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 lions, oxen, and cherubim covered the tanks. 
In earlier 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 holiest 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. 10-11) 
that the Israelites 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 1 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.”’! 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,” ¢.e. King Josiah some three centuries and a half after. 
