without "ephod or teraphim" (iii. 4), appears to regard both as
equally proper appurtenances of the suspended worship of Jahveh,
and equally certain to be restored when that is resumed. When we
further take into consideration that only in the reign of
Hezekiah was the brazen serpent, preserved in the temple and
believed to be the work of Moses, destroyed, and the practice of
offering incense to it, that is, worshipping it, abolished--that
Jeroboam could set up "calves of gold" for Israel to worship,
with apparently none but a political object, and certainly with
no notion of creating a schism among the worshippers of Jahveh,
or of repelling the men of Judah from his standard--it seems
obvious, either that the Israelites of the tenth and eleventh
centuries B.C. knew not the second commandment, or that they
construed it merely as part of the prohibition to worship any
supreme god other than Jahveh, which precedes it.

In seeking for information about the teraphim, I lighted upon
the following passage in the valuable article on that subject by
Archdeacon Farrar, in Ritto's "Cyclopaedia of Biblical
Literature," which is so much to the purpose of my argument,
that I venture to quote it in full:--


The main and certain results of this review are that the
teraphim were rude human images; that the use of them was an
antique Aramaic custom; that there is reason to suppose them to
have been images of deceased ancestors; that they were consulted
oracularly; that they were not confined to Jews; that their use
continued down to the latest period of Jewish history;
and lastly, that although the enlightened prophets and strictest