Last month, we looked at David. His life can be viewed as a tragedy. He was Israel’s “beloved,” a man after God’s own heart, possessed of military, musical, and poetic skill, with an unbroken stream of success. However, after a single grievous sin and his further attempts to cover it up, everything seemed to go wrong for him, and he died a greatly diminished figure.
How does he fare compared to the other kings of Israel and Judah?
Saul (1878), by Ernst Josephson; King David, the King of Israel (1622), by Gerard van Honthorst; Portrait of Solomon, the Wise King (1670), by G. Pesaro
Saul, David’s predecessor, often gets a bad rap. We understandably focus on his failures as a king: his disobedience to God in battles, his brooding mental illness / spiritual oppression (1 Sam 16:14), his jealousy and violence toward David, and his final suicide in battle against the Philistines. This is an oversimplification, though; Ronald F. Youngblood notes,
Scholarly studies of Saul, the first king of Israel, have depicted him as (among other things) villain, tragic figure, flawed ruler, naive farm-boy, degenerate madman, fate-driven pawn, reluctant king—the list goes on and on. Such characterizations are at least partially true. Saul was surely one of the most complex persons described in Scripture… Although at times moody, impulsive, suspicious, violent, insincerely remorseful, out of control, and disobedient to God, at other times he was kind, thoughtful, generous, courageous, very much in control, and willing to obey God. (Expositor’s Bible Commentary)
He starts out well. From a human perspective, he appears to be an ideal ruler: handsome, physically imposing, from a wealthy family (1 Sam 9:1-2). He never sought the kingship himself; he acts with humility throughout his anointing, coronation, and early reign (1 Sam 9:21, 1 Sam 15:17); he demonstrates restraint and mercy when people oppose him (1 Sam 10:27, 11:12-13). God “changed his innermost person” (1 Sam 10:9) and gives him a spiritual experience of ecstatic prophecy (1 Sam 10:10-11). After his coronation, he goes back to manual labor on his farm (1 Sam 11:5), rather than seeking to amass power and wealth. When the city of Jabesh-Gilead is threatened militarily, he zealously rallies Israel to their defense (1 Sam 11:6-11), in the style of the judges, thus earning a loyalty from them that lasts even after his death. Despite the Israelites’ wrong motives in asking for a king, Samuel’s speech at the beginning of Saul’s reign offers encouragement as well as warning:
Now look! Here is the king you have chosen—the one that you asked for! Look, the Lord has given you a king. If you fear the Lord, serving him and obeying him and not rebelling against what he says, and if both you and the king who rules over you follow the Lord your God, all will be well. But if you don’t obey the Lord and rebel against what the Lord says, the hand of the Lord will be against both you and your king… The Lord will not abandon his people because he wants to uphold his great reputation. The Lord was pleased to make you his own people. As far as I am concerned, far be it from me to sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you! I will instruct you in the way that is good and upright. However, fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart. Just look at the great things he has done for you! But if you continue to do evil, both you and your king will be swept away.” (1 Sam 12:13-15,22-25)
Saul continues to defend Israel for the rest of his reign (1 Sam 14:47-48, 52). Even after the Lord rejects Saul’s dynasty and kingship, Saul is shown remarkable mercy: he’s permitted to live for many more years, with his eventual successor David as a trusted lieutenant and aide, rather than being immediately judged and replaced.
However, Saul’s fearfulness and distance from God leads him to disobey, offering sacrifice without Samuel at Gilgal (1 Sam 13), then fighting timidly and foolishly against the Philistines (1 Sam 14), failing to follow God’s commandments to destroy the Amalekites (1 Sam 15), growing increasingly jealous and violent toward David, and killing the priests of Nob. It seems that, having failed once due to impatience and insecurity, he compounds those failings at each subsequent step, instead of repenting and growing. He goes from acknowledging the Lord himself (e.g., 1 Sam 11:13) to referring to him as “your“ God in talking with Samuel (1 Sam 15:30), to being completely cut off from the Lord and his prophets (1 Sam 28). His reign and life ended with the military defeat of Israel, the deaths of his sons, and his own suicide to avoid capture.
Solomon, David’s son and successor, starts out with enormous potential. At his birth, he is named Jedediah (“beloved of the Lord”), in response to a message from the prophet Nathan - the same prophet who condemned David’s affair with Solomon’s mother Bathsheba. He begins his reign with David’s support and acts quickly to secure and strengthen the kingdom, dispensing justice to wrongdoers who had avoided judgment during David’s reign. Solomon enjoys an unprecedented period of peace: vassal states of that time would typically withhold tribute or rebel at the death of a king, to test the new king’s rule, but he experienced none of that (1 Ki 4:21, 24). He marries the daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt; Egyptian rulers had formerly refused their daughters to any foreign land, and for a descendant of Egyptian slaves to marry an Egyptian princess showed Solomon’s blessings and success. He offers huge sacrifices to God in a display of his dedication to God, and God responds directly in a dream, offering Solomon whatever he wants. In Solomon’s answer, he thanks God for his love and promises, humbly recognizes his own limitations, and asks for wisdom to serve his people. God honors Solomon’s request, making him the wisest man to ever live, and also promising him a long life, wealth, and greatness.
Solomon enjoys a long, prosperous, and successful reign: he dispenses justice, sets up an effective bureaucracy to govern his kingdom, sponsors international trade and exploration, and receives international acclaim and fame. His wisdom goes beyond leadership and legal judgments; he’s known for his psalms, proverbs, and knowledge of animals and plants. His kingdom becomes so fabulously wealthy that silver is viewed as without value. He builds a palace to cement and symbolize his rule; expands the city of Jerusalem; fortifies the strategic cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer; and builds a network of store-cities to supply his military.
