To the kings the temple was a part of their palace which, as is shown by 1Kings vii. and 2Kings xi., stood upon the same hill and was contiguous with it; they placed their threshold alongside of that of Jehovah, and made their door-posts adjoin to His, so that only the wall intervened between Jehovah and them (Ezekiel xliii. 8).  They shaped the official cultus entirely as they chose, and regarded the management of it, at least so far as one gathers from the epitome of the “Book of the Kings,” as the main business of their government.  They introduced new usages and abolished old ones; and as they did so the priests always bent to their will and were merely their executive organs. 1 That they were at

******************************************* 1.  Compare for example 2Kings xii. 5 seq. (Joash and Jehoiada), xvi. 10 seq.  Ahaz and Urijah), and, finally, chap. xxii.  (Josiah and Hilkiah). ******************************************

liberty to offer sacrifice also is a thing of course; they did it, however, only on exceptional occasions, such as, perhaps, at the dedication of a new altar (2Kings xvi. 12, 13).  Even with Jeremiah, who as a rule does not consider sacrifice and drawing near to Jehovah (Numbers xvi 5) as every man’s business, the king as such is held to be also the supreme priest; for at the beginning of the exile and the foreign domination his hope for the future is:  “Their potentate shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them, and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me; for who else should have the courage to approach unto me? saith the Lord” (xxx. 21).  Ezekiel is the first to protest against dealing with the temple as a royal dependency; for him the prerogative of the prince is reduced to this, that it is his duty to support the public cultus at his own expense.

The distinction between the Judaean and the Israelite priesthood did not exist at first, but arose out of the course of events.  The sheltered and quiet life of the little state in the south presents a marked contrast with the external and internal conflicts, the easily raised turmoil, of the northern kingdom.  In the latter, the continual agitation brought extraordinary personalities up to the surface; in the former, institutions based upon the permanent order of things and supported by permanent powers were consolidated./1/

************************************************* 1.  The Rechabites, who arose in the northern kingdom, continued to subsist in Judah, and Jeremiah prophesied to them that there should never fail them a priestly head of the family of their founder (xxxv. 19). **************************************************