Government of Israel
The Kings of Judah were no better. King Manasseh, the worst of all the southern kings, went so far as to introduce idol worship *in the Temple* which Solomon built, and to even sacrifice his own son to a Canaanite god (probably Molech). Because of his evil leadership, the people were led to become MORE EVIL than the Canaanites who were there before them:
"Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hephzibah. 2 He did evil in the sight of the LORD, following the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD had cleared out of the way of the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the high places which his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He erected altars to Baal, and also set up a sacred pole, as Ahab, king of Israel, had done. He worshiped and served the whole host of heaven. 4 He built altars in the temple of the LORD, about which the LORD had said, "I will establish my name in Jerusalem"-- 5 altars for the whole host of heaven, in the two courts of the temple. 6 He immolated his son by fire. He practiced soothsaying and divination, and reintroduced the consulting of ghosts and spirits. He did much evil in the LORD'S sight and provoked him to anger. 7 The Asherah idol he had made, he set up in the temple, of which the LORD had said to David and to his son Solomon: "In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I shall place my name forever. 8 I will not in future allow Israel to be driven off the land I gave their fathers, provided that they are careful to observe all I have commanded them, the entire law which my servant Moses enjoined upon them." 9 But they did not listen, and Manasseh misled them into doing even greater evil than the nations whom the LORD had destroyed at the coming of the Israelites.
GOD MAKES AN AMAZING AND UNPRECEDENTED PROMISE TO DAVID HOW‐EVER...God was so pleased with David that He made an unbelievable promised to him. God promised that one of David's sons will always be king of Israel...FOREVER. He said that his throne will would remain firm forever (2 Sam 7):
"The LORD also reveals to you that he will establish a house for you. 12 And when your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his kingdom firm. 13 It is he who shall build a house for my name. And I will make his royal throne firm forever. 14 I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. And if he does wrong, I will correct him with the rod of men and with human chastisements; 15 but I will not withdraw my favor from him as I withdrew it from your predecessor Saul, whom I removed from my presence. 16 Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever.'" 17 Nathan reported all these words and this entire vision to David."
King 3 = Solomon. One of David's sons with Bathsheba was Solomon. Solomon became the next king of Israel. He built the Temple, and it was magnificent, something all the Israelites were proud of, even though it cost them a LOT of tax money (a point of contension). God visited Solomon and basically said, "name it and it's yours." Solomon asked God for wisdom and an understanding heart." God was so pleased with Solomon's request that He made Solomon wiser than anyone who came before him (including Moses!) and wiser than anyone who was to come after him (not including Jesus, of course). Solomon therefore, started out his career as the wisest of all the kings. People from all over the world, including the queen of Sheba came to him just to listen to him and be wowed by his wisdom.
But in his later years, Solomon's wisdom became corrupted. In an effort to keep the peace with the surrounding (pagan) nations, Solomon married many foreign princesses, besides his original wife, the daughter of Pharoh. (BTW: God's plan was for keeping the enemies at bay was for the Israelites to simply obey the covenant. Solomon's way of keeping the enemies at bay was by marriying their daughters). These women—700 wives and 300 concubines—came to live with him in Jerusalem. Of course, they brought with them their pagan idols. Eventually, Slomon's women turned his heart away from the LORD. Solomon even worshipped their idols and even built "high places" for hosting these pagan worship ceremonies:
A Government For Israel: The Monarchy A King, But For All The Wrong Reasons While the "judges" were exceptional warrior leaders, they were not highly organized administrators and their strategy was always last-minute. They did not collect taxes from the Israelites and were obviously not interested in organizing a permanent army to defend Israel from all possible future attacks.
Eventually, the Israelites got tired of scrambling for a judge to put an army together at the "eleventh hour." The Israelites therefore, informed Samuel (the very last judge) that they wanted him to install a king who would be their leader. They had 2 basic reasons for wanting a king:
God Consents To An Earthly Kingdom God told Samuel to anoint a king for the Israelites. In allowing the Israelites to have their king, God was merely giving the baby his bottle, as it were. It seems as if God was totally fed up with His people (1 Sam 8): And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights."
