We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Did God Want a King for Israel?
By the time God was ready to form a nation for himself by delivering the Israelites from the oppressive rule of the Egyptian Pharaoh, every nation was ruled by someone and existed in tension with, and often at war with, other nations. Yet, it’s clear from the biblical narrative that God originally wanted Israel to be an exception to this. Functioning as a microcosm of humanity, and as part of their priestly-servant role to other nations, it seems God wanted to manifest his original plan for humanity by raising up a nation that had no need of a human king, for they had God as their king. According to the biblical narrative, this is how it was for the first several hundred years after their deliverance from Egypt. Moreover, throughout the OT we find the Lord commanding his people to place no trust in human rulers, weapons or armies, but to rather find all their security in him.
This claim has sometimes been countered by appealing to Deuteronomy 17 in which the Lord gives instructions through Moses about the kind of king the Israelites should choose once they are established in the land he was giving them (Deut. 17:14-20). I contend that this passage, placed as it is within the wilderness narrative, actually confirms that God allowed Israel to have a king only as a concession to their sin. This passage recounts Moses prophesying that once the people “have taken possession” and “settled in” the land, they would say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us” (Deut 17:14). Note, it is the people who will demand a king, and they will do so precisely to be like all the other nations, in direct contradiction to the set-apart holiness that Yahweh had called them to.
Given that God foreknew this, this passage presents him as acquiescing to give instructions ahead of time about the kind of king they should appoint and the kind of safeguards they should place around him. Yahweh specifies, through Moses, that the king should be an Israelite (vs. 16); he shouldn’t acquire many wives (vs. 17); he shouldn’t acquire a great number of horses (viz. military power) or accumulate a great deal of wealth (vs. 17); he should have his own copy of the law and study it daily (vss. 18-19), and, most interestingly, he should never be regarded as “better than his fellow Israelites” (vs. 20).
What’s important for us to notice is that, had the Israelites followed these instructions, their kings would have looked and acted completely different from the rulers of other nations. Hence, even with the divine concession to allow Israel to have a king, Israel still would have provided a stark contrast with other nations and thereby preserved some of its distinctive witness to the singular Lordship of Yahweh to other nations. It seems evident, then, that in this passage Yahweh is simply trying to minimize ahead of time damage that his people’s insistence on having a king would bring to his goal of using them as servant priests to the world.
Image by trainjason via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Divine Accommodation, Moses, Old Testament, Power
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
Verse: Deuteronomy 17
Related Reading
The Cross in the Manger, Part 2
While some shepherds were tending their flock, an angel appeared to them announcing “good news that will cause great joy for all the people,” for it news about “a Savior…the Messiah, the Lord” (Lk 2:10-11). Most Jews of this time expected a Messiah who would save them by vanquishing their Roman oppressors and liberating Israel…
Re-Thinking Divine Sovereignty
Many people in the church have been taught that divine sovereignty is synonymous with unilateral control. Some have even argued that if God is not in control of everything, then something must be in control of him. Still others have proposed that if God is not sovereign over all, then he has no sovereignty at…
What Kind of God Did Jesus Reveal?
The ReKnew Manifesto exists to encourage believers and skeptics alike to re-think things they thought they already knew – hence our name, Re-Knew. I am currently working through the theology of the Manifesto in a series of posts that began a couple of months ago. Over the last few posts, we have been looking at the…
What’s the Purpose of the Old Testament Law?
Whereas the old covenant was rooted in the law, the new covenant is rooted in simple faith, such as Abraham had. Whereas the old covenant was forged with one particular nation, the new covenant is available to all who are willing to accept it, regardless of their ethnicity and nationality. Whereas forgiveness of sins within…
The Problem with Mixing Church & Government
Image by fusion-of-horizons via Flickr Some people insist that the only reason that neither Jesus nor anyone else in the first several centuries of the church tried to dominate the political system of their day was because they were a small minority of people living in a nondemocratic and hostile environment. By contrast, the argument goes,…
What Power Do You Trust?
Governments and nations have always relied on fighting to survive. They punish criminals who threaten their welfare. They go to war against enemies who attack their borders or stand in the way of their agenda. This is how the kingdoms of the world maintain law and order and advance their causes. By contrast, the Kingdom…