80 Seconds

I recently saw an ad about an “earthquake bed” - a high-tech bed whose bedframe is actually a sturdy metal box. It has built-in sensors so that, if it detects an earthquake, it quickly drops you into the box and seals shut, protecting you from any falling debris.

There are actually two series of earthquake beds - one from Chinese inventor Wang Wenxi, and one from Russian company Dahir Insaat. Some of their iterations include built-in safety gear - food, oxygen, a fire extinguisher, etc. - to keep you safe while awaiting rescue. I can’t find the specific ad that I saw, but this CNN video shares Dahir Insaat’s concept video:

Neither creator’s bed appears to be commercially available; however, based on their specialized construction, limited development, heavy steel, and complex safety-critical devices, I’m guessing they’d cost tens of thousands of dollars if they could be purchased.

I’m sure that the ad I saw was making the rounds because of February 6’s earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. I don’t begrudge the ad or the inventions - I’m not sure how workable they are, but the goal of saving lives is commendable, and invention and research involves pursuing ideas that may or may not pan out, and trying to implement an expensive, impractical idea is often the first step toward making something cheaper and practical.

And yet there’s something so… human… about responding to tragedy by offering safety through technology, if only you can afford it.

My own response to the earthquakes is a bit closer to this song by Kimya Dawson, written in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tsunami. (Warning: sensitive content.)

The earthquakes lasted 80 seconds. Over 50,000 people were killed. Since February 6, 9,000 aftershocks have been reported. Over 170,000 buildings - some of them centuries old - have been destroyed or severely damaged. Millions of people have been affected. As of Saturday, nearly 240,000 rescue workers continue to dig through the rubble, looking for victims, so they can at least give them a proper burial.

What’s an earthquake bed supposed to accomplish? Tens of thousands of dollars, times tens of thousands of people, just to be buried for weeks in the rubble of what used to be your home?

We’re quite good at controlling our environment and protecting against misfortune. Insurance, vaccinations, the Federal Reserve, building codes, sprinkler systems, irrigation, deep freezers, weather radar, floodwalls, and - yes - earthquake beds, to protect against disease, economic loss, famine, drought, fire, flood, storm. But 80 seconds shows the limits of our power.

What can we do? We call earthquakes “acts of God,” and there are rich resources within the Christian faith for developing our understanding of when and how God acts, why God allows these things to happen, and how we should respond. (“Those 50,000 who were killed when the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in the world? No, I tell you! But unless you repent you will all perish as well!”) But so much of the tragedy is human. From The Dispatch:

In 1999 an earthquake in western Turkey killed more than 17,000, setting off a nationwide push to demolish old construction and rebuild earthquake resistant buildings. Except many pre-1999 buildings in the poorer south remained, and many new buildings weren’t built to withstand the tremor.

[Turkish President] Erdoğan’s political rivals say shoddy new construction—encouraged by the president and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)—is in part to blame for the disaster. A recently resurfaced video from 2019 shows Erdoğan touting new construction in Kahramanmaraş following the passage of a law allowing contractors to pay a fee to spare their unlicensed buildings from demolition. “We solved the problem of 144,156 citizens of Maraş with zoning amnesty,” he said of the housing projects, some of which were destroyed in the quakes.

And some are blaming the Turkish government for playing politics:

In [Erdoğan’s] first public remarks [after the quakes], he threatened legal action against those who criticized the government… The day after the disaster, Erdoğan blocked access to Twitter, where criticism of the government was proliferating. Rescue workers quickly condemned that decision, because victims trapped under the rubble were using social media to communicate their locations to rescue teams… Demolition crews have been dispatched to destroy public records office buildings that housed building permits, along with the names and records of contractors and the public officials who approved such projects… Various aid workers also told press outlets they were pushed out of the way just as victims were being brought out of collapsed buildings, then replaced by government-affiliated aid workers who wanted to take the credit for the rescue in front of television cameras.

In Syria, the disaster has been complicated by the decade-long civil war, with the White Helmets, a volunteer group that operates in opposition-held Syrian territory, shouldering much of the burden of the rescue work.

There, too, leaders are choosing to play politics:

The United States Treasury announced a six-month freeze on sanctions against the Syrian government involving “all transactions related to earthquake relief.” Though U.S. officials insisted none of their existing penalties on Damascus targeted humanitarian aid shipments, the move followed finger-pointing from [Syrian dictator Assad’s] regime officials who wasted no time in blaming Western sanctions for their own deficient response to the catastrophe…

While his government complained about sanctions, the dictator of more than two decades has been stalling the delivery of life-saving relief for political gain. Until last week, the regime had insisted that all international assistance be routed through the Damascus government, delaying aid shipments to some of the hardest-hit areas in the country’s rebel-held northwest.

80 seconds would be devastating under any circumstances. But it’s made so much worse when profit-seeking or short-sighted politics leave infrastructure unprepared; when tyranny and war decimate a region for a decade; when protecting yourself becomes more important than open, honest information; when aid becomes a tool in bolstering someone’s political position.

Human response, therefore, becomes important: people who are willing to build strong communities and social ties that can be ready to bear the weight when disaster hits. People who help out, who volunteer their time and donate their money, even at personal risk and sacrifice. (Over two hundred White Helmets have died performing their duties over the last ten years.) People and countries who send aid rather than put their own country first, who seek to protect the poor and powerless.

Last year, singer-songwriter Nick Cave wrote,

We must love each other. And mostly I think we do – or we live in very close proximity to the idea, because there is barely any distance between a feeling of neutrality toward the world and a crucial love for it, barely any distance at all. All that is required to move from indifference to love is to have our hearts broken. The heart breaks and the world explodes in front of us as a revelation.

There is no problem of evil. There is only a problem of good. Why does a world that is so often cruel, insist on being beautiful, of being good? Why does it take a devastation for the world to reveal its true spiritual nature? I don’t know the answer to this, but I do know there exists a kind of potentiality just beyond trauma.

A Tragedy of Kings

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.