No KINGS: A Biblical Perspective

1 Samuel 8:1  When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel... ³ Yet his sons did not follow in his ways but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted justice.

⁴ Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah ⁵ and said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” ⁶ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord, ⁷ and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.⁸ Just as they have done to me^[a] from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. ⁹ Now then, listen to their voice; only, you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

¹⁰ So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. ¹¹ He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you:

he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots, 

¹² he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 

¹³ He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 

¹⁴ He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 

¹⁵ He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 

¹⁶ He will take your male and female slaves and the best of your cattle^[b] and donkeys and put them to his work. 

¹⁷ He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 

¹⁸ And on that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you on that day.”

When Samuel, the prophet was old, and in biblical terms about to ‘sleep” with the ancestors, Israel was at a crossroads. Who would lead them moving forward. Samuel’s sons were not fit to follow in the ways of their father.  So, the elders pleaded with Samuel to appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations. To which the Lord responded, “Samuel listen to their voice and then show them the ways of kings who shall reign over them.”

By the numbers.

Samuel anoints Saul as King 1.0. Insecurity befalls his leadership.

David as King 2.0 fairs better.  However, Bathsheba, Uriah, and the shabby treatment of his wife Michal leave a stain on his legacy. But the truth of Samuel’s prophecy really finds haven with the crowning of Solomon as King 3.0 (the offspring of Bathsheba and David).

What follows in 1 Kings 1-10 in anyone’s gazetteer is a sober read.  The pathology of power is in full display. Once anointed King, partly on the orders of the dying King David, King Solomon’s first order of business is to either kill/murder or banish his rivals in power. This includes Adonijah his older brother and a rival for Kingship^[1], and David’s General Joab who had unfortunately supported Adonijah as future King.

If success is measured by power, money, control and excess, Solomon was the most successful of the Kings of Israel. Yet his god became his own creation. A god who approved of his wars, his self-aggrandisement, his misogyny (he will accumulate 700 wives and 300 concubine) his monuments layered in gold and jewels, a temple (three years to build) and a palace (13 years to build) all built with forced labor.^[2] And to that a golden throne, golden drinking vessels, a standing army (1400 chariots, 2,000 horses) and a fleet of ships to control the Red Sea and its shipping lanes. Ships that brought him gold, silver, apes and peacocks (you figure) rounded out Samuel’s prophecy of the failure of Kings. Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom or so he told himself.  Other nations brought him objects of silver, gold, garments, weaponry, horses, and mules.  Solomon’s god existed to confirm his preferences. “Blessed be the Lord,” Solomon cried out, “who has given rest to his people Israel according to all that he promised; not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke through his servant Moses. The Lord our G/god be with us, as he was with our ancestors; may he not leave us or abandon us, but incline our hearts to him to walk in all his ways and to keep commanded our ancestors. (1 Kings 8:56).“ Fine words, but they were the stuff of theater not proclamation.

Writer, scholar and poet Daniel Berrigan writes,

For all the apparatus of glory, Solomon is a king unclothed. We note the petrified apparatus of orthodoxy; the subservient priesthood, clients beholden (and secretly envious) the conscience of prince and people befogged…In sum, the Solomonic culture is puffed by near nonentities, intent on domination and prospering, cost what these may – to others.[3]

Solomon was not without warnings. (1 Kings 6:10) “Concerning this house that you are building, if if if if you will walk in my statutes, obey my ordinances, and keep my commandments by walking in them then I will establish my promise with you, that I made to your father David.”

But no one should be surprised when a few chapters later we read in 1 Kings 11:6 Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Then appearing to Solomon twice, as a warning YHWH tells Solomon I will surely tear the kingdom from you ...

The rest of the account of the Kings of Israel is one step forward two steps back. Stories of vengeance, settling old scores, murder, and mayhem. Israel thought the ark of the covenant would save them, the temple would save them, being the people of God with a promise would save them, but in the end, Israel was its own enemy following the god of their Kings who was nothing more than a ventriloquist dummy.

Centuries later, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, a large crowd followed him. It was time to eat, and miraculously the crowd was fed with very limited supplies that seemed to keep multiplying. “The people cried out this indeed is the prophet who has come into the world.  “When Jesus realized they were about to come and make him king, he ran to the mountain to be by himself.”  (John 6:15) No kings on that day. One might think his kingdom is going to be a kingdom of a different kind.

Again, we move forward in time, Stephen was a devout follower of the witness of Jesus. Like Jeremiah hundreds of years earlier. Stephen warned against Israel securing their future in sacred objects and political systems. In one of the longest captured “sermons” in the biblical text, Stephen links the initiative of building the idols of Sinai with the misguided actions of those who built and were maintaining the second Temple (Acts 7:47-48). Earlier God had given Moses a blueprint for a tent (Acts 7:44) as a dwelling place for YHWH. As a metaphor for the presence of God the tabernacle of testimony was mobile. It could be transported from one destination to another. As a symbol of power, a tent was far more egalitarian than the rituals associated with any temple. It was the home of a common person and suggested the immanence of God. As a vulnerable object to human manipulation the security of the tabernacle was the domain of God's responsibility. In any event the emphasis here is not on the advantage of a tent over a temple as a place of sacred space, rather the point of the text explicitly points to the intrinsic merit of the tent over the temple because the one is made by God and the latter by human hands (Acts 7:48). And so, we are not too surprised that "David who enjoyed God's favor" (Acts 7:46) was unable to build the temple despite asking the "God of Jacob" to build what became a sign of apostasy. Rather the task of building such a house (1^st Temple) became the ill-fated ambition of Solomon.

Oh, the vagaries of illicit power. I am reminded of the late Ivan Illich (1926-2002) author, Catholic priest, philosopher, professor and social critic whose favourite adage was the “corruption of the best becomes the worse.”

"Ultima Ratio Reagan" is a poem by the former U.S. Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov. It adapts the Latin phrase ultima ratio regum ("the final argument of kings," traditionally engraved on cannons) to reflect on political power, war, and the historical ignorance of humanity.

The reason we do not learn from history is

Because we are not the people who learned last time.

Because we are not the same people as them

That fed our sons and honor to Vietnam

And dropped the burning money on the trees,

We know that we know better than they knew,

And history will not blame us if once again

The light at the end of the tunnel is the train.

---

^[1] Adonijah sealed his fate when he asked Bathsheba for the hand in marriage of Abishag the Shunammite, the young virgin that kept King David warm at night.  Solomon responded, “So, may God do to me, and more also, for Adonijah has devised this scheme at the risk of his life. Now therefore as the Lord lives, ... Adonijah shall be put to death. So, King Solomon sent Benaiah son of Jehoiada; he struck him down and he died. (1 Kings 2:19-25.) Then there was the strange case of Shimei son of Gera who cursed David. David swore to the Lord he would not put down Shimei by the sword, but then he informed Solomon, "do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man; you will know what you ought to do to him, and you must bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol.” (1 Kings 2:8-9). By the end of 1 Kings 2, Solomon had found an excuse to avenge David and struck down Shimei.

^[2] 1 Kings 4:13 King Solomon forced labor out of all Israel; the levy numbered thirty thousand men.

^[3] Daniel Berrigan, The Kings and their Gods: The Pathology of Power (Eerdmans). 49