The King After God: All the King's Wives

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In the seventeenth verse of Deuteronomy 17, God’s guidelines for choosing a king, firstly stipulates that the candidate “must not take many wives.” Now, we all know of one king who had failed this law, keeping a total of “seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings 11:3). King Saul was known to have had one wife, a woman named Ahinoam (1 Samuel 14:50); and a concubine named Rizpah. Back in those days, it was more or less prevalent among kings and nobles to keep at least one partner other than the common-law wife. It was not the rule and much less was it a legal stipulation for a man to have one; but because of society’s permissiveness on the matter, the Law of Moses later regulated the practice by providing certain rights to the concubine, her children, her benefactor, including a certain protocol that must be observed in obtaining a mistress (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). Regardless, however, of the toleration and management imposed by the Law over the custom, a part of the Scriptures spoke against concubinage and it was doubtless that there were those who believed, citing it as a source of trouble based on certain cases in the lives of the patriarchs. It was from this contingent that held the incompatibility of the concubinage part of culture to Christianity.

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An Example from the Life of Abraham. Abraham, for instance, kept several concubines—Genesis 25:6, and had sons by them—but none gave him great deal of complication than Sarah's Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. The first snag that this arrangement is liable to promote is between wife and mistress. Hagar was an Egyptian maidservant who was dragged into the mess spilled by Abraham and Sarah when they attempted to facilitate God’s promise of a son and heir (Genesis 15:40). Knowing the fact that their bodies were “as good as dead” (Romans 4:19), they resorted to the custom of impregnating the Sarah’s slave (Genesis 16:3). And out of that arrangement, Hagar bore Ishmael; a development that changed the attitudes of both Hagar and Sarah toward each other. The fourth verse in Genesis 16 says that Hagar began to despise her mistress. Sarah, armed with her legitimate right as wife and Hagar’s owner, coupled with an embittered soul, it was easy for her to mistreat her and send the slave running away (verse 6). But in a desert road, God meets Hagar and tells her to “go back to [her] mistress and submit to her” (verse 9), with a promise. On account of the respect God had for Abraham, He assured to greatly increase the progeny of Abraham from her body “that they will be too numerous to count” (verse 10).

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Hagar did as the Lord commanded and returned to Sarah. She gave birth to Ishmael while she stayed with her mistress (verse 16). Little more than a decade later, Sarah got pregnant and gave birth to the awaited heir, Isaac (21:1-5). At this point, Sarah compelled Abraham to divorce Hagar and disinherit Ishmael by sending her away (Genesis 21:10). The matter, according to the Scriptures, “distressed Abraham greatly” (verse 11). 

An Example from the Life of Jacob. It distressed the patriarch greatly “because it concerned his son” (Ibid.). One observable problem in ancient concubinage is seen in the conflict among the offspring. In Genesis 21:8 to 10, the sight of Ishmael teasing Isaac infuriated Sarah prompting her to banish the servant child and her mother. And that ended a sibling conflict which could have grown worse in time, such as what happened among Jacob’s eleven sons when their jealousy of Joseph sent him into Egyptian bondage. The passage in Genesis 35:23 to 26 outlines Jacob’s family. In order of marriage, Leah was the first; and from this union brought Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. From Leah also came Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter (30:21). Rachel, though Jacob loved her first, fell second to give him Joseph and Benjamin. By her maidservant Bilhah came Dan and Naphtali. Leah, too, offered her maidservant Zilpah and from her came Gad and Asher.

Examples from the Life of the Israelite Kings

The first three Israelite kings were not from this contingent. King Saul was known to have kept a wife and a concubine, a fact we either know little or care little about. Saul’s wife was Ahinoam (1 Samuel 14:50), from whom came Jonathan, Ish-Bosheth (who went by the names Ishvi, Esh-Baal, and possibly Abinadab, 31:2), and Malki-Shua (verse 49); and the daughters Merab and Michal, the princess whom Saul gave to David as wife at the cost of two hundred Philistine foreskins (1 Samuel 18:27). The concubine was Rizpah (2 Samuel 3:7,21:8,10,11).While the trouble that the women entangled in concubinage could churn out is well established in the consciousness of the Israelite, Saul’s disobedience had instead created for his partners the lifelong pain of losing their sons in tragic deaths that could have well been avoided from the start. We have already known how in 1 Samuel 31, Ahinoam lost her three sons in a battle against the Philistines on Mount Gilboa. Rizpah lost her two sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 21:8), to the Gibeonites who had them immolated for a mandate defied by—you guessed it—Saul.

