consequence, the special blessing of Jehovah. The five Danite sjiies consulted these oracular I'enates of iNlicah through the intervention of Jonathan (xviii, 5), and in- formed the Danites on their way to Laish of tlie images which the house contained. The Danite warriors, with the most unscrupulous indifference, violently carried oft" the whole apparatus of this private cult, including the priest himself, to their new city; and we are informed that it continued to be celebrated till "the day of the captivity of the land," which, as we see from the next verse, may perhaps mean till the ca])ture of Shiloh by the Philistines. What is most remarkable in tliis nar- rative is the fact that both Micah, who was a worship- per of Jehovah, and the Danites, who acknowledged Elohim (ver. 5, 10), and Jonathan, the grandson of jMo- ses himself, should, in spite of the distinctest prohibi- tions of the law, have reganled the adoration of tera- phim and other images as harmless, if not as laudalile; and that this form of idolatry, without any political mo- tive to palliate it as in the case of Jeroboam, should have been adopted and maintained without surprise or hesitation, nay, even with eager enthusiasm, by an entire tribe of Israel. This is very much as at present some forms of image-adoration are blended with the service of 'iod. That such will-worship, however, was only comparatively innocent, and originated in an obstinate pruritus of improving rather than obeying God's reve- lation, Samuel clearly expressed in reproving Saul (1 Sam. XV, 23) : " Stubbornness is as iniquity and idola- try" (literally teraphim). We do not read that the stubbornness of Saul led him actually to worship tera- phim. However, his daughter possessed teraphim, as we shall see presently.
3. The next notice of teraphim which we find is in 1 Sam. xix, 13-10, where Michal, to give David more time to escape, deceives the messengers of Saul by putting " the teraphim" in his bed, " with a pillow of goats'-hair for his bolster." The use of the article shows that "the teraphim" was something perfectly well known (Theni- us, ad loc.) ; and the fact that we thus find it (or them) in the house of a man so pious as David entirely con- firms our inference as to the prevalence of tliese itnages. The suggestions of Michaelis that Michal may have worshipped them mdvnown to David, and that barren women were especially devoted to them, are wholly without foundation. The article (C^SIpri) explodes the arguments of Michaelis {De Theraphis, Comment. Soc. Gott. 1703), Bochart (llieroz. i, 023), etc., that the teraphim in this instance was a mere hastily made doll of rags ; in fact, a sort of malkin. We maj- legitimately infer from the passage that they had some rude resem- blance to the human shape, being, perhaps, something like the Hermte; hence x\quila in this place renders the word by TrpoTOj-iai. The Sept. rendering KivoTucpia very probably points to the belief that the teraphim were images of deceased ancestors (^KtvoTCKpu'i Tivn fjam' tXtffui'pfi'n wf tvtzoq vtKpov. Suid. vid. Bo- chart, Uieroz. I, ii, 51), and the rendering of "put a pillow of goats'-hair for his bolster" by Ka\ i]Tvap tojv alywv t^tro vpog KtipciXiiQ avTov, " she placed the goats' liver at his head," shows that they read '^33, "liver," for 'T'33, "mattress." Now if this ancient reading were correct, it brings the passage into remark- able parallel with Ezek. xxi, 21, where Nebuchadnezzar is said to have decided his course b}' belomantia, togeth- er with consultation of teraphim and looking into the liver (extispicium). It is possible that Michal may have bten divining by means of a sacrifice to the teraphim when Saul's messenger arrived, and that she put the yet palpitating liver on the bed with the image, which in a small, dark, narrow recess might well enough pass for a human being. Josephus, with his usual want of honesty, omits all mention of the teraphim, and only says that she put the liver under the bedclothes, hop- ing that its motion would make the men more easily believe that David was gasping ! {Ant. vi, 11, 4). The-
TERAPHIM
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TERAPHIM
odoret {Quwst. 49, in 1 Beff.) repeats this preposterous notion.
Oil every revival of the knowledge of the written revelation of (iod the tcrapliini were swept away, to- gether with the worse forms of idolatry (2 Kings xxiii, 24): "The workers with familiar spirits, and the wiz- ards, and the images (teraphim), and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Jiidah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of tlie law which were written in the book tiiat Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord."
4. The next passage in historical order about the ter- aphim is Hos. iii, 4. which is encompassed by difficul- ties. The prophet, purchasing (iomer to himself, bids her be chaste for many days, '• for tlie children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a sacritice, and without an image (matseba/i), and without an ephod, and witliout tera|)him." Here it would cer- taiuly be the priiiKt facie impression of every unbiassed reader that the matzebah and the teraphim are men- tioned without blame as ordinary parts of religious wor- ship. Without, however, entering into the question (which, perhaps, camiot be decided) whether Hosea did (ir did not mean to commend or tolerate these material adjuncts to a monotheistic worship, it is certainly not surprising that the reverence paid to the teraphim should have continued in Israel side by side with that paid to the calves, which beyond all doubt were intend- ed to be mere Elohistic symbols; and this is the less surprising when we remember that one of these cheru- bic emblems was set up in the very city (Dan) to which the teraphim of JMicah had been carried ; and probably, indeed, because of the existence there of the irregular worship established by Moses' grandson. But here, again, the Sept. version is curious and perplexing, for it uses the word SijXoi (sc. Xi'.&ot, bright gems), a word whicli, like C))\iomt;, it uses elsewhere of the Urim and Thumraim (Numb, xxvii, 21 ; 1 Sam. xxviii, 6) j and Aquila seems to have had the same notion in adopting the word (pw-KTi-iovQ, and it is even countenanced by Jerome, who in this passage includes the teraphim among the " instrumenta sacerdotalis habitus." This is one starting-point for the theory, supported with such a mass of splendid but unconvincing learning by Spencer (Z>e Leff'/. flfbr. lib. iii, dissert, vii, p. 920-1038), that the teraphim and urim were identical. He argues not only from tliis reuileriug C/yXoi, but also (1) from the frequent union of ephod with terapiiim ; (2) from the supposition that urim means " tires," and that teraphim means the same, being a mere Aramaic equivalent for seraphim, " the burning ones ;" (3) from the constant use of tera- phim for oracular purposes. He concludes, therefore, that they were small images, permitted as a kind of necessary concession to deeply r(}oted idolatry, placed in the folds of the ei)hod and believed to emit predictions of the divine will. How ill the tlieory accords with the data before us will be obvious at once. This passage seeras to indicate that as the use of teraphim, like that of the Penates and Lares among the Romans, was con- nected with nationality, it necessarily perished with the nationality itself.