Enter Solomon, the veritable founder of the Synagogue of Satan, and probably the most violent and detestable human being that ever lived. We have demonstrated from 1 Kings 11 how he unapologetically flaunted his love for Molekh all around the nation, but really, his apostasy started much earlier than that, and we see this as just the inevitable result of an incredibly evil soul given (or, rather, having usurped) an extraordinary amount of power. Chapter 8 of the same book shows just how susceptible he was to the customs of the heathen nations around him, as it accounts for his great lust for flesh and how he imposed it on the rest of the nation, in the name of God even (as “peace” offerings!), the way Yahshuah warned against in Matthew 18.
And the sovereign and all Israel with him made slaughterings before יהוה. And Solomon brought peace offerings, which he slaughtered to יהוה, twenty-two thousand bulls and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep. Thus the sovereign and all the children of Israel dedicated the House of יהוה. On that day the sovereign set apart the middle of the courtyard that was in front of the House of יהוה, for there he made burnt offerings, and the grain offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar that was before יהוה was too small to contain the burnt offerings, and the grain offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings. And Solomon at that time observed the Festival, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the entrance of Ḥamath to the wadi of Egypt, before יהוה our Elohim, seven days and seven days—fourteen days. On the eighth day he sent the people away. And they blessed the sovereign, and went to their tents rejoicing and glad of heart for all the goodness that יהוה had done for His servant David, and for Israel His people.
1 Kings 8:62-66
So Solomon was a complete scoundrel with an insatiable appetite for flesh, so much so that it is a wonder he did not depopulate Israel of its entire livestock commodity, and we have no doubt that he was so from before the very beginning of his reign. Nor do we have any doubt that he doctored the official history to make sure that he would be viewed in a positive light, a fact which has led to mixed reviews of his reign, both of which are evident in the later chronicles which have made their way into the Bible. For example, there is a discrepancy in 1 Kings 2:35, which says that Solomon appointed Zadok to be the high priest in place of Abiathar, but Zadok was already in this position during David’s reign (2 Samuel 8:17), so the only thing that could have happened is that Abiathar was removed. This particular lie (in 1 Kings 2) is obviously intended to demonstrate that Solomon had authority over Zadok, the very man who allegedly anointed him, and that he (Solomon) was therefore not subject to the conditions imposed on him by God and the prophets, as Saul and David were. This forever consolidated the apostasy of the entire nation, as Yahweh hinted when he told Samuel, “It is not you they have rejected, but me.”
This is, of course, a controversial statement, as we are supposed to believe that Solomon was chosen by David to succeed him, that he was anointed by Zadok, and that he deserved the throne because he was a good, God-fearing man, but in reality he was an illegitimate bastard of a publicly disgraced foreigner, the consequence of David’s self-professed “great sin” (the murder of Uriah the Hittite), and nowhere near the top of the line of succession. It is plainly evident that he conspired with his own brothers to kill them off, as they were his rivals, even causing one of them to lead an open rebellion and civil war against David just so he could maximize his chances of moving up a single notch, and that he remained in the palace while they were out fighting each other so that he could usurp the throne when his father died, inventing the ridiculous story that David had suddenly changed his mind about who was to rule in his stead, with no corroborating evidence other than his own word, though David had never even so much as hinted that he favored Solomon. When the throne rightly passed to his older brother Adonijah, who was next in line, he again conspired with his mother to murder him by setting him up on a false charge and making sure he was killed without any due process so that he could not respond to it, thereby clearing his name. (In fact, it was no charge at all, because the charge was treason, and Solomon was not the king, which makes it ironic, because apparently Adonijah did not even want the throne—if he did, then Solomon and his mother would not have had to invent a charge, as he simply would have taken it.) This story is recorded in 1 Kings 2, and shows how Solomon swore by Yahweh that he would not kill Adonijah, and then not only did it, but conspired to do it for no other reason than that he coveted the throne. But the treachery does not end there.