God knew all along it would come to this. God knows all things, even before they happen. The earthly kingdom was something that God simply consented to. However, when God was born—as an heir to the *earthly* kingdom of the Jews—He did not wish to rule as an earthly king, because earthly kings rule by force, and God didn't want anyone to feel like they were being forced to obey Him. Even now, though God is our King of Kings, He will never force our obedience, as an earthly king would.
1.In order to have a standing army ready at all times to defend Israel from potential enemy attacks. 2.To be like all the other nations (1 Sam 8:5): "Now that you are old and your sons do not follow your example, appoint a king over us, as other nations have, to judge us."
God was not pleased with the Israelites' request for a king. From God's point of view, their desire for a king "as other nations have" was just another way of saying that they were rejecting Him as their King.
King 1 = Saul. Saul is known for starting out pretty good, but then he started to actually go crazy. The only thing that would calm him down was the music that the shepherd boy David would play for him. There was actually a time when Saul tried to kill David.
King 2 = David, son of a man named Jesse is renowned as the best of the Israelite kings. This king went through a LOT. In his life, he experienced intense defeat, victory, happiness, depression, grief etc. For example, he conquered all of Israel's enemies, his son Absalom tried to kill him, his family fell apart, he had a profound relationship with God etc. David was a man very much in touch with his emotions and he expressed his thoughts and feelings through poem‐songs. These poem‐songs are called the Psalms. There are 150 Psalms in the bible, a great number of which were written by David. The psalms were prayed during worship services (aka: sacrifices) in the Tabernacle. Later on, when the Temple was built, the psalms were prayed in the Temple. The psalms were set to music and were chanted. Today, while we do not know the original melodies of the psalms, we do have the words. The Jewish do have a form of chant today which is probably very similar to the kind of chant David sung 3,000 years ago. So, we do have an idea of what the Psalms must have sounded like.
We pray the Psalms in the Liturgy of the Church and are encouraged to pray them privately at home through the year. Even though we are not king David and have not had the exact same experiences as he had, we can still pray his psalms because we have all gone through stuff similar to what David went through—depression, happiness, doubt, faith, etc. We must make the Psalms "our own."
King David conquered the city of Jebus (the last enemy in Judah to be conquered). This name of this Jebusite city was soon changed to Jerusalem and it became Israel's capital city—where God's presence was to dwell permanently. David genuinely felt bad that God was living in a tent (the Tabernacle) while he was living in a palace in Jerusalem. David wanted to honor God by building a Temple to house the arc of the covenant, over which God's presence was). The Temple was to be a stone "house" for God, a permanent stone version of the original Tabernacle. God however, informed David that he could not build the Temple as David had been involved in too many wars over his lifetime.
Meanwhile, the Southern kingdom under the leadership of Rehoboam also committed great sin. In fact, they became so sinful that they became just like the Canaanites (1 Kings 14:22-24): "Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and by their sins angered him even more than their fathers had done. 23 They, too, built for themselves high places, pillars, and sacred poles, upon every high hill and under every green tree. 24 There were also cult prostitutes in the land. Judah imitated all the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD had cleared out of the Israelites' way."
Northern and Southern Kings Do "Evil In The Sight of The LORD" The bible reports that the northern and southern kings, with just a few exceptions, "did evil in the sight of God." For example, the northern king Omri Omri (1 Kings 16:25-26), "did evil in the LORD'S sight beyond any of his predecessors. 26 He closely imitated the sinful conduct of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, causing Israel to sin and to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger by their idols." Omri's son went on to be even worse (1 Kings 16:30-33): "Ahab, son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the LORD more than any of his predecessors. 31 It was not enough for him to imitate the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat. He even married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went over to the veneration and worship of Baal. 32 Ahab erected an altar to Baal in the temple of Baal which he built in Samaria, 33 and also made a sacred pole. He did more to anger the LORD, the God of Israel, than any of the kings of Israel before him."
This is a really really really important promise!!! THIS IS SOMETHING THAT GOD DIDN'T HAVE TO DO. BY THIS STAGE, GOD HAD ALREADY FULFILLED ALL HIS PROMISES TO THE ISRAELITES AND OWED DAVID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. THIS PROMISE MEANS THAT EVEN IF ALL OF THE OTHER TRIBES GET DESTROYED, DAVID'S KINGDOM WILL "STAND FIRM FOREVER." IF IT WASN'T FOR THIS PROMISE, THE OLD TESTAMENT WOULD BE A WHOLE LOT SHORTER.
