EDOLATRY (Heb. ter-aw feme% teraphim, once only, Sam. xv:23).
I. Definition and Classification. Idolatry, strictly speaking, denotes the worship of deity in a visible form, whether the images to which hom age is paid are symbolical representations of the truc God, or of the false divinities which have been worshiped in his stead. Idolatry may be classified under the following heads: (I) Fetish ism, or low nature worship of trees, rivers, hills and stoncs; (2) of animals; (3) of high nature worship, as the sun, moon and stars, and the powers or forces of nature, as fire, air, etc.; (4) hero worship, as of the leaders of a nation, or of deceased ancestors; (5) idealism or the worship of mental qualities or abstractions, as justice, etc. There may also be added to these: (a) the wor ship of the true God by images; (b) of false gods by images; (c) of the worship of the images or symbols themselves.
2. Idolatry Through Heathen Nations. The heathen nations who influenced the Israelites were as follows: (1) Chaldea. The early existence of idolatry is evinced by Josh. xxiv :2, where it is stated that Abram and his immediate ancestors dwelling in Mesopotamia 'served other gods.' The terms in Gen. xxxi :53, and particularly the plural form of the verb, seem to show that some members of Terah's family had each different gods.
(2) Egypt. From Josh. xxiv :14, and Ezek. xx:8, we learn that the Israelites, during their sojourn in Egypt, were seduced to worship the idols of that country; although we possess no particular account of their transgression. In Amos v :25, and Acts vii :42, it is stated that they committed idolatry in their journey through the wilderness; and in Num. xxv :1, sq., that they worshiped the Moabite idol Baal-peor at Shittim.
(3) Canaan. After the Israelites had obtained possession of the promised land, we find that they were continually tempted to adopt the idolatries of the Canaanite nations with which they camc in contact. The book of Judges enumerates several successive relapses into this sin. The gods which they served during this period were Baal and Ashtoreth, and their modifications; and Syria, Sidon, Moab, Ammon, and Philistia. are named in Judg. x:6 as the sources from which thcy de rived their idolatries. Then Samuel appears to have exercised a beneficial influence in weaning the people from this folly 0 Sam. vii) ; and the worship of the Lord acquired a gradually increas ing hold on the nation until the time of Solomon, who was induced in his old age to permit the es tablishment of idolatry at Jerusalem. On the di
vision of the nation, the kingdom of Israel (be sides adhering to the sin of Jeroboam to the last) was specially devoted to the worship of Baal, which Ahab had renewed and carried to an.un precedented height ; and although the energetic measures adopted by Jehu, and afterward by the pricst Jehoiada, to suppress this idolatry, may have been the cause why there has been no later express mention of Baal, yet it is evident from 2 Kings xiii:6, and xvii:io, that thc worship of Asherah continucd until the deportation of the tcn tribes.
(4) Assyria. The deportation of the ten tribes also introduced the peculiar idolatries of the As syrian colonists into Samaria. In the kingdom of Judah, on the other hand, idolatry continued dur ing the two succeeding reigns; was suppressed for a time by Asa (i Kings xv :12) ; was revived in consequence of Joram marrying into the fam ily of Ahab; was continued by Ahaz ; received a check from Hezekiah; broke out again more vio lently under Manasseh; until Josiah made the most vigorous attempt to suppress it. But even Josiah's efforts to restore the worship of the Lord were ineffectual; for the later prophets, Zepha niah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, still continue to utter reproofs against idolatry. Nor did the capture of Jerusalem under Jehoiachim awaken this pecu liarly sensual people; for Ezekiel (viii) shows that those who wcre left in Jerusalem under the government of Zedekiah had given themselves up to many kinds of idolatry; and Jeremiah (xliv :8) charges those inhabitants of Judah who had found an asylum in Egypt, with having turned to serve the gods of that country. On the restoration of the Jews after the Babylonian captivity, they ap pear, for the first time in their history, to have been permanently impressed with a sense of the degree to which their former idolatries had bcen an insult to God, and a degradation of their own understanding—an advance in the culture of the nation which may in part be ascribed to the in fluence of the Persian abhorrence of images, as well as to the effects of the exile as a chastise ment. In this state they continued until Antio chus Epiphanes made the last and fruitless at tempt to establish the Greek idolatry in Palestine (i Nlacc. i).