The conquest of the ten tribes by Shalmaneser was for them the last scene of the drama of abominations which had been enacted uninterruptedly for upwards of 250 years. In the northern kingdom no reformer arose to vary the long line of royal apostates; whatever was effected in the way of reformation was done by the hands of the people (2 Chron. xxxi.l). But even in their captivity they helped to perpetuate the corruption. The colonists", whom the Assyrian conquerors placed in their stead in the cities of Samaria, brought with them their own gods, and were taught at Bethel, by a priest of the captive nation, " the manner of the god of the
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land," the lessons thus learnt resulting in a strange ad- mixture of the calf-worship of Jeroboam with the hom- age paid to their national deities (2 Kings xvii, 24-41). Iheir descendants were in consequence regarded with suspicion by the elders who returned from the captivity with Ezra, and their ofifers of assistance rejected (Ezra iv, 3), See Samaritans.
The first act of Hezekiah on ascending the throne was the restoration and purification of the Temple, which had been dismantled and closed during the latter part of his father's life (2 Chron. xxviii, 24 ; xxix, 3). The multitudes who flocked to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, so long in abeyance, removed the idolatrous altars of burnt-offering and incense erected by Ahaz (2 Chron. xxx, 14). The iconoclastic spirit was not con- fined to Judah and Benjamin, but spread throughout Ephraim and Blanasseh (2 Chron. xxxi, 1), and to all external appeai-ance idolatry was extirpated. But the reform extended little below the surface (Isa. xxix, 13). Among the leaders of the people there were many in high position who conformed to the necessities of the time (Isa. xxviii, 14), and mider Manasseh's patronage the false worship, which had been merely driven into obscurity, broke out with tenfold virulence. Idolatry of every form, and with all the accessories of enchant- ments, divination, and witchcraft, was again rife; no place was too sacred, no associations too hallowed, to be spared the contamination. If the conduct of Ahaz in erecting an altar in the temple court is open to a char- itable construction, Manasseh's was of no doubtful char- acter. The two courts of the Temple were profaned by altars dedicated to the host of heaven, and the image of the Asherah polluted the holy place (2 Kings xxi, 7 ; 2 Chron. xxxiii, 7, 15 ; comp. Jer. xxxii, 34). Even in his late repentance he did not entirelj' destroy all traces of his former wrong. Tradition states that the remon- strances of the aged Isaiah (q. v.) only served to secure his own martyrdom (Gemara on Yehamoth, iv). The people still burned incense on the high places ; but Je- hovah was the ostensible object of their worship. The king's son sacrificed to his father's idols, but was not as- sociated with him in his repentance, and in his short reign of two years restored all the altars of the Baalim and the images of the Asherah. With the death of Jo- siah ended the last effort to revive among the people a purer ritual, if not a purer faith. The lamp of David, ■which had long shed but a struggling ray, flickered for a while, and then went out in the darkness of Babylonian captivity.— Smith. See Judah, Kingdom of.
It will be useful here to recapitulate the main vari- eties of the idolatry which so greatly marred the relig- ious character of this monarchical period of the Jewish state. It has been a question much debated whether the Israelites were ever so far given uji to idolatry as to lose all knowledge of the true God. It would be hard to assert this of any nation, and still more difficult to prove. That there always remained among them a faithful few, who in the face of every danger adhered to the Avorship of Jehovah, may readily be believed, for even at a time when Baal-worship was most prevalent there were found seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed before his image (1 Kings xix, 18). But there is stiU room for grave suspicion that among the masses of the people, though the idea of a supreme Being— of whom the images they worshipped were but the distort- ed representatives — was not entirely lost, it was so ob- scured as to be but dimly apprehended. And not only were the ignorant multitude thus led astray, but the priests, scribes, and prophets became leaders of the apos- tasy (Jer. ii, 8). Warburton, indeed, maintained that they never formally renounced Jehovah, and that their defection consisted " in joining foreign worship and idol- atrous ceremonies to the ritual of the true God" {Dir. Leg. b. V, § 3). But one passage in their history, though confessedly obscure, seems to point to a time when, un- der the rule of the judges, " Israel for many days had no true God, and no teaching priest, and no law" (2 Chron.
XV, 3). The correlative argument of Cudworth, who contends from the teaching of the Hebrew doctors and rabbis "that the pagan nations anciently, at least the intelligent amongst them, acknowledged one supreme God of the whole world, and that all other gods were but creatiu-es and inferior ministers," is controverted by Mosheim {Intell. Si/st. i, 4, § 30, and notes). There can be no doubt that much of the idolatry of the Hebrews consisted in worshipping the true God under an image, such as the calves at Bethel and Dan (Josephus, -1?;^ viii, 8, 5; candXeig iivixivvnovQ r^j ©f'p), and by asso- ciating his worship with idolatrous rites (Jer. xli, 5) and places consecrated to idols (2 Kings xviii, 22). From the peculiarity of their position they were never distin- guished as the mventors of a new pantheon, nor did they adopt any one sj-stem of idolatry so exclusively as ever to become identified with it (so the Moabitcs with the worship of Chemosh [Xumb. xxi, 29]); but tliey no sooner came in contact with other nations than they readily adapted themselves to their practices, the old spirit of antagonism died rapidly awaj', and intermar- riage was one step to idolatry. — Smith.