Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

IMAGES IN USE 425image was as rigidly carried out in Israel as in Islam—thesecond monotheistic revival of the Semites. The holy ofholies in Solomon's Temple contained, however, two enormouscherubim, about 17 feet high, side by side, right across the backof the shrine. . . . Not only were these figures in the holiestplace, 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 moltenimage of silver, weighing about six pounds, in his privatechapel of Yahweh, served by a Levite, and they, with the ephodand teraphim, were adopted for tribal worship by part of thetribe of Dan until the captivity."The author adds " there was neither officially nor privatelyany objection to the use of images." He also shows that even" in the hoHest of all things, the Ark of Yahweh, there werecherubs, one on each side of the mercy seat,with their wingscovering the mercy seat," in which design and other religiousmatters 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 " everyform of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idolsof 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 odourof the cloud of incense went up." Some scholars go indeed asfar as the assertion that until the prophetic reformation in theseventh and sixth centuries B.C., the popular religion of Israelwas 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 worshippedby Israel, for in i Kings xi. 5 and 33, we read " Solomonwent after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians,"and, " because they have forsaken me and have worshippedAshtoreth." From 1this acknowledged worship of Ashtoreth,1 Of the fate of this and other temples erected by Solomon we read in2 Kings xxiii. 13, " and the high places which Solomon had builded for Ashtoreth,the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh, the abominationof Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the children of Ammon, did theking defile," i.e. King Josiah some three centuries and a half after.