#302 | Melakhim Aleph ch.13 - New Religion

Yesterday we saw the revolution of Yeravam and the Ten Tribes seceding to create their own country up north, leaving Yehuda and Binyamin in the south.

And now Yeravam builds Shechem in HaRefraim as his capital city and eventually moves his capital to Penuel.

But Yeravam says, Atata Shuv HaMamlacha LeBeit David.

The nation is a religious one.

There is no separation between religion and state.

And therefore, if people will go for Ali al-Regal, people will need to go visit the temple.

And of course, who is going to preside there, especially on festive occasions? The king of Judah, then I'm going to be discredited and in a very short time people are going to see Yehudah as the only legitimate state and I'm going to be discredited what am I going to do? I need to stop people going to Jerusalem and I need to have a religious centre And therefore, what does he do? He also takes advice.

And he makes two golden cards.

And he says, You don't need to go to Jerusalem.

Here are your gods of Israel who brought you up from Egypt.

And he put one in Beit El and another in Dan.

And this was a great sin.

And this was a great sin.

In fact, we find five specific religious changes that he makes.

The first being the shrines at Dan and Beit El.

We'll talk about those places in a minute.

Number two, the golden calves.

Number three, he disenfranchises the kahuna.

Anyone can be a priest.

Number four.

He changes the date of Sukkot, so it would seem, and he makes a Chag on He pushes off Sukkot for a month and makes it in the 8th month, the month of Cheshvan.

We'll talk about that too.

And the king himself functions as a priest, performing the sacrificial service, As we see here, Yeravam himself acts as a priest.