Rizpah, Saul's Concubine, in the Middle of Saul's Transgression with the Gibeonites

The story in 2 Samuel 21:1 to 14 tells that Saul, “in his zeal of Israel and Judah” (verse 2) attempted to do what Joshua centuries before him would not: “annihilate the Gibeonites.”

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The Gibeonites, according to 2 Samuel 21:2, were an ancient race of Amorites who, in Joshua 9, extracted Israelite protection through a cunning ruse. In verses 4 to 6 and 9 to 14, they successfully deceived the Israelites into believing that they were worn and vulnerable travelers from some far distant land drawn to where the Israelites were “because of the fame of the Lord” (verse 9). Flattered it seemed by the testimony posed by the Gibeonites that Joshua and the Israelites forgot the fundamental procedure of inquiring of the Lord (verses 14 and 15) and on went the decision to establish a treaty of peace with these people , unwittingly disobeying God’s mandate never to make any covenant with them (Exodus 23:32).

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The sanctity of their survival sealed by an oath invoking the Name of the Lord demanded the lives of seven of Saul’s male descendants with their bodies left unburied and exposed “before the Lord” (verse 6). David had five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab, along with the two sons of Rizpah, delivered to the Gibeonites and immolated (2 Samuel 21:8 to 9). When the Gibeonites were done with them, Rizpah came and stood by the bodies of her two sons, spread sackcloth on a rock, and, enduring night and day and the pouring rain, scared away scavenging birds and other wild animals that tried to approach the corpses. This prompted King David to have the remains of Rizpah and Merab’s sons gathered and given a proper burial. Along with this, he claimed from the people of Jabesh Gilead the bones of Saul and Jonathan and buried them in the tomb of Saul’s father Kish in Benjamin (verses 12 to 14).

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Her name appears four times in the Bible. In 2 Samuel 3:7, her name gets dragged into a scandal cooked up by Ish-Bosheth in an attempt to derail the growing influence exerted by Abner, the king’s general and uncle, in their clan. As we already know, King Saul by this time was already unfit to rule. His obsession to murder David through the influence of intermittent demonic oppression and possession and the Prophet Samuel’s public declaration that God had rejected him as king (1 Samuel 15:23,26,28) were factors enough for many to seek other leaders in place of Saul. One of these was David. Another was Abner, at least in Ish-Bosheth’s interpretation of how Abner had been flexing his influence in Saul’s clan. It could have been that Abner had been trying to gain the clan’s support to install him as king and thereby keep the supremacy over all Israel. Ish-Bosheth’s scandalous accusation, however, may have irredeemably shattered Abner’s delicate prospects to gain the major trust of the clan, so he opts for the next best thing: a defection over to David’s side. 

Saul was a normal reflection of his society as he escaped the technicality of taking “many wives” (Deuteronomy 17:17). He had one wife and one other wife, and that was it. But how many is “many”? When God transferred the anointing as king, He was risking landing it on someone who had a starkly illicit control over his raging hormones. 

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David's Life with his Wives

As we read of David’s story, we can notice that the stages of his life were landmarked by the women he loved. Michal, King Saul’s princess, would cover David’s early rise to popularity; Abigail would be during the stage when he was eluding Saul’s murderous pursuit; Bathsheba, who would mark the zenith of David’s life as by then the undisputed king of Israel; and Abishag, a Shunammite girl given to him by his servants during the twilight years of his life to attend and take care of him (1 Kings 1:2), since by then his senility had robbed him of the ability to basically care for himself (verse 1).

The "Abigail Age of David's Life": “This part of my life is called, ‘Running.’ And I wanna thank my wife Abigail for all of the support and prayer; and, of course, God without whose blessing and guidance my head would be stuck at the edge of a royal spear right now!”

But even aside from these ladies, David was known to have married some lesser known wives like Ahinoam of Jezreel (2 Samuel 3:2), Maacah daughter of Talmai king of Geshur (verse 3), Haggith (verse 4), Abital, and Eglah (verse 5). He was also known to have kept a harem of concubines. In 2 Samuel 15:16, he was known to have left ten of them to take care of the palace when he escaped Jerusalem before his usurping son Absalom could take over the city.