Solomon’s first act as King was to exile the priest Abiathar, which is the only time in history that a king ever deposed a high priest in Israel, effectively asserting his authority over both the Levitical Priesthood and the Law of Moses. Indeed, he actually threatened to kill Abiathar, without any grounds whatsoever, but it behooved him instead to pretend like he was “merciful.” Like Joab, Abiathar’s only alleged crime was that he supported the rightful king Adonijah. It would have been politically expedient for Solomon to keep him on as High Priest, but it is inconceivable that Abiathar would have kept his mouth shut about the murder of Adonijah after Solomon had solemnly sworn on the name of Yahweh that he would not do it, so like Joab, he, too, had to go.
Solomon’s second act as King was to hunt down Joab, the commander of David’s armies, who had remained loyal to David throughout his life, and who had put down the rebellion of Absalom. Joab’s loyalty was to Adonijah, in accordance with David’s will, but he chose to flee rather than instigate an open rebellion, because he was obviously not keen on seeing another civil war break out due merely to the petty cause of Solomon’s treachery and unbridled ambition, but Solomon hunted him anyway. Joab found refuge at the Tabernacle and clung to the altar there, apparently thinking that Solomon would never have him murdered for no real reason at the altar of Yahweh He was mistaken, for Solomon did indeed command him to be so murdered after his assassins hesitated and asked him to relent, and even cursed him in the process.
Solomon’s third act as King was to put David’s friend Shimei under house arrest, presumably because Shimei was loyal to the monarchy, or Solomon at least suspected him of being so. Shimei did what Solomon told him to, but was eventually framed and murdered the way Adonijah had been. Then, 1 Kings 2 tells us, and only then, the reign of Solomon was established.
Now, we hope that this sufficiently demonstrates the low moral character of Solomon well before his old age, which Christians always write off as the easily forgivable mistakes of an old man (if that—many blindly reject the fact that he ever erred at all, even when confronted about it), and which they even tell us he repented of, in blatant contradiction to the Bible. The whole idea of Solomon being given “wisdom” by God—his one redeeming quality—is only even attested to by Solomon’s own mouth, with no corroboration, and it is expressly refuted by Yahshuah’s nature-friendly teaching in Matthew 6:29-33. We have already seen that his “wisdom” consists of quips such as the ones about how parents ought to beat their children interspersed among the other Proverbs, a policy which has been soundly refuted by pediatricians and which causes a great deal of animosity toward the Bible by people who know better, so even this characteristic is spurious. The episode of his alleged meeting with Yahweh is recorded in 1 Kings 3:5, after a description of how Solomon forged a marriage alliance with Egypt and made a thousand burnt offerings. With the recognition of how detestable each of these acts was, in consideration of the evidence we will examine below, the notion that Yahweh could have rewarded him for it, as alleged, is utterly asinine. What Solomon claimed to have asked for (and we say “claimed,” because it is apparent that God never consorted with him, and it is upon Solomon’s word alone that he ever did—in a dream) was not wisdom, as many allege, but “understanding … that I may discern between good and evil.” In other words, Solomon merely claimed to have eaten the forbidden fruit, and now we are supposed to believe that God loved him for it, even though we are told in the Bible that the division of the kingdom happened specifically because of his debauchery, and that had it not been for the sake of his father, Solomon himself would have been deposed and killed, the way Saul had been.
Furthermore, Masonic tradition holds that Solomon hired Hiram of Tyre to build the Temple, which was used to justify his decision to destroy the Tabernacle which he had already profaned with the blood of Joab. Judeo-Christian tradition even holds that he built it with the labor of demons, as recorded in the Testament of Solomon. Hiram was presumably chosen because he had also built an identical temple in Tyre, which was likewise dedicated to Molekh, and Solomon was so apostate already by that time that he had unapologetically aimed at mimicking the Baal worship of Tyre and imposing it over all Israel. So it is only natural that the Valley of the Wailing Son would have thrived under his rule, as he mercilessly exploited the Israelites and all the nations offering him tribute in order to transform Jerusalem into a meat-centric megalopolis. To this day, Freemasons regard Hiram and Solomon, together, as the founders of their craft.
