Jeroboam recognized that unified worship holds a people together, and so to keep the breakaway tribes from going to Jerusalem’s temple to worship, he set up two golden calves, not at the capital, but at the two extremities of Israel’s territory, one at Bethel in the south and the other at Dan in the north. He also installed a non-Levitical priesthood to lead and instruct Israel in worship of both the golden calves and the goat-shaped demons.​—1Ki 12:28-33; 2Ch 11:13-15.

Whereas the best of the whole lot, Jehu, pleased Jehovah by removing the vile Baal worship that Ahab and Jezebel had sponsored, yet “Jehu himself did not take care to walk in the law of Jehovah the God of Israel with all his heart”; he allowed Jeroboam’s calf worship to continue throughout the land.​—2Ki 10:30, 31.