The Kingdom of God. John Bright
proceeded to lay waste the northern state as well.8 Suicidal madness reached its climax a generation later when Asa of Judah (913-873),9 hard pressed by Baasha (900-877), bought in the aid of Ben-hadad—king of the Aramean state of Damascus. The latter cheerfully ravaged much of northern Galilee (I Kings 15:16-22). In the course of this fraternal throat-cutting the empire which David had built collapsed like a house of cards. Damascus succeeded to the dominant position which Israel had held. Two centuries later Isaiah could still remember the schism as the worst disaster that had ever befallen his people (Isa. 7:17).
In such a situation Jeroboam could not, even had he wished, deliver what his prophet backers expected. An amelioration of taxes and conscription in the midst of war could hardly have been hoped for. On the contrary, expenses must have mounted. And to return to the loose charismatic leadership would have been to compound disaster. To bring stability to his state Jeroboam sought to found a dynasty. But the north apparently did not want a dynasty. No sooner did Nadab the son of Jeroboam take the throne (901-900) than he was murdered by Baasha. And when Baasha’s son, Elah (877-876), attempted to succeed his father, he in turn was murdered by a cavalry officer, Zimri.10 And both plots were prophet inspired (I Kings 14:6-16; 15:25-29; 16:1-12).
What was worse, Jeroboam was obliged to set up his own state cult to rival Jerusalem. It is clear (I Kings 12:26-29) that Jeroboam realized the enormous prestige of Solomon’s temple—housing as it did the sacred Ark of the tribal league—and knew that if he could not wean his people from it, he would lose them. So he set up a rival shrine in Bethel. Now this shrine was a temple of Yahweh, God of Israel (in spite of the language of vs. 28), and the golden bulls which adorned it were not idols but—like the cherubim in the Jerusalem temple—pedestals for the throne of the invisible Yahweh.11 But the bull motif was apparently too closely associated with the symbolism of the Baal cult for the taste of purists. No doubt ignorant people did come to worship them. Jeroboam was to live in the hearts of posterity as the man who “made Israel to sin” (I Kings 15:34). His cult was probably the entering wedge for all sorts of paganism. In any case pagan practices did enter (as the reader of Hosea well knows). What was worse, Yahweh—God of Israel—became, in the minds of many, all too very much like Baal.
So the northern state did not succeed at all in breaking with the new order. It broke from the Davidic dynasty—and never ceased to try to found a dynasty. It rebelled from the tax policy of Solomon—and itself followed exactly the same administrative pattern, as the ostraca of Samaria show.12 It parted company with Solomon’s state cult—and got Jeroboam’s. One day prophets would be silenced in the name of that cult (Amos 7:10-13). And the schism of society went on unchecked. By the time of Amos we see a society torn asunder.
II
1. In the northern state, therefore, to the end of its existence, there was tension between the old order and the new. The gravest crisis came in the middle of the ninth century B.C. The able Omri (876-869) had seized the throne (I Kings 16:15-28), to be succeeded by his notorious son, Ahab (869-850). These kings sought to recapture a measure of the prosperity of Solomon, and to do that they had to recreate his policy. This called for internal unity, a strong hand in Transjordan—particularly against Damascus—and, above all, a close liaison with Phoenicia. Omri and Ahab achieved their goal by a series of steps which we cannot here trace. Suffice it to say that in a succession of victories the Arameans (Syrians) were repressed, while alliance with Phoenicia was sealed by the marriage of Ahab to Jezebel, the daughter of Ittobaal, king of Tyre (I Kings 16:31).13 Meanwhile the fratricidal quarrel with the southern state was patched up by the wedding of Athaliah, daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, to Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat—king of Judah (II Kings 8:18, 26). That the purpose of this alliance was partly commercial is shown by the abortive attempt to recreate the Red Sea trade out of Ezion-geber (I Kings 22:48).14
This might have been all to the good had it not been for Jezebel. Born and raised a worshiper of the Tyrian Baal, she was allowed by Ahab—it being the custom, and he not being narrow-minded—to continue her native religion in Samaria, and a temple of Baal was built for her there (I Kings 16:32). But it did not stop at that. Jezebel was a strong-minded woman who appears to have been no less than a missionary for her god. Infuriated by those that opposed her (notably Elijah), she turned all the repressive measures at her command against them, even the threat of death (I Kings 18–19). It was a question who should be the God of Israel: Yahweh or Baal Melqart (18:20-24).