Knowing all this, it really should not be a surprise that Solomon participated in the heathen rituals which sometimes included cooking and eating one’s own offspring. After all, this was the high point of the ceremonies convened to worship the gods which the Bible says he worshiped, and the one which any man who had such great lust for flesh as Solomon did no doubt would have enjoyed the most. More importantly, it was Solomon who established the Molekh and Asherah/Ashtoreth cult throughout the land. So, given that he had a thousand wives and only one documented son, and that most people eat every day, it is likely that he participated in these rituals almost every day, and that he brought all these women to himself so that he could have a steady supply of bodies to enable him to indulge in the sex rites of the Ashtoreth cult, and the sacrificial rites of the Molekh cult, which required the sacrifice of one’s own children, rather than any random animal. Apart from these two causes, why else would a man have need of more than a few, much less a few hundred wives? (And the needs of the first could easily be met by just a few, irrespective of the man in question.)
Even so, Solomon was just one man, practically a footnote in the more than two millennia of almost continuously documented history of Abraham and his descendants in the Bible. If the fact that the king who built the Temple where the sacrifices were performed (hence his great desire to build it in the first place, as it was right next to his palace) also ate his own children, combined with the new knowledge that such practices are actually what they envision as pleasing to God, is not enough to turn Jews and Christians off to the practice of eating meat, then it bears reminding that the reason Solomon was easily one of the most despicable men in history is that he only instituted the practices among the Israelites and suppressed the prophets’ resistance to his religious reforms; he was not the originator of them, nor was he by any means the greatest persecutor of the prophets of Yahweh. As uncanny as it is, the kings of Israel and Judah actually just got progressively more wicked as time went on.
1 Kings relates that Jeroboam did more evil (defined in the context as idolatry, so this evil necessarily denotes sacrifices) than all before him (14:9), that Omri did more than all before him (16:25), and that Ahab also did more than all before him (16:30,33). 16:33 explicitly states that Ahab sacrificed his own sons to Molekh (though this decision was almost certainly made by his wife Jezebel), and by implication, so did the kings before him all the way back to Solomon. This probably also shows why Jeroboam’s rule was accepted in Israel, as ultimately the common man’s palate was what determined whether the reigns of the various kings were accepted, as evidenced by the fact that David’s rule was not accepted by the Jebusites, whereas Saul’s was, even though Saul was the oppressor and David the liberator. In fact, those few kings who did not openly support the Molekh cult to the point of participating themselves were assassinated.
1 Kings also provides substantiation to claims we have already made in previous chapters, as well as numerous other insights, such as that the cult prostitution was clearly associated with the Abomination (i.e. that Molekh worship was associated with Ashtoreth worship), implying that the many condemnations of adultery and fornication in Scripture still evidence the distaste the prophets had for human and animal sacrifice, even where they are meant to literally refer to sex rites. Ultimately, Israel’s apostasy is represented as “Jeroboam’s sin,” which was originally an answer to the dilemma which Solomon’s rebellious captain Jeroboam faced when he feared that Israel’s allegiance would revert back to Solomon’s son Rehoboam after the prophets cut off Jerusalem from ruling over Judah. That is, Jeroboam was afraid that Rehoboam might win the people over to his side by outdoing him in terms of feeding
them meat, so he set up a couple of golden calves closer to home, for their convenience—like the world’s first fast food joints—in order to pacify them.
