The altars where these sacrifices were offered were in charge of a special class of men, the priests.  In the early days, in Canaan, there was a little temple, or shrine, outside each town and village with one or more priests in charge of it.  Sometimes wealthy men had private shrines and hired their own special priests.  It was the business of these men to know just how a sacrifice must be offered in order that it might be pleasing to Jehovah.  There were certain rules and regulations handed down from generation to generation.  There were certain kinds of animals which could not be offered.  It was important to know just what parts of each victim were to be burned.  The various meal offerings had to be prepared in a certain way.  Yeast could not be used, nor honey.

=The increasing number of priestly rules.=—­As the centuries passed more and more rules were worked out by the priests.  This was their whole business in life, and, of course, they made much of it.  More and more different kinds of offerings were invented; for example, incense, which was the burning of herbs which made a sweet-smelling smoke.  The books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, especially Leviticus, are largely composed of these rules for sacrifices.  The animals had to be washed, killed, and skinned, according to certain directions.  The blood had to be disposed of according to strict rule—­some placed in the horns of the altar, some on the priests, some on the worshiper bringing the offering, and so on.  And the more there were of these rules, the more priests there had to be to remember and enforce them.  Thus it came about that all too frequently sacrifices came to be the chief thing in religion.  Religion meant sacrifices and not much else.

THE REIGN OF JEROBOAM II

Jeroboam II, who reigned over the northern kingdom of Israel for some forty years, beginning about B.C. 790, was in some ways like Ahab, who lived a century earlier.  He was victorious in war and brought peace and prosperity to his nation.  These years of peace brought little happiness, however, to the common people of Israel.  They had already become so poverty-stricken during the long years of petty but cruel wars, under the earlier kings since Solomon, that they were practically at the mercy of a small class of nobles and wealthy merchants who grew richer all the time while the people grew poorer.

=Evil days.=—­These rich men used false weights and measures.  In buying wheat from the farmer they would use heavy weights, and get more than was right; in selling to the poor of the cities they used light weights, and so gave out little for much.  They corrupted courts and judges, so that no poor man could get his rights.  They charged enormous rates of interest for the money which the poor were obliged to borrow.  All over the land the mass of the people were living in hovels and selling their sons and their daughters into slavery to keep from starving, while the rich men and their families lived in luxury and in wasteful, extravagant display.