The danger to Israel was immense. The more we know of Canaanite paganism the clearer this becomes.15 Here was a paganism of the most degrading sort. Its gods and goddesses—Baal, Astarte, Asherah, Anat, and the rest—represented for the most part those forces and functions of nature which have to do with fertility. Its myth was closely linked with the death and rebirth of nature. Its cult was concerned to control by means of its ritual the forces of nature, and thus to produce the desired fertility in soil, in beast, and in man. As in all such religions sacred prostitution of both sexes and other orgiastic and ecstatic practices of the most disgusting sort were involved.
Clearly the question, Yahweh or Baal? was not a trivial one. We moderns tend to view it as a sort of denominational quarrel, and to find the prophet hostility to Baal rather fanatical and narrow. But we are wrong. For these were not two rival religions, one of which was somewhat superior to the other; they were religions of wholly different sorts; they could have nothing to do with each other. It must be understood that Israel’s very being as a people rested in her confidence that Yahweh had called her, entered into covenant with her, summoned her to live in obedience to his righteous law, and given her a sense of destiny as his people. Baal, on the contrary, would have been destructive of the very faith that made Israel what she was. Here was a religion which summoned men not at all beyond their animal nature, and even fostered that animal nature; which posed no moral demands, but provided men with an external ritual designed to appease the deity and to manipulate the divine powers for their own material ends; which was incapable of creating community but rather, by pandering to the selfish desires of the worshiper, was destructive of real community. Paganism was, then as now, no trivial thing. As long as men take on the character of the gods they serve, so long does it greatly matter who those gods may be. Had Israel embraced Baal it would have been the end of her; she would no longer have lived as the peculiar people of God. Not one scrap of her heritage would have survived.
Of course the menace of Baal was not new with Jezebel. It had been there since the conquest, when Israel first confronted the superior material culture of Canaan and, in taking over her land, took over her agrarian way of life, her cities, and her shrines. The temptation was always present to imagine that the worship of the gods of fertility was a necessary part of the agrarian life. Many were quick to apostatize to Baal or to address Yahweh as if he were Baal. The incorporation of new blood into Israel,16 no doubt much faster than it could be assimilated, and the tolerant attitude of Solomon and others in such matters, could only have facilitated the process. Baal was no stranger to Israel.
Yet we must not allow this to obscure the magnitude of the threat which Jezebel posed. Here for the first time was an overt attempt on the part of the state to impose a foreign paganism by force. Jezebel, as we said, resorted to persecution, and this persecution had far-reaching effects. It fell with especial force on the prophets of Yahweh (I Kings 18:4; 19:14). For the first time in Israel the prophet was faced with reprisals for speaking the Word of Yahweh. In the face of pressure some of them gave way and surrendered to the state. We see thereafter groups of prophets, in the pay of the court or the shrine, clustering about the king to lick the royal hand and to say—unanimously—what the royal ear wished to hear (I Kings 22). But we see also a succession of lone individuals who like Micaiah, because they refused to compromise their prophet Word, were ever more completely alienated not only from the state but from their fellow prophets as well. To these prophets Yahweh was against the state.
2. That the policy of Jezebel should produce violent reaction was inevitable. For not only was it intolerable to conservative Israelites, but the feeling still persisted that the state could be purged, brought back to its destiny by political action. The fact that the reaction bided its time until both Ahab and Elijah had passed from the scene diminished none of its violence. The reader will find