And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the reign shall return to the house of David. If these people go up to do slaughterings in the House of יהוה at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people shall turn back to their master, Reḥaḇʽam sovereign of Judah, and they shall slay me and go back to Reḥaḇʽam sovereign of Judah.” So the sovereign took counsel and made two calves of gold, and said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. See, your mighty ones, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!” And he set up one in Bĕyth Ěl, and the other he put in Dan. And this matter became a sin, for the people went before the one as far as Dan. And he made the house of high places, and made priests from all sorts of people, who were not of the sons of Lĕwi. And Jeroboam performed a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the festival that was in Judah, and he offered on the altar. So he did at Bĕyth Ěl, slaughtering to the calves that he had made. And at Bĕyth Ěl he appointed the priests of the high places which he had made. And he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bĕyth Ěl on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the month which he had devised in his own heart. And he performed a festival for the children of Israel, and offered on the altar and burned incense.
1 Kings 12:26-33
Needless to say, the fact that this amounts to a repeat of the Golden Calf incident following the Exodus is representative of nothing so much as Israel’s stubborn refusal to obey God and stop eating meat. The unnamed prophet of the next chapter (13) who was told to prophesy against Jeroboam’s altar was explicitly told not to eat anything near the altar, and when the king offered him a meal and a gift, he declared that he would not partake of it even for half the kingdom (1 Kings 13:1-9). True to the cryptic speech of the Prophets, what he was really telling Jeroboam is that he would not do it even if he were to abdicate and set up him in his place, because Jeroboam only ruled over half his own kingdom.
The prophecy of the punishment for Jeroboam’s sin, delivered by the prophet Ahijah, is recorded in the next chapter (14), where his house is cursed to be eaten by dogs and birds because they made asherim, or Asherah poles (14:15), which is a fancy way of saying ‘barbecue spits.’ (Yes, the origin of the cross or crux immissa in Christian worship is a barbecue spit. This is not an exaggeration. Nor is it any wonder, considering that church-going Christians universally hold themselves to be eating the body and drinking the blood of their sacrificial victim.) According to this curse, only one of Jeroboam’s children gets buried (14:12-13), and this because he is the only one in whom God has found anything good. This signifies that God’s sense of karma (or of irony) has not diminished between the Law and the Prophets—a fact which feeds heavily into certain descriptions of the consequences of the sin of eating meat in Revelation and elsewhere in the Prophets. At the same time, Jeroboam’s fear that Israel might return to Yahweh under Rehoboam’s guidance turns out to be completely unfounded, for Judah was no better off with Solomon’s son in charge than it had been under Solomon himself. The irony of the prospect of Israel being ruled by the House of David under Rehoboam is also great, because David was the only one of Rehoboam’s grandparents who was even an Israelite—and that is even assuming that David was really Solomon’s biological father. (He was certainly not his father in the other sense of the word.)
Meanwhile Reḥaḇʽam son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Reḥaḇʽam was forty-one years old when he became sovereign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which יהוה had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put His Name there. And his mother’s name was Naʽamah the Ammonitess. And Judah did evil in the eyes of יהוה, and they provoked Him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places, and pillars, and Ashĕrim on every high hill and under every green tree. And there were also cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the gentiles which יהוה dispossessed before the children of Israel.
1 Kings 14:21-24
Notice that the reference to male prostitutes seems to indicate that Judah was worse than Israel at this time. Thus the circle of the association between Jerusalem and Sodom is complete, as the practice of sodomy and the practice of eating of meat are deliberately and unquestionably linked to each other, to the point that they are synonymous. So it is no wonder that Isaiah prophesied Jerusalem’s fiery destruction, or that Yahshuah likened its valley to the lake of fire, as the precedent was already there in the fate of Sodom.
After Jeroboam, the same curse that was delivered to him was also made (16:1-2) against Baasha, the king who accomplished the curse of Jeroboam’s house by deposing Nadab and killing off his other descendants. Once again, the irony is immediately apparent. 15:30 actually says it was done on account of Jeroboam’s sins, meaning that the one thing which God had against all these proverbially wicked kings was the fact that they were eating meat, and that this was the constant. This fact is reaffirmed in 21:17-24, and again in 2 Kings 9:9-10, where exactly the same curse is made against Ahab. We are told that God deprived the rain due to Ahab’s sins (i.e., the common punishment for eating meat is famine), a fact which obviously factors into the description of the Two Witnesses, and therefore the Abomination of the Third Temple prophesied by Ezekiel.
