KINGS AND INDIGENOUS RELIGIOUS PRACTICE IN ANCIENT ISRAEL PART 1
We are used to thinking that the Hebrew followers of the indigenous religion in ancient Israel were practitioners of folk religion, and the believers in worshipping only YHVH were the educated elites. So I decided to look at the kings of Israel as recorded by the books of Kings. While they may not have been priests, they were certainly the elite of society. As a reminder, after Solomon, our ancestors divided into two kingdoms, Israel in the north including 10 tribes and Judah in the South, including Jerusalem and only two tribes
I divided the kings into three groups.
Zealots for YHVH
Personally a Yahwist, but tolerated indigenous religious practices.
Active supporters of the Indigenous religious practices
The zealots for YHVH supported the worship of only YHVH and acted against native practices. There were only three such kings in ancient Israel after King David. They were Asa (1 Kings 15:10-15), Hezekiah (2 Kings chapters 18-21. His persecution of non Yahwists is recounted in 18:4-5), and lastly Josiah under whom the scroll that became the bulk of the book of Deuteronomy was written and supposedly discovered in the Temple during some renovations. His story is told in 2 Kings 22-23:28. His actions against the non Yahwists are detailed in 2 Kings 23:4-16.
The second group of Kings consists of people who worshipped only YHVH but tolerated native practices. There are also a couple of kings who were a mixed bag because they supported some of the native practices but persecuted other parts. There were five kings from Judah who fit this category and two kings from Israel who fit the mixed bag group.
The last group actively supported indigenous practices. This includes every single king of Israel—every last one. It also includes the sons of Hezekiah and Josiah whom the authors of Kings hold out to be the most exemplary kings of Ancient Israel. There were 30 kings in total who actively supported indigenous practices.
I think we can only conclude that the political elite of the two kingdoms largely supported indigenous religious practices. I will look at the implications of this in a later blog post.
