(the main content of this article was originally written in Nov 2008)
Shabbat shalom, my beloved brothers and sisters,
This week’s sidra (Dt 17:14-21) covers the biblical Yahwist view of kingship – ‘messiah-ship’, and it is quite different to what Christianity or even modern Judaism tells us about an anointed Israelite king.
The Pre-Exile View of Kingship – God’s View of Israel’s Kings
The Miqra (Hebrew Bible) consistently tells us that God was never truly happy that Israel set a human king over it. Adonai allowed Israel to have a human king, but it was with great reluctance. Through the prophet Hosea, Adonai tells us:
‘They have set up kings, but not by Me;
They have appointed princes, but I did not acknowledge it.’ (Hos 8:4).
The Yahwist Israelite view of kingship was quite different from that of the surrounding peoples of the time. Whereas pagan kings were viewed as divine or semi-divine, descended from the gods, as well as being lawgivers whose very words were law, Israelite kings were very much human, and given only limited power by God; the laws they followed were God’s, not theirs. They did not have any power to pass laws, and originally the king was only intended to have the powers of final adjudication in certain types of legal disputes, and of oversight in national defence (kings were chiefly the military generals of the national army).
The Anointed One is NOT a Saviour
If you follow the Miqra, and adhere closely to the words of Torah & the Prophets, you will see that the anointed king of Israel is NOT a saviour; the word ‘messiah’ is never synonymous with ‘saviour’. This is the big criticism that modern Talmidaism has of messianism and messianic belief. Messianic theology abrogates God’s powers of salvation – which are Adonai’s and Adonai’s alone to have – and gives them over to a mortal human being. In Hos 13:10, God even mocks people’s hope that a messiah will save them!
Where is your king now – can he save you?
Where in all your cities are your rulers,
of whom you once asked,
“Give me a king and rulers”?
There will be more than one messiah in history (the messiah will not be immortal)
A common misconception (both rabbinic and Christian) is that there would only ever be just one future messiah, which inherently presumes that he would be immortal, but nowhere in the Miqra does it say ‘the’ Anointed One (ha-mashiach). You will never find the phrase, “the Anointed One / the Messiah” anywhere in scripture; if it appears in translation, the word ‘the’ has been deceitfully inserted, because the Hebrew ha-mashiach never occurs in the Hebrew scriptures. The long trail of Israelite history does not point towards or ultimately culminate in ‘The Messiah’. Yes, God will give us a king in the future – a descendent of David – but only as a final sign that Adonai alone has acted and intervened in history, and Adonai alone has approved events.
Every divinely-appointed king who sits on the throne of Israel will be a descendent of David – every legitimate Israelite king is ‘an Anointed One’. Every time one ‘Anointed One’ dies, another anointed one will reign in his place:
‘If your SONS (note the plural) keep My covenant
and My decrees that I teach them,
Then their SONS also
To the end of time,
Shall sit upon your throne”. (Psalm 132:11-12)
The belief that there will only be one future messiah is therefore a false interpretation of scripture. The popular retort that ‘this was the common Jewish belief about the messiah at the time’ does not magically make it true, and more importantly, nor does popular theological belief suddenly persuade God to change what God has decreed for all time.
So if Yeshua was a messiah, where was his son? Where was his successor? James never considered himself a messiah, nor did any other of Yeshua’s male relatives try to succeed as a messiah in Yeshua’s place. This is because it is highly probable that none of Yeshua’s relatives ever considered their family to have been royalty which was descended from David; they were Galilean peasants, the descendants of ordinary peasants – and there is no shame in that.
Good Messiahs and Bad Messiahs
There were good messiahs (eg Hezekiah), but both Israel and Judah had a long history of really bad messiahs (just read the Book of Kings, and how many times it says, ‘and XX did what was evil in the sight of YHVH’)! The prophecies in the books of the prophets are not about a perfect, sinless, divine messiah, but rather about hope in an anointed king who would be faithful to Adonai, and follow Adonai’s laws. An Israel with an anointed king who is obedient to God, is an Israel which is safe and secure.