"This part of my life is called, ‘Being Stupid’!” It was the day the king came to his rooftop, saw the bathing Bathsheba, and was conquered. But to what price?

The number of the partners David kept was not exactly the direct answer to our question as to how many did Deuteronomy 17:17 mean by “many wives.” After Saul’s death, David’s life changed. The ease, popularity, and prosperity facilitated the growth of his family in a way that he added more wives who bore more children, sadly, beyond his ability to discipline. As a result, the privileged royal lifestyle and the unchecked excesses of unrestraint swelled into a deposit that encrusted their God consciousness, like what led to the chain of events involving Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom (2 Samuel 13). According to the chart provided in 2 Samuel 3:2-5, Amnon, David’s “firstborn” was born of Ahinoam of Jezreel (verse 2); Tamar and Absalom were siblings from Maacah, the Geshurite princess (verse 3). 

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One of the great scandals of David’s life began with his desire for Bathsheba. The lust of a night as he watched the woman bathing turned into fornication, which resulted into her getting pregnant. In his attempt to cover up his blunder, he recalled Bathsheba’s husband Uriah from the battlefield and tried to get him to sleep with her, which even in his most inebriated state would not violate the code of a soldier in a time of battle, which ignites the frustration of the king, which leads him to pen a directive to his general Joab to march Uriah into the part of the battlefield where the fighting is thickest and to abandon him there. Uriah successfully hand-carried the sealed letter to Joab and with great regret, the latter obeys. The battle ended with Uriah as casualty, a victim not of war but of a carefully meditated plot to murder him.

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It could be considered, therefore, that the “many” expressed in Deuteronomy 17:17 is the point that goes beyond a man’s ability to control his dependents and keep them from self-destructing. In the example that involved Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom, it presented David’s family self-destructing immorally.

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Abishag was one described in 1 Kings 1:4 as “very beautiful,” the result of a nationwide search for “a young virgin to attend the king and take care of him,” who “can lie beside him” to keep the king warm (verse 1). The “beauty search” proved to be a great success in Abishag as she was faithful in her task and even maintained her virginity throughout the period she took care and waited on the king (verse 4). If she had ever served a master younger and other than David at another time, that master would call that point of his life, “Being Happy.”

Solomon's Polygamy and its Possible Egyptian Origin

The penchant for the lovely ladies passed on from David to his son Solomon whose fame was built, among others, on the plain fact that he loved “seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings 11:3), maintaining an unbroken violation of God’s condition in Deuteronomy 17:17. Yet if there were any value to virtue in this aspect of his life, it was the fulfillment of the second part of the passage: “…or his heart will be led astray” (Ibid.). And true enough, “his wives led him astray” (1 Kings 11:3).

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In our recent article, The King After God: All the King's Horses, we have suspected that King Solomon amassed a great number of horses and chariots in emulating the Pharaoh of Egypt, whose collection was renown for its quantity and quality throughout the region. War horses and chariots, however, were not the only array he wanted in his treasure trove. The kings of Egypt were known to have loved multiple wives and concubines. Ramses II, said to be Moses' contemporary, was reported to have kept as many as fifty wives, and from them the famed Nefertari was chosen to become his queen, the chief of all his female consorts. With the record we have available today, we may well say that Solomon surpassed Ramses II in this respect, by a great measure—try lining up fifty against a thousand wives and concubines! One comparable element the Israelite king did not adopt was the Egyptian custom of marrying the immediate family member.


After Nefertari, Ramses was known to have loved their daughter Isetnofret. From this union came her successor Bintanath. After Bintanath, the Pharaoh chose another daughter he had by Nefertari, Meritamen. Her sister by the same mother, Nebettawy, took her place. Nearing the end of his life, seeming to have run out of daughters to desire after, he chose Maathorneferure who, scholars suspect, had been either another daughter or his sister.

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It is called incest, and the Israelite law which the king and his people were to equally obey severely prohibited such a practice. Leviticus 20:17 called it "a disgrace" if a man marries a sister, "the daughter of either his father or his mother." The law prescribed banishment to anyone guilty of this "disgrace," as the commission of the act discriminated the offender from his God-authored culture. If there was a law that Solomon was not as desperate to violate as gaining for himself a thousand wives, it was experimenting with incest.

