[513] If Zimri was a descendant of the House of Saul, as is possible from the occurrence of the name in the number of Saul's descendants (1 Chron. viii. 36), we perhaps see an excuse for his ill-considered conspiracy. He acted, says Grotius, upon the principle, "Νήπιος ὃς πατέρα κτείνας υιοὺς καταλείπει." [514] Comp. 2 Kings ix. 7 with Hosea i. 4. Thus Babylon is at once commissioned to punish, and condemned for ruthlessness: Isa. xlvii. 6. CHAPTER XXX. _THE EARLIER KINGS OF JUDAH._ 1 KINGS xiv. 21-31, xv. 1-24. The history of "_the Jews_" begins, properly speaking, from the reign of Rehoboam, and for four centuries it is mainly the history of the Davidic dynasty. The only records of the son of Solomon are meagre records of disaster and disgrace. He reigned seventeen years, and his mother, the Ammonitess Naamah, occupied the position of queen-mother.[515] She was, doubtless, a worshipper in the shrine which Solomon had built for her national god, Molech of Ammon, who was the same as the Ashtar-Chemosh of the Moabite stone--the male form of Ashtoreth.[516] Whether her son was twenty-one or forty-one when he succeeded to the throne we do not know.[517] His attempted expedition against Jeroboam was forbidden by Shemaiah;[518] but ineffectual and distressing war smouldered on between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. If Jeroboam sinned by the erection in the old sanctuaries of the two golden calves, Rehoboam surely sinned far more heinously. He not only sanctioned the high places--which in him may have been very venial, since they held their own unchallenged till the days of Hezekiah--but he allowed stone obelisks (_Matstseboth_) in honour of Baal, and pillars (_Chammanim_) of the Nature-goddess (_Asherah_) to be set up on every high hill and under every green tree.[519] Worse than this, and a proof of the abyss of corruption into which the evil example of Solomon had beguiled the nation, there were found in the land the _Kedeshim_, the infamous eunuch-ministers of a most foul worship.[520] In spite of Temple and priesthood, "they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord drave out before the children of Israel."[521] Since Rehoboam thus sinned so much more heinously than his northern compeer we can hardly admire the conduct of the Levites, who, according to the chronicler, fled southward in swarms from the innovations of the son of Nebat. The Scylla of calf-worship was incomparably less shameful than the Charybdis of these heathen abominations.