And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilʽad,̱ said to Ahạb,̱ “As יהוה Elohim of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be no dew or rain these years, except at my word.”
1 Kings 17:1
These possess authority to shut the heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy. And they possess authority over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they wish.
Revelation 11:6
Notice how God’s sense of irony in this context also works to the opposite effect. In Elijah’s case, God has the birds feeding him, as opposed to feeding from him. The obvious implications are that living in harmony with Nature (as opposed to viciously exploiting animals) has its benefits, and that God goes out of his way to nourish those who are willing to risk starvation for the sake of obedience to his will. Yet, at the same time, he also sends plagues to wipe out whole populations that are disobedient.
And the word of יהוה came to him, saying, “Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide by the wadi Kerith, which flows into the Jordan. And it shall be that you drink from the stream, and I shall command the ravens to feed you there.” And he went and did according to the word of יהוה, for he went and dwelt by the wadi Kerith, which flows into the Jordan.
1 Kings 17:2-5
This curse of drought was so bad that the brook dried up and Elijah had to go elsewhere to be fed, and it was a blessing to the one who fed him, because her pot of flour was miraculously restored when it should have been depleted. The implication is that God will go to the same lengths to punish sin as he will to reward obedience, even if it means the land gets stricken in the process. So the land suffers because of Man’s sin, whether or not the suffering is the direct consequence of the sin, because God will still mete out the same punishment. That is to say that while most people are content to let some future generation reap the consequences of our mismanagement of the environment, God’s sense of justice is not so skewed that we are allowed to escape the consequences of our own actions—so much so that the righteous Elijah was spared the consequences he did not incur.
Other kings who are described as having followed the way of Jeroboam include Nadab (1 Kings 15:26), Baasha (15:34; 16:2,7), Zimri (16:19), Omri (16:26), Ahab (16:31), Ahaziah (22:52), Jehoram (2 Kings 3:3), Jehu (10:29,31), Jehoahaz (13:2,6), Jehoash (13:11), Jeroboam II (14:24), Zechariah (15:9), Menahem (15:18), Pekahiah (15:24), and Pekah (15:28). In other words, every king of Israel that came after Jeroboam is described as upholding his legacy of apostasy, meaning specifically that they all worshiped a golden calf and ate meat, with the exceptions of Elah, Shallum and Hosea. However, these three also sinned the same way, though their sins are not explicitly likened to Jeroboam’s because none of them reigned long enough to merit the attention. Elah’s sin is equated with his father Baasha’s (1 Kings 16:13), and therefore also Jeroboam’s, Shallum only reigned a month (2 Kings 15:13), and Hosea’s sin (2 Kings 2:2) was sufficient to warrant the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel and the captivity of the Ten Tribes, though Judah’s was avoided by virtue of Hezekiah’s actions. That is to say that from the time of Solomon’s apostasy, Israel never repented of its carnivorous and idolatrous practices, even for a moment, and that these practices are continually cited in the Bible as the reason for God’s anger with the Israelites, right from the beginning in the wilderness where they fashioned the Golden Calf, leading all the way to the whole nation’s destruction, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Ahijah in 1 Kings 14:15-16.
Judah is a little different, because there were several kings who did not follow Solomon’s apostasy, namely Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah (or Uzziah), Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah. Most of these are described as having been good, but not good enough to take down the high places (the altars) and the asherim, which means that Judah itself continued to sin under their rule. As with those of the wicked kings, the accounts of their reigns make it very clear that the main interest of the people who recorded them was whether or not they were eating meat, and whether or not they were discouraging their subjects from doing so.
