He was home. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Judah’s rolling green hills and rock-strewn valleys until he was gazing at them once again. Everything looked so wonderfully familiar—and yet so very different. The farther he journeyed into his country’s heartland, the more changes he noticed. Roadside shrines now dotted the road to Jerusalem, piled with offerings to the Baals, the carved idols draped with charms and amulets. Every hill he passed seemed to have become a high place with a sacred grove and Asherah poles and altars to the starry hosts. In one village Hadad saw the townspeople gathered to dedicate a new building, and he watched in horror as the remains of a sacrificed child were enshrined in one wall to ensure prosperity. Hadad had never been very religious, but this wickedness appalled him. It had happened so fast. And it was so widespread. He ate his evening meal at an inn in Beth Shemesh, but he had made up his mind not to spend the night within the walled city.