He builds a temple to the Lord - the long-time dream of his father David, and the culminating physical symbol of God’s decision to live among his people. At the zenith of Solomon’s reign, he dedicates the temple to the Lord in a massive and magnificent worship service where he expresses his heartfelt devotion to God:
O Lord, God of Israel, there is no god like you in heaven above or on earth below! You maintain covenantal loyalty to your servants who obey you with sincerity. You have kept your word to your servant, my father David; this very day you have fulfilled what you promised…
God does not really live on the earth! Look, if the sky and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this temple I have built! But respond favorably to your servant’s prayer and his request for help, O Lord my God. Answer the desperate prayer your servant is presenting to you today. Night and day may you watch over this temple, the place where you promised you would live. May you answer your servant’s prayer for this place. Respond to the request of your servant and your people Israel for this place. Hear from inside your heavenly dwelling place and respond favorably. (1 Ki 8:23-24, 27-30)
Woven throughout all of this success and splendor, though, are hints of trouble. Solomon’s marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh shows his power and cements a valuable foreign alliance, and Jewish tradition states that she became a Jewish proselyte, yet the Israelites are warned against foreign alliances and relations with Egypt, and Solomon seems to recognize that the marriage falls short of God’s holiness (2 Chron 8:11). He spends seven years constructing the magnificent temple of the Lord - but thirteen years constructing his own personal palace. (The fact that he was aided by David’s preparations for the temple may explain some of this but perhaps not all.) The court and kingdom are incredibly wealthy, but that wealth is created in part through significant forced labor and taxation, which spurs a rebellion after Solomon’s death. His longstanding friendship and trade with Hiram, king of Tyre, helps him build the temple and palace, yet he repays Hiram by attempting to trade twenty towns (even though those should have been considered part of the Promised Land) that left Hiram feel like Solomon was ripping him off (1 Ki 9:11-14). Solomon’s splendor and power are shown through his treasure, his army of horsemen and chariots, and his many wives, and yet Moses forbids kings from amassing treasure, horses, or wives (Deut 17:16-17).
All of this leads to disaster as Solomon’s reign progresses. His 700 wives, 300 concubines, and numerous foreign alliances become entanglements and distractions that pull him away from God. It starts, perhaps, as mutually beneficial alliances and politically expedient nods toward other nations’ religious practices, but Solomon’s emotions become entangled by his many marriages and he starts worshipping other gods himself. Out of mercy, God postpones full judgment until after Solomon’s death, but Solomon ends his reign harried by enemies to the north, south, and within, with Israel only a short time away from rebellion and a division that never healed.
What are we to make of the lives of these three men?
All started, to varying degrees, with promise, potential, and acknowledgement of God. All showed some measure of success and service to God and his people. David and Solomon in particular showed, for all-too-brief moments, what God’s people could look like, when gathered together in faithfulness to celebrate and worship the Lord and to enjoy his goodness. All three were later brought low - Saul by his insecurities and disobedience that led to a growing darkness and distance from God, David by the devastating choices and consequences that flowed from a single act of adultery, Solomon in a prolonged process of compromise and ensnarement that turned away his devotion to God.
All three are tragedies. Like any good tragedy, they’re good stories - as in tragedies since ancient Greece, we see the tragic heroes’ virtues and flaws, we watch their falls, we experience the catharsis of pity for them and fear as we reflect on the potential for flaw and fall within our own lives.
All three form a critical part of the history of God’s dealings with his people. Saul’s failures set up the path to David’s kingship; David’s devotion to God results in the epochal promise of 1 Samuel 7, that a descendent of David would always be on the throne, that was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus; Solomon built the temple that became the center of the worship of God for centuries.
And there are good moral lessons to draw from the lives of all three. We can see how Saul’s humility and zeal, from another angle or in other circumstances of his life, can manifest as insecurity and impatience, then we can reflect on how strengths can become weaknesses if not tempered and centered in a deeper commitment to the good. David’s affair shows us the necessity of fleeing temptation, the weaknesses that exist even within a man after God’s own heart, and the importance of heartfelt repentance. Solomon’s life prompts reflection on the differences between intelligence, wisdom, earthly success, and faithfulness to God and the paradox of how material blessings can tempt us to forget God. And so on.
Is that all, though? If we want a good tragedy, we can read Oedipus Rex or Shakespeare’s Macbeth or see Anakin Skywalker’s fall in Revenge of the Sith. The lives of Saul, David, and Solomon give moral lessons, but so do the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Tony Stark. Reading about the Israelite kings has the not-insignificant advantage that they’re part of God’s people and their accounts are divinely inspired, and they teach history in a way that the lives of Stark or Skywalker don’t, but if all we gain is some catharsis and historical knowledge and some moral teachings, we’re not seeing the whole picture.
The Israelites were called to be God’s people. Moses promised that someday they would have a king (Deut 17:14-20). We see that the kings were to represent God as his regent on earth, to shepherd God’s people, to ensure justice, to provide protection and rest so that the people could enjoy the blessings of land and divine presence that God had promised them. Yet Saul, David, and Solomon show that no human is fully up to this task - whether humble beginnings or divine prophecies from birth, unqualified success in battle or unprecedented peace, physical stature or superlative wisdom, talent or wealth or eloquence, all ended in tragedy. If even the best of humans fails, then the only way that God’s people can have a ruler who faithfully follows God and guides his people is if God himself is that ruler.
The lives of Saul, David, and Solomon, give the historical facts around the prophecies and promises of Christ, but they also show our need for Christ. The potential of Saul, devotion and strength of David, and wisdom and splendor of Solomon all foreshadow the greater strength and wisdom and lasting splendor of the Son of David.
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