And Asa did what was right in the eyes of יהוה, as his father David had done, and put away the cult prostitutes from the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. And he also removed Maʽaḵah his grandmother from being sovereigness mother, because she had made an abominable image for Ashĕrah. And Asa cut down her abominable image and burned it by the wadi Qiḏron [that is, the Valley of Ben Hinnom]. But the high places were not removed. However, Asa’s heart was perfect with יהוה all his days.
1 Kings 15:11-14
And Joash did what was right in the eyes of יהוה all the days in which Yehoyaḏa the priest instructed him. However, the high places were not taken away; the people still slaughter and burned incense on the high places.
2 Kings 12:2-3
And he [Azariah] did what was right in the eyes of יהוה, according to all that his father Amatsyahu did, however, the high places were not taken away. The people still slaughtered and burned incense on the high places.
2 Kings 15:3-4
And he [Jotham] did what was right in the eyes of יהוה. He did according to all that his father Uzziyahu did. However, the high places were not taken away. The people still slaughtered and burned incense on the high places. He built the Upper Gate of the House of יהוה.
2 Kings 15:34-35
And he [Hezekiah] did what was right in the eyes of יהוה, according to all that his father David did. He took away the high places and broke the pillars, and cut down the Ashĕrah, and broke in pieces the bronze serpent which Mosheh had made, for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Neḥushtan.
2 Kings 18:3-4
Notice that Hezekiah, several centuries removed from David, is called David’s son. This is the other sense of the word ‘father’ that we have remarked about. The difference between Solomon and Hezekiah is that Hezekiah did the works of David and Solomon did not. This all shows how the main preoccupation of the historiographers who compiled the biblical chronologies cared about precisely 3 things: recording the names and reigns of the various kings, ascribing a moral disposition to them, which is inferred from their own personal values, and whether or not they disestablished the Asherah cult and its slaughter offerings, which is to say, whether or not they made concerted efforts to turn the Israelites away from their carnism. This ought to explain how big a deal this latter interest was to the Nazarite prophets and to the Zadokite priests who maintained proper stewardship of the Temple according to the Law of Moses, right next door to the wicked kings of Judah, throughout the generations. Joash is listed as a good king because he was raised in the Temple, anointed at the age of only 7, and did as the priest instructed, including restoring the Temple. Jotham also built up the Temple (15:35) and had a close association with the priesthood: his mother was the daughter of Zadok (15:33), which means she was a member of the family which administered the Temple.
Hezekiah’s mother was the daughter of Zechariah (18:2), which likely means she was a member of the family of priests. This clearly shows the influence of the Zadokites, and it also establishes that Zadok was a direct ancestor of Yahshuah, as Yahshuah well knew. (Matthew 1:14 also records another Zadok, a descendant of Jotham, in Yahshuah’s patrilineal genealogy.) Joash was murdered by his servants and replaced with Jehoahaz, who did evil in the eyes of Yahweh by repeating Jeroboam’s sins (2 Kings 13:2), but also made appeal to Yahweh, which was heard (13:4-5). This suggests either that Jehoahaz did not want to upset any of the gods, including Yahweh, or that he worshiped Yahweh and simply did not know any better than to ban the sacrifices, which is what we might expect if he had a carnivorous appetite. (17:32-33 shows that at a later date, people were worshiping both Yahweh and foreign gods, so it seems clear that this had been going on since at least the time of Solomon.) Either that or he must have just been afraid to do the right thing, on account of what had happened to his predecessor. Either way, Israel continued to sin, and the asherim remained in Samaria during his reign (13:6)—and this was one of the few relatively good kings of Judah.
Jehoahaz’s son Joash persisted in the way of Jeroboam (13:11). Amaziah, the son of the other Joash (the one that was murdered) did right (14:3), but again, the high places were not taken down and people continued slaughtering (14:4). This suggests that Amaziah did not participate like Jehoahaz and Joash did, which must have aggravated somebody, because he met with the same fate as his father (14:19). It was about this time that God evidently decided he had had enough.
