Letter to the Editor

Rabbi Yosef Green’s reappraisal of Jeroboam ben Nabat (JBQ 44:2) was an eye-opener for those who never realized that there were many positive aspects to Jeroboam, termed the first and most wicked king of North Israel. Jeroboam was condemned not only as a great sinner in the Bible (I Kgs. 15:30) but also in later rabbinic literature. In TB Sanhedrin 101 he was tarred with being one “who caused strife between the people and their Heavenly Father.” Yet, as a good defense attorney of Jeroboam, Rabbi Green managed to point out many of Jeroboam’s positive attributes though I feel that his defense of Jeroboam’s calves at Dan and Beth-El was weak. As we know Jeroboam made these two towns religious centers and set up calves as the central holy object in those places despite the fact that he surely knew that such idols were an anathema to Israelite tradition since the days of Moses. Had Jeroboam chosen a different symbol for his two new holy places, snakes instead of calves, he could have defended himself by citing the story of the Israelites in the desert, when the people were suffering from a plague of snakes. In this story we read that God Himself told Moses to set up a pole with a statue of a snake so that when people look up at it they would not be bitten by snakes (Num. 21:9). Had Jeroboam copied what Moses did he could have saved himself from the condemnations against him found in the Bible and in rabbinic literature. What is also surprising is that a snake statue was preserved even in the Southern state of Judea and by kings descended from David. This snake statue may even have been the original one made by Moses or a later model. Whatever the case this snake statue was finally destroyed after several hundred years during the reign of King Hezekiah.