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But Solomon went for the foreign gals, specifically from the very nations God warned the Israelites never to intermarry with (1 Kings 11:2). And in this matter, he not only modeled after the king of Egypt but even perfected this aspect of his foreign hero.

Unlike his father David and King Saul before him, Solomon was not known for his prowess in the battlefield. But it was during his time when the kingdom of Israel experienced great peace "on all sides" (1 Kings 4:24). Countries as far as the Euphrates River to the borders of Egypt brought tribute to Solomon and were his subjects all his life.

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Though God never sanctioned its arrangement, polygamy and polygyny were acts that had been with man from the dateless past. Solomon's tremendous numerical buildup of wives can be understood from the diplomatic relationship he established and maintained with the nations around him. One can deduce that the peace that marked his reign, described in 1 Kings 4:23–25, may have resulted from accepting wives customarily offered by the kings who negotiated for peace. The arrangement of marriage, therefore, was a significant motion to bind an alliance between parties involved, a mutual sincere reciprocation of goodwill. 

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Even as late as the Colonial history, the marriage of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile in A.D. 1469 united their two of their Spanish kingdoms and established their government as a world power.

The Bible's First Bigamist and his Role in Advancing the Cainite Culture

That was for peace. But the role of marriage serves more than peace. In Genesis 4:19 a man by the name of Lamech expanded the influence of the house of Cain, Adam's cursed firstborn and the Bible's first murderer, by rapidly populating the vast stretches of wild lands untamed by the people of his time. How he facilitated this was through the expedience of a bigamous marriage.
 
Lamech was the first known bigamist in the Bible. It was his expression of the loose sexual element that marked the Cainite culture that lured the young restless men of Adam's house, the "sons of God" of Genesis 6:2. It was also the best way to promote a counter culture. In the time of Adam, it was his house that dominated the planet. The culture which he promoted and which the world almost automatically embraced was the Godly lifestyle authored by God Himself. Except by Cain, however. 

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The blessings that came with a righteous life refused to apply to Cain after he murdered his brother Abel. In Genesis 4:11 to 12, his ability to tame crops was nullified by a curse that God slapped on his life. In spite of this, God continued to be gracious by allowing him to live, though wandering the face of the earth (Genesis 4:12 and 14). It did not mean that Cain gained immortal life, impervious to hunger, thirst, exhaustion or pain. He still had to contend with these but without his talent to farm the earth. He needed a new way of living, and in the ensuing verses, it becomes apparent that he did find a way, a compromise that worked around the loss of his talent. In the sixteenth verse, he lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. The birth of his firstborn Enoch is the first evidence that the new lifestyle he adopted was working. In the seventeenth verse, he gains a following, a considerable one as he establishes the first known city in the Bible. At this point, his pattern of survival was getting noticed and gaining the respect and renown as a workable alternative to the Adamic culture, though at this point it was not seen as an alternative but as an enhancer of certain aspects of life. Four generations later, the Cainite culture explodes from being a minor global player to end the Adamic age and the Godliness it upheld.

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The greatest exponent of the Cainite culture, next to Cain, was Lamech. The passage in Genesis 4:19 says that he was married to two women: Adah and Zillah. This multiple marriage was not only responsible for enlarging the increments of population, but out of it came the three fathers of invention that changed the way people lived forever.

"Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of  bronze and iron" (Genesis 4:20-22).  

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In Psalm 127:3, it says, "Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him." In the next verse it explains one benefit: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court" (verse 4 to 5).

Without the Lord, however, to bless with a quiver full children to contend with their opponents, it seemed like Cain's house was bound nowhere but oblivion. Cain himself took only one wife. It was Lamech who conceived of the daring experiment and accomplished by the flesh what the hand of God could grant.

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The psalmist disclosed one benefit of having a large number of offspring in your family. In ancient times, a large family meant power. Children did not survive the starvation that followed a poor man's austere condition; those, however, of a lavishly wealthy family not only did but had more to give and help their neighbor. A wealth of strong male children was a family's insurance that secured its wealth in good hands.

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Rehoboam, the First Non-Israelite King?