The Duties and Responsibilities of an Anointed King
Our sidra today (Dt 17:14-21) tells us a number of things about what an anointed king of Israel is supposed to be and do:
– ‘you must be sure to appoint over you a king only someone whom Adonai your God chooses’ (i.e. not someone of your own choice; 17:15a)
– the king must be of Israelite descent (i.e. not a foreigner or a convert, 17:15b)
– he shall not send Israel as a nation back to Egypt en masse (17:16 – but this does not prohibit individuals from returning)
– he shall not take many wives (17:17a)
– he must not accumulate great wealth (17:17b)
– he shall have a copy of this scroll (i.e. Deuteronomy) written for himself, supervised by the Levitical priests (17:18 – alternate interpretation: he will write the scroll for himself, supervised by the priests)
– he shall read from it and study it all his life (17:19)
– he shall not act in a haughty or authoritarian manner towards his fellow Israelites (17:20a)
– if he follows all these instructions, he and his descendants will reign successfully over Israel (17:20b)
Note carefully that Dt 17:19 says that a king must learn to revere Adonai his God; obviously no messiah can do this if a messiah is God! God cannot revere God’s own Self!
Deuteronomic law only gives Israel the option to have a king. Of course, the original Yahwist ideal was that Adonai alone was the Sovereign of Israel – again, an idea unique in the ancient world (to have an invisible God as Sovereign Ruler over a people). Note here though that God does not make it a commandment to set up a king, but rather it was Israel’s own doing (“and then you say”). God therefore provides the stipulation, ‘you must be sure to appoint over you a king [only] someone whom Adonai your God chooses’. The choice of who the king will be is God’s choice, not the choice of human beings (and God’s choice would obviously be made known through a prophet of God).
The Anointed King should not be a pagan Foreigner, or have many Wives
One of the laws regarding the king was that he should not be a foreigner. This was probably to avoid situations like coups d’état, which were frequent occurrences in other countries, where a foreign mercenary might overthrow the native king and appoint himself as a non-native king over the people. In such a case, the foreigner would in all likelihood not be a follower of Adonai. The law therefore is not focussed on the king’s ethnicity, but rather his religion – to ensure the Yahwist loyalty of the monarch.
For similar reasons, no Israelite king should take for himself many wives, because inevitably a polygamous king will have pagan wives. This happened a number of times in Israel’s history, where Israelite kings took pagan wives and subsequently began to worship their gods. However, the focus of the law here is to ensure that the anointed king does not become derelict in his duty towards Adonai, or in his national duties towards God’s people.
Limiting the excesses of the Anointed King
The laws in Torah governing kings were designed to limit the excesses of kings. This is a similar philosophy to that limiting the powers of priests; if priests had been given the right to own land, they would have abused their power, so Adonai decreed that priests would have no land inheritance, and would instead be dependent on the offerings of the people in the Temple. This was all part of the Yahwist principle of ensuring that the divide between those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, and those at the top, would be kept at a level which would never become excessive.
The King should not focus on wealth
Then we have the law saying, ‘nor shall he amass multitudinous quantities of silver or gold.’ This is part of the inherent Israelite dislike of excessive and opulent wealth, but it also has a side effect for the king: it meant that the king will, as a result, not be tempted to acquire that silver and gold through excessive, oppressive and unfair taxation.
Another reason for the king not acquiring great wealth, is so that the anointed one’s heart does not become haughty, and think that it was by his own power and prestige that he gained the wealth, for such wealth is considered a gift of God. Excessive wealth could tempt the anointed king to forget God.
The Right to criticise an Anointed King
A unique and extraordinarily democratic Israelite right not enjoyed by other peoples of that time, was the right to criticise the king – especially if the one doing the criticising was a prophet. Any Israelite also had the right to say ‘no’ to his king without recrimination (as in the case of Naboth, when King Ahab asked him for his vineyard). Gentile kings would not have tolerated such a rebuke (they would have had the rebuker executed without hesitation or remorse). An Israelite king – an Anointed One – is a fellow servant of God, together with all other Israelites, subject to the same laws, ethics and guiding principles.