The account of Ahaz is a good indication of just how wicked Judah had become by the time the Assyrians were converging on Israel. It says he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, rather than those of his ancestor David, strongly implying an association between the sin of Judah and that of Jeroboam, though technically Jeroboam’s was specific to the Golden Calves and to Israel proper. Like Ahab of Israel before him, Ahaz even sacrificed his own children (or, at least, his son—the difference is not always clear in Hebrew).
In the seventeenth year of Peqaḥ son of Remalyahu, Aḥaz son of Yotham, sovereign of Judah, began to reign. Aḥaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of יהוה his Elohim, as his father David had done. But he walked in the way of the sovereigns of Israel, and he also made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the gentiles whom יהוה had dispossessed from before the children of Israel. And he slaughtered and burned incense on the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
2 Kings 16:1-4
Hosea (the king, not the prophet), too, is described as doing evil, but not as those before him (17:2), which suggests that he ate meat, but did not sacrifice his children or do anything quite that drastic. So even among the “good” kings of Judah, the only ones who were actually good were Joash and Hezekiah, both of whom ascended before their 17th birthday and were manipulated by the priests. By the time the Hasmoneans from Levi took the reins of power, the priesthood based in Jerusalem was even more abominable than the ruling dynasty, if that were possible, so the priests’ option of putting a monarch under their sway when he was young and returning Judah to something resembling a godly nation was no longer available. And this was the legacy of the Israel after Saul and Solomon, until God finally put an end to it.
In the ninth year of Hoshĕa, the sovereign of Assyria captured Samaria and exiled Israel to Assyria, and settled them in Ḥalaḥ and Ḥaḇor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. Now this came to be because the children of Israel had sinned against יהוה their Elohim—who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh sovereign of Egypt—and feared other mighty ones, and walked in the laws of the gentiles whom יהוה had dispossessed from before the children of Israel, and of the sovereigns of Israel that they had made. And the children of Israel secretly did against יהוה their Elohim matters that were not right, and they built for themselves high places in all their cities, from watchtower unto the walled city, and set up for themselves pillars and Ashĕrim on every high hill and under every green tree, and burned incense there on all the high places, like the gentiles whom יהוה had removed from their presence. And they did evil matters to provoke יהוה, and served the idols, of which יהוה had said to them, “Do not do this.” And יהוה warned Israel and Judah, through all of His prophets, and every seer, saying, “Turn back from your evil ways, and guard My commands and My laws, according to all the Torah which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by My servants the prophets.” But they did not listen and hardened their necks, like the necks of their fathers, who did not put their trust in יהוה their Elohim, and rejected His laws and His covenant that He had made with their fathers, and His witnesses which He had witnessed against them, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless, and after the gentiles who were all around them, of whom יהוה had commanded them not to do like them. And they left all the commands of יהוה their Elohim, and made for themselves a moulded image, two calves, and made an Ashĕrah and bowed themselves to all the host of the heavens, and served Baʽal, and caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, and practised divination and sorcery, and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of יהוה, to provoke Him. So יהוה was very enraged with Israel, and removed them from His presence—none was left but the tribe of Judah alone. Judah, also, did not guard the commands of יהוה their Elohim, but walked in the laws of Israel which they made. And יהוה rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until He had cast them out from His presence. For He tore Israel from the house of David, and they made Jeroboam son of Neḇat sovereign. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following יהוה, and made them commit a great sin. And the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did. They did not turn away from them, until יהוה removed Israel from His presence, as He spoke by all His servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their land to Assyria, as it is to this day.