Notice above that when God gave the promise to David, He hinted that David's son would be a sinner who God will have to punish. (More on that later). A little while after receiving this amazing promise, David committed a mortal sin—adultery with Bathsheba. To make things worse, had then her husband killed. Afterwards he repented for his sins and God forgave him. He wrote a whole psalm about it (Psalm 51). This just goes to show that even the best of us can sin terribly, but that God can forgive anyone, if we are truly sorry.
God's plan A was for the Israelites to be His special people, a people set apart from all the rest, a people who would obey Him as their King and receive the blessing of peace/national security as a reward. The Israelites did indeed want to be God's "special" people, but they didn't want to have to be "different" from all the other nations and didn't want to have to obey Him. In other words, the Israelites wanted to be God's chosen people, but didn't want to have to change one bit!
So now, the Israelites thought they could avoid the repercussions of breaking the covenant (aka enemy attacks) by putting a king on the throne, a king who would organize and run a permanent army in order to ensure national security for Israel.
1 King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of Pharaoh (Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites), 2 from nations with which the LORD had forbidden the Israelites to intermarry, "because," he said, "they will turn your hearts to their gods." But Solomon fell in love with them. 3 He had seven hundred wives of princely rank and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart. 4 When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods, and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God, as the heart of his father David had been. 5 By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites, 6 Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done. 7 Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab, and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites, on the hill opposite Jerusalem. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
Solomon also gathered to himself way too much wealth (by taxing) and military power (horses), something Moses, way back in the book of Deuteronomy, had specifically warned him not to do (Deut 17): "When you have come into the land which the LORD, your God, is giving you, and have occupied it and settled in it, should you then decide to have a king over you like all the surrounding nations, 15 you shall set that man over you as your king whom the LORD, your God, chooses. He whom you set over you as king must be your kinsman; a foreigner, who is no kin of yours, you may not set over you. 16 3 But he shall not have a great number of horses; nor shall he make his people go back again to Egypt to acquire them, against the LORD'S warning that you must never go back that way again. 17 Neither shall he have a great number of wives, lest his heart be estranged, nor shall he accumulate a vast amount of silver and gold.
According to the Mosaic law, every male in all Israel was to go to Jerusalem to celebrate the major Feasts. Three times a year therefore, Jerusalem would be filled to overflowing with men who have travelled from all over Israel to celebrate. Of course, the women could also come to celebrate but the men were required to go.
The Northern King--Jeroboam--really did not want the northern males to go to Jerusalem in the south to celebrate the 3 religious festivals. He felt that if they went to the capital city, their hearts would get nostalgic for Jerusalem, for national unity and that perhaps they might end up joining with Rehoboam again. Jeroboam therefore, invented his own versions of the 3 festivals and built pagan worship sites in the cities of Bethel and Dan for the northern Israelites to go to. Jeroboam supplied these northern worship sites with golden calves for the Israelites to worship, saying to the northern Israelites "behold your god who brought you out of the land of Egypt." This is exactly the thing that caused God to want to wipe out the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. Now, it's happening openly in the northern kingdom of Israel.
Civil war: God warned David that if his son (Solomon) would sin, He would punish him. The punishment was for Solomon's kingdom to be torn apart. When Solomon's son Rehoboam was king of all Israel, a civil war broke out. One of Solomon's old workers by the name of Jeroboam formed a coalition of 10 northern tribes which, in 922 BC, rebelled against Rehoboam in the south. This rebellion resulted in two separate kingdoms. The northern kingdom became known as "Israel," while the southern kingdom became known as Judah or Judea. The phrase "all Israel" referred to all 12 tribes. Of course, the VALID kingdom was the southern kingdom and the VALID king was the southern king. God's punishment against Solomon therefore, was to make Solomon's kingdom much, much smaller--2 tribes.
Where Will The Northern Kingdom Worship? One of the laws the Moses gave in the book of Deuteronomy 16, was a law concerning religious holidays. There were 3 major holidays/feast days in the Jewish calendar. 1. Passover (celebrating the 1st born son's escape from the angel of death during the exodus from Egypt) 2. Pentecost (celebrating Israel's escape from bondage) 3. Tabernacles (celebrating God's provision for the Israelites)
