History - The Monarchy (1050-920 BCE)
After two hundred years of
only marginal success in occupying and holding lands in the Land of
Israel, the Hebrews united to form a single state under a single
monarch. During the early centuries in what the Romans later called
Palestine, the Hebrews were ruled loosely by "judges," who seemed to
exercise a limited amount of judicial, legislative, and even military
control over the otherwise independent Hebrew tribes. At times, various
"deliverers" would lead some or all of the tribes against non-Hebrew
oppressors or aggressors, and then fade again into history. Still, the
tribes faced down the constant threat of invasion and oppression, and
they still had not even remained firm in their Yahweh religion.
Saul
The Hebrews, however, began to desire more permanent solutions to their
political and military troubles. Looking to the Egyptian and
Mesopotamian models of monarchy, particularly among their neighbors the
Canaanites, Philistines, Moabites, and Ammonites, the Hebrew tribes
began agitating for a king. As recounted in the I Samuel and II Samuel,
the Hebrews approached Samuel, the "judge" of Israel, and demanded a
king. The account makes clear that both Samuel and Yahweh considered the
desire for a king to be an act of disobedience towards Yahweh; the
Hebrew people, according to Samuel, would greatly suffer for this
disobedience. However, Yahweh, as happened with Moses and all other
deliverers in Hebrew history, selected a king for the Hebrews and Samuel
formerly anointed this new king with oil to symbolize his election as
monarch. This was Saul; according to Hebrew history, he was chosen by
popular acclaim by the Hebrew people (which seems likely among a group
without a king). He was chosen for his height and his good looks, but
soon proved to be ineffectual. Saul was not, however, a standard Near
Eastern king; he seems to have been largely a military leader. There are
no accounts of him exercising monarchical power outside of military
exploits. The Hebrews, after all, were still tribal people, so the
transition to a monarchy must have been slow.
Saul was certainly not a wealthy monarch; the accounts of his kingship
imply that he was no wealthier than any tribal leader. The Hebrew
history of Saul, however, emphasizes his disobedience; because he
repeatedly fails to carry out Yahweh's instructions as spoken by Samuel,
Yahweh immediately chooses another king, David. Saul ruled as king only
two years.
While it's hard to assess Saul's monarchy, one very important pattern
emerges. It's clear that the monarchy is viewed as a negative
development in Hebrew history—this is amazing considering that the
account is written after centuries of Israelite and Jewish monarchs. In
the Hebrew view of history, it represents the Hebrew refusal to be ruled
by god in favor of a human ruler. In the history of the settlement of
Canaan, the book of Judges , when Gideon is offered the monarchy, he
replies, "You have no king but Yahweh." So the institution of the
monarchy creates a new conflict: the conflict between Yahweh and the
Hebrew monarchs. This conflict first rears its head in the relationship
of Samuel, as judge of Israel, and Saul, as king of Israel. Samuel
speaks the words of Yahweh; Saul disobeys them. This conflict would form
the basis of a massive change in the nature of Hebrew religion, the
"prophetic revolution," which is played out against the backdrop of the
incongruence between rule by Yahweh and rule by a king. The most
far-reaching, however, of the innovations of the monarchy was the
centralization of government in Jerusalem, which had been unimportant up
until that point. Under Solomon, Jerusalem would become the cultic
center of the Yahweh religion; sacrifice to Yahweh would now only be
possible in Jerusalem's temple and no-where else.
David
The most difficult king to asses in the Hebrew monarchy is the second
one, David. Before Saul has even become king, Yahweh chooses another
candidate on account of Saul's disobedience. He is a young and beautiful
adolescent who becomes wildly popular in the court of Saul. Deeply
suspicious, Saul at several times tries to kill the young David, but the
youth flees into the hills. When Saul kills himself, David returns and
becomes king. The account of his kingship, however, is deeply
ambivalent. While David is clearly a hero during the reign of Saul, his
character gradually changes as king, until he commits a crime greater
than any Saul had committed: he murders a man in order to marry his
wife.
While the Hebrew judgment of David seems to be ambivalent, his
accomplishments in his forty year reign are undeniable. After centuries
of losing conflict, the Hebrews finally defeat the Philistines
unambiguously under the brilliant military leadership of David. His
military campaigns transform the new Hebrew kingdom into a Hebrew
empire. An empire is a state that rules several more or less independent
states. These independent states never fully integrate themselves into
the larger state, but under the threat of military retaliation send
tribute and labor to the king of the empire.
Most importantly, David unites the tribes of Israel under an absolute
monarchy. This monarchical government involved more than just military
campaigns, but also included non-military affairs: building,
legislation, judiciaries, etc. He also built up Jerusalem to look more
like the capitals of other kings: rich, large, and opulently decorated.
Centralized government, a standing army, and a wealthy capital do not
come free; the Hebrews found themselves for the first time since the
Egyptian period groaning under heavy taxes and the beginnings of forced
labor.
Solomon
It is the third and last king of a united Hebrew state, however, that
turned the Hebrew monarchy into something comparable to the opulent
monarchies of the Middle East and Egypt. The Hebrew account portrays a
wise and shrewd king, the best of all the kings of Israel. The portrait,
however, isn't completely positive and some troubling aspects emerge.
What emerges from the portrait of Solomon is that he desired to be a
king along the model of Mesopotamian kings. He built a fabulously
wealthy capital in Jerusalem with a magnificent palace and an enormous
temple attached to that palace (this would become the temple of
Jerusalem). He took 700 wives and over 300 concubines, most of whom were
non-Hebrew (in the book of Judges , Yahweh forbids all male Hebrews to
marry non-Hebrews). All of this building and wealth involved imported
products: gold, copper, and cedar, which were unavailable in Israel. So
Solomon taxed his people heavily, and what he couldn't pay for in taxes,
he paid for in land and people. He gave twenty towns to foreign powers,
and he paid Pheonicia in slave labor: every three months, 30,000 Hebrews
had to perform slave labor for the King of Tyre. This, it would seem, is
what Samuel meant when he said the people would pay dearly for having a
king.
While the author of II Samuel, the biblical account of Solomon's reign,
portrays Solomon as a good king it's clear from the account that the
Hebrews living under him did not think so. Groaning under the oppression
of Solomon, the Hebrews became passionately discontent, so that upon
Solomon's death (around 926 to 922 BC) the ten northern tribes revolted.
Unwilling to be ruled by Solomon's son, Rehoboam, these tribes
successfully seceded and established their own kingdom. The great empire
of David and Solomon was gone never to be seen again; in its place were
two mighty kingdoms which lost all the territory of David's once proud
empire within one hundred years of Solomon's passing.
From:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/HEBREWS/HEBREWS.HTM
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