If David's polygamous marriage wrought shocking scandals and disasters in his life, Solomon’s wives and concubines produced an array of interesting contenders to the throne after him, including a half-Israelite, half-Ammonite forty-one-year-old by the name of Rehoboam. It was through Rehoboam that the Israelite kingdom, which kings Saul, David, and Solomon, took painstaking care in establishing all their lives, split into two with the Northern part made up of ten tribes unilaterally slipping into apostasy, and the Southern part preserved for the descendants of David to rule.

Rehoboam too took for himself wives and concubines. But unlike the complicated marriages of his immediate two predecessors, the Bible attributes no problems stemming from his eighteen wives and sixty concubines (2 Chronicles 11:21). He did not love them equally, though, for there was one whom he treated with greater favor: Absalom’s daughter Maacah, who must have been specially beautiful if she took after her father who in his time was the most flawlessly handsome man in all Israel (2 Samuel 14:25). From his union with Maacah came Abijah, a favorite he personally groomed above all his other twenty-eight sons (2 Chronicles 11:21). Out of all the disasters that occurred during his reign, Abijah proved to be Rehoboam’s greatest success.

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There may be, however, some discrepancy concerning the Abijah of 2 Chronicles 11:20 and 22 from the Abijah of 13:2. Although extra-Biblical references make no difference between the two, a reader trekking the abovementioned passages may readily differentiate the first Abijah being the son of “Maacah daughter of Absalom” (verse 20) from the second Maacah of 13:2, “a daughter of Uriel of Gibeah.” The dilemma here would therefore concern Abijah’s mother Maacah. Other reliable translations render the word “daughter” of 13:2 as “granddaughter” instead. The man Uriel of Gibeah may have been Maacah’s maternal grandfather. But without looking any further than 1 Kings 15:2, Maacah was identified as the “daughter of Abishalom,” "Abishalom" a variant of “Absalom,” meaning “father of peace.” Later in the tenth verse, Maacah daughter of Abishalom became  grandmother to Abijah’s successor, Asa.

But while Asa turned out to be a righteous man of God, Maacah found her niche later in life as a pagan “queen mother” (verse 13) for the goddess Ashera. In accordance to the cultural reform instituted by Asa, the king “deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother” (2 Chronicles 15:16).

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Abijah, the Only Righteousness from Rehoboam's Multitude of Wrong

Rehoboam first placed Abijah in a prominent position as “chief prince” (2 Chronicles 11:22). It was not a bad decision, in fact, verse 23 says that “he acted wisely.” He spread out his sons to settle various districts of Judah and Benjamin and provided for them lavishly. Among the commodities he provided were wives: “He gave them abundant provisions and took many wives for them.”

The love Rehoboam devoted to Maacah radiated to Abijah who honored that love with a towering respect for his father. In 2 Chronicles 13:7, he defended his father’s honor when he faced Rehoboam’s archenemy, Jeroboam king of Israel:

“Some worthless scoundrels gathered around him and opposed Rehoboam son of Solomon when he was young and indecisive and not strong enough to resist him.”

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Abijah turned out to be a God-fearing king with an impregnable faith that held God as his leader (verse 12). He came up to Jeroboam with an army of 400,000 against the latter’s 800,000, which got subdued “because (Abijah) relied on the Lord, the God of their fathers” (verse 18). In the verses that followed it is said that Abijah wrested some important towns and villages from Jeroboam’s control and that Jeroboam, after this event, never regained power again during the time of Abijah (verse 19 to 20). The king of Judah, however, “grew in strength” and acquired for himself fourteen wives and by them had twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters (verse 21). In our explanation of “many wives,” we can have some liberty in saying that Abijah’s—and Rehoboam’s—polygamy was within the limits of his ability to control. From the family line touched by Maacah, daughter of Absalom, son of David, Abijah chose Asa, whose great reforms in Judah brought peace throughout the kingdom for three decades (2 Chronicles 11:5 to 6).

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The King After God: All the King's Horses

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In Deuteronomy 17:16, God warned the future king against setting his heart in amassing a great number of horses for himself. Apparently, horses had been a great obsession among ancient royalty. As history will testify, the horse by this time had just been added to military science and, oh, how it revolutionized the way man made war. It was therefore easy for a king to lose sight of God as the Source of his victory and focus instead on his array of war horses and get self-deceived and call himself invincible.

