to make ultimate disaster certain. In the second generation after David
the radical incompatibility between the northern and southern Hebrew
tribes, which under his strong hand and that of his son had seemed one
nation, reasserted its disintegrating influence. While it is not certain
if the twelve tribes were ever all of one race, it is quite certain that
the northern ones had come to be contaminated very largely with Aramaean
blood and infected by mid-Syrian influences, which the relations
established and maintained by David and Solomon with Hamath and
Phoenicia no doubt had accentuated, especially in the territories of
Asher and Dan. These tribes and some other northerners had never seen
eye to eye with the southern tribes in a matter most vital to Semitic
societies, religious ideal and practice. The anthropomorphic monotheism,
which the southern tribes brought up from Arabia, had to contend in
Galilee with theriomorphic polytheism, that is, the tendency to embody
the qualities of divinity in animal forms. For such beliefs as these
there is ample evidence in the Judaean tradition, even during the
pre-Palestinian wanderings. Both reptile and bovine incarnations
manifest themselves in the story of the Exodus, and despite the fervent
missionary efforts of a series of Prophets, and the adhesion of many,
even among the northern tribesmen, to the more spiritual creed, these
cults gathered force in the congenial neighbourhood of Aramaeans and
Phoenicians, till they led to political separation of the north from the
south as soon as the long reign of Solomon was ended. Thereafter, until
the catastrophe of the northern tribes, there would never more be a
united Hebrew nation. The northern kingdom, harried by Damascus and
forced to take unwilling part in her quarrels, looked about for foreign
help. The dynasty of Omri, who, in order to secure control of the great
North Road, had built himself a capital and a palace (lately discovered)
on the hill of Samaria, relied chiefly on Tyre. The succeeding dynasty,
that of Jehu, who had rebelled against Omri's son and his Phoenician