Jeroboam’s sins

25 Then Jeroboam’s workers built walls around Shechem city in the hilly area where the descendants of Ephraim lived, and he ruled from there for a while. He and his workers then left there and went to Peniel town, and they built walls around that town.

26-27 Then Jeroboam said to himself, “If my people continue to go to Jerusalem and offer sacrifices to Yahweh at the temple there, soon they will again become loyal to Rehoboam, the king of Judah [DOU], and they will kill me.”

28 So he consulted his advisors, and then he did what they suggested. He told his workers to make gold statues of two calves. Then he said to the people, “You have been going to Jerusalem to worship for a long time. It is a big trouble for you to continue going there. You people of Israel, look! These statues are the gods that brought our ancestors up from Egypt! So you can worship these, here!” 29 He told his workers to place one of the statues in Bethel city in the south and one in Dan city in the north. 30 So what Jeroboam did caused the people to sin. Some of them went and worshiped the calf at Bethel, and others went and worshiped the other calf at Dan.

31 Moses had declared that only men from the tribe of Levi would be priests, but Jeroboam also told his workers to build shrines on hilltops, and then he appointed men who were not from the tribe of Levi to be priests. 32 He also appointed Adonijah and two priests, Elishama and Jehoram. They had a celebration at the end of October, like the celebration of Living in Temporary Shelters that occurred in Judah each year. On the altar that they built in Bethel, he offered sacrifices to the gold statues of calves that they had made, and he stationed the priests there at the shrines that his workers had built. 33 Jeroboam went up to that altar on that day in October which he himself had chosen. There on that altar he burned incense to be a sacrifice. And he declared that the people should celebrate that festival on that same day every year.