IMAGES IN USE 425 



image was as rigidly carried out in Israel as in Islam — the 

 second monotheistic revival of the Semites. The holy of 

 holies in Solomon's Temple contained, however, two enormous 

 cherubim, about 17 feet high, side by side, right across the back 

 of the shrine. . . . Not only were these figures in the holiest 

 place, but in the court stood the brazen sea on twelve oxen, 

 and figures of Hons, oxen, and cherubim covered the tanks. 

 In earHer times Micah had a graven image, and a molten 

 image of silver, weighing about six pounds, in his private 

 chapel of Yahweh, served by a Levite, and they, with the ephod 

 and teraphim, were adopted for tribal worship by part of the 

 tribe of Dan until the captivity." 



The author adds " there was neither officially nor privately 

 any objection to the use of images." He also shows that even 

 " in the hoHest of all things, the Ark of Yahweh, there were 

 cherubs, one on each side of the mercy seat, with their wings 

 covering the mercy seat," in which design and other religious 

 matters he discerns clear instances of Egyptian influence. 



However this may be, it is plain from Ezekiel (viii. lo-ii) 

 that the IsraeUtes worshipped graven representations of " every 

 form of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idols 

 of the House of Israel, pourtrayed up on the wall round about. 

 And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of Israel 

 . . . with every man his censer in his hand : and the odour 

 of the cloud of incense went up." Some scholars go indeed as 

 far as the assertion that until the prophetic reformation in the 

 seventh and sixth centuries B.C., the popular religion of Israel 

 was about on a level with unreformed Hinduism. 



We stand on surer ground in the statement that Ashtoreth, 

 a goddess of the Zidonians and Canaanites, was worshipped 

 by Israel, for in i Kings xi. 5 and 33, we read " Solomon 

 went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians," 

 and, " because they have forsaken me and have worshipped 

 Ashtoreth." 1 From this acknowledged worship of Ashtoreth, 



1 Of the fate of this and other temples erected by Solomon we read in 

 2 Kings xxiii. 13, " and the high places which Solomon had builded for Ash- 

 toreth, the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh, the abomination 

 of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the 

 king defile," i.e. King Josiah some three centuries and a half after. 