2 Kings 17:6-23
There was absolutely no need for this whatsoever, apart from the Israelites’ stubborn refusal to stop defiling themselves with their abominations. All God really wanted them to do was stop eating meat. That is hardly a lot to ask of anyone, much less the Israelites, considering everything he had done for them and the fact that he had given them the land to begin with, after delivering them from bondage. The Israelites wanted a king and a savior to lead them out of their oppression, but they rejected Yahweh in both capacities, as well as everyone he sent them, from Moses to James. Who can deny that they were thoroughly wicked? And yet their sin is that of our society, which has taken it much further than Solomon and Ahaz ever could have imagined. The idea of salvation is alive throughout the OT, but it is always a matter of something people must do for themselves, and it always entails repentance, without which justice and mercy cannot coexist. That is exactly the point of the metaphorical demonstration of the scapegoating ritual, which Christians mistake for a covering of sin, as though God will not punish you if you call on the name of the victim, but stubbornly refuse to take the blame for your own actions and do what he commands you to. The idea that you are saved by the blood of Jesus begs the question of why the name of the real Messiah (as opposed to the Roman Apollo/Mithras) means ‘Yah saves,’ or why Psalm 20 indicates that the Messiah himself needs salvation by the same.
Now I know that יהוה shall save His Anointed;
Psalm 20:6
He answers him from His set-apart heavens
With the saving might of His right hand.
The Psalms contain many such references to God’s mercy and to his majestic power to save, but they are usually in reference to our part in the process, which is what the Israelites utterly failed to do: repent. More often than not, the key point is the fact that God requires nothing from us but a shred of remorse for our sin, so that we do not keep doing it. When the fact that animal sacrifices are expressly forbidden is taken into account (a theme which is repeated throughout the Prophets), and that these poems were written a full millennium before Yahshuah’s supposed atoning sacrifice, then it is apparent that God did not give the go-ahead to slaughter these animals because he enjoys it when animals die and people eat them, but because they are stubborn sinners, and the practice was meant to teach them a lesson. What God delights in is obedience, a contrite spirit, and the offerings of our hands and mouths. So say the Prophets.
“Hear, O My people, and I speak,
O Israel, and I witness against you:
I am Elohim, your Elohim!
I do not reprove you for your slaughterings,
And your burnt offerings are continually before Me.
I do not take a bull from your house,
Nor goats out of your pens.
For every beast of the forest is Mine,
The cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the mountains,
And all moving in My field are Mine.
If I were hungry,
I would not speak to you;
For the world is Mine,
and all that fills it.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls,
Or drink the blood of goats?
Offer thanksgiving to Elohim,
And pay your vows to the Most High.
And call upon Me in the day of distress—
Let Me rescue you,
and you esteem Me.”But to the wrong Elohim said,
“What right have you to recite My laws,
Psalm 50:7-17
Or take My covenant in your mouth,
While you hated instruction
And cast My Words behind you?”
O יהוה, open my lips,
Psalm 51:15-17
And that my mouth declare Your praise.
For You do not desire slaughtering,
or I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.
The slaughterings of Elohim are a broken spirit,
A heart broken and crushed,
O Elohim,
These You do not despise.
Please accept the voluntary offerings
Psalm 119:108
Of my mouth, O יהוה,
And teach me Your right-rulings.
Let my prayer be prepared before You as incense,
Psalm 141:2-3
The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.
O יהוה , set a guard for my mouth;
Watch over the door of my lips.
He who declares the wrong right,
Proverbs 17:15
And he who condemns the righteous,
Both of them are an abomination to יהוה.
All a man’s ways are right in his own eyes,
Proverbs 21:2-3
But יהוה weighs the hearts.
To do righteousness and right-ruling
Is more acceptable to יהוה than a slaughtering.
Do not let your heart envy sinners,
Proverbs 23:17-20
But be in the fear of יהוה all day long;
For certain, there is a hereafter,
And let your expectancy not be cut off.
Hear, my son, and be wise,
And guide your heart in the way.
Be not among heavy drinkers of wine
Or with gluttonous eaters of meat.
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