310 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY VIII 



servant of Jahveh par excellence, the pious David, 

 should have her teraphim handy, in her and 

 David's chamber, when she dresses them up in 

 their bed into a simulation of her husband, for 

 the purpose of deceiving her father's messengers. 

 Even one of the early prophets, Hosea, when he 

 threatens that the children of Israel shall abide 

 many days without " ephod or teraphim " (iii. 4), 

 appears to regard both as equally proper appur- 

 tenances of the suspended worship of Jahveh, and 

 equally certain to be restored when that is 

 resumed. When we further take into considera- 

 tion that only in the reign of Hezekiah was the 

 brazen serpent, preserved in the templs and 

 believed to be the work of Moses, destroyed, and 

 the practice of offering incense to it, that is, 

 worshipping it, abolished that Jeroboam could 

 set up "calves of gold" for Israel to worship, 

 with apparently none but a political object, and 

 certainly with no notion of creating a schism 

 among the worshippers of Jahveh, or of repelling 

 the men of Judah from his standard it seems 

 obvious, either that the Israelites of the tenth 

 and eleventh centuries B.C. knew not the second 

 commandment, or that they construed it merely 

 as part of the prohibition to worship any supreme 

 god other than Jahveh, which precedes it. 



In seeking for information about the teraphim, 

 I lighted upon the following passage in the 

 valuable article on that subject by Archdeacon 



