Jeroboam’s Altar at Bethel

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 26.

Jeroboam’s Altar at Bethel

"AND he set the one in Bethel." It was, no doubt, an easy task to turn the people to Bethel instead of Jerusalem to worship, for there Abraham had built an altar and had worshiped, both before and after he went to Egypt (Gen. 12:8; 13:4); there the Lord appeared unto Jacob, and there Jacob set up a pillar, and called it God's house (Gen. 28:10-22); there Jacob built an altar when he returned with all his substance from the house of Laban, and there the Lord appeared to him again, and renewed to him the promise made to Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 35:6-15); in the troubled times of the judges there was the ark of the covenant, and there the people came to inquire of the Lord (Judges 20:18-28); and there Samuel went in his circuit once a year to judge Israel. So when Jeroboam built an altar there, and established a system of worship, idolatrous though it was, he could appeal to them upon all these sacred memories, as against Jerusalem, and especially when by the cry, "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," he would palm off upon them the idols as simply representations of the God of their fathers.