f Israel revolted, and set up Jeroboam to be their king. From that
time on, to the end, the kingdom was divided, and many times the one
part was antagonistic to the other.

#66. The Northern Kingdom.#--Jeroboam as its first king, fearing that
if the religion of the two peoples remained substantially the same,
and if his people went regularly to Jerusalem, the capital of the
Southern Kingdom, to worship, they would be alienated from him,
devised a system of calf worship, and set up two golden calves, the
one at Bethel, just over the border of Judah, and the other at Dan, in
the extreme north of his domain. To these two centers of worship he
invited his people to resort, in order to keep them from assembling
with the men of Judah in Jerusalem. "It is too much for you," he said,
"to go so far as to Jerusalem; behold your gods right in your midst"
(1 Kings 12:25-33). All this he did in utter defiance of God's
command, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," and in
spite of the bitter experience of Israel in the wilderness in the
matter of the golden calf that Aaron made.

#67.# This action on the part of Jeroboam "set the pace" for the
Northern Kingdom, and from that day to the end of their history the
land was full of gross idolatry. Not that all the men of the Northern
Kingdom refused to follow Jehovah, for this was not the case, but the
rulers were leaders in one form or another of idolatry.

#68. Ahab and Jezebel.#--In 925 B. C. Ahab ascended the throne of the
Northern Kingdom. He married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of
the Sidonians, a most masterful and wicked woman. She led her husband
to establish the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth, nature divinities,
whose worship was connected with most abhorrent practises. Not only
so, but between them they did their best to root out all those who
persisted in the worship of the God of Abraham. They persecuted the
sons of the prophets, and put them to the sword. It was now no longer
safe to try, even in secret, to worship the God of truth.

#69. Elijah and Elisha.#--It was just at this time that God in his
mercy sent two very great prophets to Israel to try to win them back
to their allegiance to the God of Moses and the Patriarchs. This, the
student will remember, was one of those periods which was mentioned in
the introduction, in which the narrative is amplified and the miracle
multiplied, as betokening that the period was of great importance.
Elijah and