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342 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH

king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes. This narrative supplies an illustration of the fact that not only is man incapable of himself to find God, but that, left to himself, he is incapable of retaining the knowledge of God in its original purity even when once divinely communicated ; and that even the things revealed, apart from the continued teaching of God s Spirit, are liable to become corrupted and distorted in his mind. Here we have a sad instance of a certain knowledge of Jehovah mixed up with the worship of a graven image and a molten image, which were an abomination in His sight, and the illegitimate use of the divinely instituted ephod, which was only to be borne by the high priest, joined together with the pagan teraphim. But the point to be noted is that here also these teraphim were used for oracular con sultations, for it was of them that the apostate Levite of Bethlehem asked for counsel for the idolatrous Danites. 1 In Ezek. xxi. 2 1 we find the exact antithesis to David s consulting the ephod, in the pagan king of Babylon con sulting with images (literally, teraphim ), in reference to his projected invasion of Palestine. 2

" Now it is clear that in olden times, whenever by apostasy and disobedience fellowship with Jehovah was interrupted, and when in consequence there was no revela tion from Him, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets, Israel turned to the pagan teraphim, or, like poor Saul, they sought unto such as had familiar spirits and wizards that peep and mutter.

" A parallelism, in its spiritual significance, is to be found in Christendon. What the ephod or the prophet was in olden times, Holy Scripture is now. It is even a more sure word than voices from heaven, or answers by

1 Judg. xviii. 5, 6.

2 The only other instances where teraphim are mentioned are I Sam. xix. 13-16, from which we gather, first, the sad fact that idolatry was practised by Michal, the daughter of Saul ; and, secondly, that the teraphim must have had some resemblance to the human form, since the idol could be mistaken for the body of David. There were no doubt larger ones in the temples, and smaller ones of all sizes, and for idolatrous purposes, in the houses.