⁴ But turning to the God of his father and keeping his laws, and not doing as Israel did.

²⁸ So after taking thought the king made two oxen of gold; and he said to the people, You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough; see! these are your gods, O Israel, who took you out of the land of Egypt.

¹ And last of all, the prayer which we make to you from our heart and in the name of the Lord Jesus, is this: that as we made clear to you what sort of behaviour is pleasing to God, as in fact you are doing now, so you will go on in these ways, but more and more.

¹² So that your lives might be pleasing to God, who has given you a part in his kingdom and his glory.

⁶ They were upright in the eyes of God, keeping all the rules and orders of God, and doing no wrong.

¹⁵ Do not you, O Israel, come into error; do not you, O Judah, come to Gilgal, or go up to Beth-aven, or take an oath, By the living Lord.

¹⁹ (But even Judah did not keep the orders of the Lord their God, but were guided by the rules which Israel had made.

¹⁸ He went in the ways of the kings of Israel, as the family of Ahab did: for the daughter of Ahab was his wife; and he did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

⁷ And I said, After she has done all these things she will come back to me; but she did not. And her false sister Judah saw it.

⁸ And though she saw that, because Israel, turning away from me, had been untrue to me, I had put her away and given her a statement in writing ending the relation between us, still Judah, her false sister, had no fear, but went and did the same.

³¹ And as if copying the evil ways of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, was a small thing for him, he took as his wife Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Zidon, and became a servant and worshipper of Baal.

³² And he put up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he had made in Samaria.

³³ And Ahab made an image of Asherah and did more than all the kings of Israel before him to make the Lord, the God of Israel, angry.

³³ After this Jeroboam, not turning back from his evil ways, still made priests for his altars from among all the people; he made a priest of anyone desiring it, so that there might be priests of the high places.

³⁴ And this became a sin in the family of Jeroboam, causing it to be cut off and sent to destruction from the face of the earth.

³³ He went up to the altar he had made in Beth-el on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the month fixed by him at his pleasure; and he gave orders for a feast for the people of Israel, and went up to the altar, and there he made the smoke of his offerings go up.

³⁰ And this became a sin in Israel; for the people went to give worship to the one at Beth-el, and to the other at Dan.