of age.

[22] This youth of Jeroboam, when Solomon built the walls of righteous
and keep the laws, because he hath proposed to thee the greatest of all
rewards for thy piety, and the honor thou shalt pay to God, namely, to
be as greatly exalted as thou knowest David to have been." Jerusalem,
not very long after he had finished his twenty years building of the
temple and his own palace, or not very long after the twenty-fourth of
his reign, 1 Kings 9:24; 2 Chronicles 8:11, and his youth here still
mentioned, when Solomon's wickedness was become intolerable, fully
confirm my former observation, that such his wickedness began early, and
continued very long. See Ecclus. 47:14.

[23] That by scorpions is not here meant that small animal so called,
which was never used in corrections, but either a shrub, furze bush,
or else some terrible sort of whip of the like nature see Hudson's and
Spanheim's notes here.

[24] Whether these "fountains of the Lesser Jordan" were near a place
called Dan, and the fountains of the Greater near a place called Jor,
before their conjunction; or whether there was only one fountain,
arising at the lake Phiala, at first sinking under ground, and then
arising near the mountain Paneum, and thence running through the lake
Scmochonitis to the Sea of Galilee, and so far called the Lesser Jordan;
is hardly certain, even in Josephus himself, though the latter account
be the most probable. However, the northern idolatrous calf, set up by
Jeroboam, was where Little Jordan fell into Great Jordan, near a place
called Daphnae, as Josephus elsewhere informs us, Of the War, B. IV. ch.
1. sect. 1: see the note there.

[25] How much a larger and better copy Josephus had in this remarkable
history of the true prophet of Judea, and his concern with Jeroboam, and
with the false prophet of Bethel, than our other copies have, is evident
at first sight. The prophet's very name, Jadon, or, as the Constitutions
call him, Adonias, is wanting in our other copies; and it is there, with
no little absurdity, said that God revealed Jadon the true prophet's
death, not to himself as here, but to the false prophet. Whether the
particular account of the arguments made use of, after all, by the
false prophet against his own belief and his own conscience, in order
to persuade Jeroboam to persevere in his idolatry and wickedness, than
which more plausible could not be invented, was intimated in Josephus's
copy, or in some other an