2 Kings 17:32

So they feared the Lord i.e. In the way in which their ideas of the worship of the local divinity demanded. This they did, says Bp Hall, -not for devotion, but for impunity. Vain politicians to think to satisfy God by patching up religions … What a prodigious mixture was here, true with false, Jewish with paganish, divine with devilish … No beggar's cloak is more pieced than the religion of these new inhabitants of Israel. I know not how their bodies sped for the lions. I am sure their souls fared the worse for this medley. Above all things God hates a mongrel devotion. If we be not all Israel, it were better to be all Asshur. It cannot so much displease God to be unknown or neglected as to be consorted with idols".

and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests R.V. and made unto them from among themselves priests. See note on 1 Kings 12:31. The word represented by -lowest" means an -end" or -extremity", but the idea of the phrase is that the choice of these priests was made anywhere, from the whole mass of the nation, from all that was comprised in it between one extremity and the other. This was distinctly contrary to what the Jews had been taught, that the priests were to come exclusively from one tribe, and the high priests from a special family.

houses of the high places Hence it seems that not an altar only, bat a temple of some kind was erected on the high places.