Having taken these measures, on the 15th day of the eighth month[346] he proclaimed a solemn Festival of Dedication, and went up to Bethel, to offer incense in person on the altar. But at this critical moment, as he was standing there, a man of God from Judah appeared, who boldly confronted the king, denounced the idolatrous service, and foretold the desecration of the altar by a future king of the house of Judah, JOSIAH by name, who would offer upon it the priests of the high-places, and burn men’s bones upon it (See 2 K. xxiii. 15). Enraged at this out-spoken defiance, Jeroboam stretched forth his hand, and bade the bystanders seize the bold stranger. But at the moment his hand became suddenly paralysed, and at the same time the altar was rent asunder, and the ashes of the victims were poured out. Now thoroughly alarmed, the king implored the prophet to intercede with the Lord for him, that the heavy judgment he had incurred might be removed. The other complied, and the king’s hand was restored. Grateful for this signal favour, Jeroboam would now have hospitably entertained the man of God. But the latter had been sent on a special errand, and his commands had been precise, and peremptory, neither to eat bread, nor drink water in a place so openly profaned with idolatry, nor even to return thence by the same road that he had come. Accordingly he declined the royal invitation, and went his way (1 K. xiii. 10). On the road, however, as he lingered under an oak, he was overtaken by an old prophet of Bethel, who had heard from his sons of the day’s occurrences at the festival. His own guilty silence had wellnigh made him a partaker in the sins of the king, and the bold bearing of the stranger reminded him of what he himself should have done. Either, therefore, from a wish to win respect for himself once more by intercourse with such an accredited messenger of the Most High, or with the full intention of deceiving him, and so bringing discredit on his words, he hurried after him, and now announced himself as the bearer of a distinct Divine command that he should return to Bethel. Overcome by this solemn declaration, the other accompanied him to the town. But as they were seated at the meal, the Spirit of the Lord came upon the guilty host, and the Deceiver was constrained to pronounce the doom of the Deceived. The man of God had been faithless to the terms of his commission, and a certain death awaited him, nor should his body ever come into the sepulchre of his fathers. With his doom upon him he went his way, and a lion met and slew him (1 K. xiii. 24).