Deut 17-18 Laws Concerning Israel's Kings
Proverbs 15
In chapters 17 and 18 we come to a section which deals with the regulations that would control a king, a priest, and a prophet. These were the three main offices in the nation Israel, which God set up for these people.
This was not a theocracy because the roles and power of Kings was separate from the Priesthood. In Islam, those roles are combined.
God laid down rules for each of these offices.
God knows that the time will come when they demand a king like the other nations had. God says that their king must be an Israelite and not a foreigner. (hmmm…)
But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.
Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold [Deu 17:16-17].
These are the rules for the king. It is interesting to note that King Solomon transgressed these rules. First of all, he multiplied horses. At Megiddo, the thing that impresses there is not so much the battlefield of Armageddon as the ruins of the stables of Solomon. The stables of Solomon would have made any of the racetracks in our country look like a tenant farmer's barn down in Texas. And other stables have been excavated at several additional sites. Solomon, went all out in that direction. God warned against this. The raising of horses would get one entangled with Egypt because that was the place where very fine horses were bred.
Solomon transgressed by multiplying wives to himself. (In Kings, we will take a look at Solomon’s broken heart when the Queen of Sheba left). The key is that God put up warning signs long before Israel ever had a king: “Don't go this way. Be careful.” Yet Solomon had many, many wives. It was his wives who turned his broken heart away from God. (But he recovered well by writing Ecclesiastes - a superb book for our Post Modern age but we’ll get there.)
Third, God warned against trying to corner the silver and gold market of that day. Yet that is exactly what Solomon did. David had begun it—but David was collecting silver and gold to build the temple. The problem is that Solomon continued collecting silver and gold for himself. This was the undoing of Solomon, and the grievous taxation was the direct cause of the division of Israel as a nation into the northern and southern kingdoms after Solomon's death.
And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them:
That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel [Deu 17:18-20].
The king was to be a man of the Word of God. He was to have a private copy of the Law of God, and he was to read in it every day of his life.
I wonder if our politicians today pay attention to God’s words and their impact on wealth, power, taxation, freedom…
Jay - think through the Political Caucuses I attended the past month, and praying for LIFE