1st Kings Chapter 12 verse 31 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 31. - And he made an house of high places [See on 1 Kings 3:2, and cf. 2 Kings 17:29. It is often assumed (Keil, Rawlinson, al. after Josephus) that Jeroboam built two temples for his cherubim, and the statement of the text, that he built one, is explained on the ground that the historian contrasts the "house of high places" with the "house of the Lord." Ewald, too, after 2 Kings 17:29, 32, understands the words as plural. But is it not more probable that a chapel or sanctuary already existed at Dan, where an irregular priesthood had ministered for more than four hundred years? This verse would then refer exclusively to Jeroboam's procedure at Bethel (see next verse). There he built a temple and ordained a number of priests, but Dan had both already. We know that the Danite priests carried on the calf worship to the time of the captivity (Judges 18:30). This "house of high places" has grown in Ewald's pages into "a splendid temple in Canaanite style"], and made priests of the lowest of the people [Heb. מִקְצות "from the ends," i.e., from all classes, ex universe populo (Gesen.), and not, as the writer explains presently, from the tribe of Levi alone. Genesis 19:4, Judges 18:20, Ezekiel 33:2, prove this to be the correct interpretation of the word. Rawlinson, who remarks that "Jeroboam could have no motive for specially selecting persons of low condition," does not thereby dispose of the A.V. rendering, for the historian might mean that some of Jeroboam's priests were of the lowest stamp, because he could find no others, or because he was so little scrupulous as to take them. "Leaden priests are well fitted to golden deities" (Hall)], which were not of the sons of Levi. [Jeroboam would doubtless have been only too glad to have retained the services of the Levitical priests, but they went over in a body to Rehoboam (2 Chronicles 11:13). The statement of ver. 14, that, "Jeroboam and his sons" had "cast them out," suggests that they had refused to take part in his new cult and that thereupon he banished them, and, no doubt, confiscated their possessions. The idea of Stanley, that "following the precedent of the deposition of Abiathar by Solomon, he removed from their places the whole of the sacerdotal order," is a wild conjecture for which Scripture affords not the slightest warrant.]

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(31, 32) Of the lowest of the people.--This is universally recognised as a mistranslation, though a natural one, of the original, "the ends of the people." The sense is "from the whole mass of the people," without care for Levitical descent--the Levites having (see 2Chronicles 11:13-14) generally returned into the kingdom of Judah on the establishment of this idolatry. It is hardly likely that the king would have lacked because at Dan an unauthorised Levitical priesthood was (as has been said) forthcoming.