There is no Messiah-Saviour
Because of all this, Talmidaism is most definitively not a messianic movement, in that it does not teach belief in a personal messiah-saviour – that a messiah will come to save us; Massorite Talmidis and Tennessee Ebionites also reject the idea that the prophet Yeshua was a messiah. Instead, we teach most emphatically that it is and will always be Adonai, and Adonai alone who will save us:
“I – and I alone – am Adonai; apart from Me there is no other saviour.” (Isa 43:11).
Talmidaism does however teach – just as the Prophets do – that one day there will be a descendent of David on the throne of Israel, who will be faithful to God, and who will therefore preside over a reunited Israel and Judah which is free and safe.
Messianism is a Corruption of the Davidic Covenant
Messianism evolved over the centuries as a corruption of the Davidic covenant (2Sam 7:8-16, 1Chron 17:7-14 & Psalm 89:20b-38). After each national blow suffered by the Jewish people, the theology of despair invested more and more hope in a ‘messiah’, and less and less in God. Instead of placing our faith firmly in Adonai our True Saviour, messianism puts people’s faith in one mortal man. Messianism takes belief away from the power of our Almighty God to redeem and save us from fear and oppression, and instead hands it over to a mere man. Messianism was not part of the original Yahwist religion – we must always remember that neither Abraham, Isaac, Jacob nor Mosheh longed for a messiah to come and save them. We should likewise treat messianism with extreme caution.
As long as the Messiah is obedient and faithful to God, Israel will be safe and secure
One of the benefits of the Covenant with David and his descendants was that, as long as the Davidic king obeyed God’s laws and precepts, then Israel would live safely and securely within her borders. If the king – the anointed one, the messiah – disobeyed God’s laws and precepts, then Israel would fall into turmoil. This is because it was not envisaged that any future messiah would be perfect or sinless:
“I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to Me. If he does wrong, I will chastise him with the rod of men, and the affliction of mortals…” (2Sam 7:14)
Here, the use of the words ‘father’ and ‘son’ is meant to illustrate the guiding part that God plays in the life and discipline of any anointed king of Israel – not that the anointed one is the literal son of God!
Having an Anointed One is only a sign from God – the focus is on God, not the Anointed One
Having an Anointed One is a sign that Adonai is acting in our history, not that any particular anointed one at a given point in history is saving us. We have to take note that in Ezekiel 37:15-28, the return of the exiles of Ephraim (that is, the Israelites of the northern kingdom) precedes there being a renewed monarchy in Israel. The exiles of Judah, for the most part, have returned, but we will know that God is ready to give us a new line of kings when Adonai – and Adonai alone – causes the exiles of Ephraim to return to the Land.
The Anointed King must study and be obedient to God’s Torah
Finally, the sidra ends with instructions for the king to write a copy of the Torah, supervised by the levitical priests. Copying the text of anything is the best way to become familiar with that text; the hope was that in being thus supervised, he could not amend any of its laws (an alternate interpretation is that he would have the scroll written for him); and that he was to read aloud from it every day of his life. This ensured that he would be daily reminded of the laws of God, each day being reminded that the Anointed One, the king of Israel, was always subservient to Israel’s true King, our Sovereign Adonai.
Focussing too much on the Future takes us away from God’s Actions in the here and now
Most people are so focussed on prophecies of an anointed king in the future, that we end up missing the entire point of God’s Message. Our focus instead should be that one day, Adonai will fulfil God’s promises to bring back the exiles of Ephraim, reunite Ephraim and Judah, re-establish a Davidic kingdom, and then have the Temple rebuilt. It isn’t any messiah that will set all these amazing events in motion, but rather Adonai, the Holy One of Israel. Our emphasis should therefore be on what Adonai has promised to do. A messianist looks forward to the coming of a messiah, but a faithful follower of Adonai instead looks forward to the future acts of Adonai.
Nevertheless, we should always be mindful that focussing too much on what God might do in the future, suggests we are unhappy or disappointed in what God is doing for us now. We should never forget that Adonai is already with us; our True Saviour is acting now! Even in these anxious and uncertain times, our living God is acting to save us! Salvation is not the sole province of the future, but happens each and every day that God shows God’s faithful love for us in our difficult times.
Blessed be the Holy and Wondrous Name of Adonai!
your brother in service and humility
Shmuliq
“I have set Adonai clearly before me always” (Ps 16:8)