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Of all the countries singled out for Israel never to establish any trade agreement in exchange for its horses, God zeroed in on Egypt. He cautioned, “The king…must not…make the people return to Egypt to get more of them (great numbers of horses), for the Lord has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again’” (Deuteronomy 17:16). In principle, an ancient king owned everything within the limits of his realm. But while he would dismissively allow his subjects to claim property of items within and surrounding their households, only he had the right to assert ownership of the military. And the item closest to his heart was the horses of his cavalry.

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The king of Egypt owned a cavalry so celebrated of the terror it brought in the battlefield to its breathtaking beauty that captures the fancy of romantic splendor, as sung in Songs of Solomon 1:9: “I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots” (King James Version). Because it owned the greatest army of fighting horses in the Near East, many nations chose to ally themselves with Egypt, among which later included Israel. Around 600 B.C. the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah decided it had enough of Babylonian dominance and sent envoys to Egypt “to get horses and a large army” (Ezekiel 17:15). In other words, Judah turned to Egypt to help trounce the proud Babylonian rising tide. Centuries before this, King David made his decision to “trust in the name of our God” than to trust in “chariots and…in horses” (Psalm 20:7). In 586 B.C. the battle-tested horses of Egypt did not prevail against the lightning hooves of the Babylonian steeds, and the kingdom of Judah came to an end.

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The best chariots and the most powerful horses in ancient Egypt belonged to the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh was a steed collector, the kind of king God told the future Israelite monarch never to become. King Saul fulfilled this principle and so did his successor David. Solomon, however, was known to have “accumulated chariots and horses” (1 Kings 10:26). The account was that “he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.” And where did all these horses come from? Scholars are divided on whether the king imported them from Cilicia up north or from Egypt (verse 28). Solomon not only assembled a great cavalry at peacetime (for his reign was marked with peace, 1 Kings 4:24), and not only did he probably disobey the mandate never to turn to Egypt for its horses, but like Egypt Solomon entered the international chariot-making and -exporting industry and chose the Hittites and the Arameans as trade partners. This began when he approved the importation of an impressive Egyptian chariot worth (verse 29).

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During the Second Intermediate Period of the early sixteenth century B.C., a subtly invading group of Semitic people called the Hyksos introduced into Egypt the use of the horse, along with the chariot. It was not until the Empire Period (1600-1100 B.C.), however, when the horse exploded in popularity across the realm. Rameses II, one of the kingdom’s most powerful pharaohs, was known to have kept a massive herd in an elaborate complex of stables he had constructed in the northeast of Cairo, by the Nile Delta (http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_animals.html).

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Biblical references indicate that King Solomon, despite all his God-given and innate splendor, seemed to fashion himself like an Egyptian pharaoh and even endeavored to seek the esteem of his Egyptian counterpart. In 1 Kings 3:1 it is clear that “Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter,” whom he honored by constructing for her a precious cedar palace (7:8), similar in beauty as Solomon’s “throne hall, the Hall of Justice, where he was to judge” (verse 7). It seems like whatever the pharaoh had, Solomon wanted the same, whether it was herds and herds of war horses and magnificent chariots (1 Kings 10:26), a holy Temple (Chapter 6), a splendid royal palace (7:1-12), an unspeakable annual net worth measured in gold (10:14), golden shields (verses 16 to 17), a throne so great “inlaid with ivory and overlaid with fine gold” (verse 18 and subsequent specifics from verse 19 to 20), wives and concubines (11:1), and a subtle buildup of a pagan pantheon (verse 2 to 7). It was an ambitious and nauseating attempt identical to nothing more than a former slave seeking the respect of an equal in the eyes of its former master. This was the mortification, among others, that God wanted to save Israel from. God wanted to establish Israel’s dignity apart from the shame of its Egyptian slavery. The miracles and the fear He promised to inspire upon every nation that hears about the Israelites (Exodus 23:27) were to eradicate the slave in anything Israelite. But because of Solomon’s admiration for the Egyptian pharaoh, the period of Israel’s greatest glory was also an ironic re-association with her old slave master.

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An ancient Egyptian on horseback was not really the standard. As shown from historical finds, the most common use of the beast was to pull chariots. From the military cavalry to royal pageants and parades, Egypt followed the two-horse chariot as standard.

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The King After God: Chosen From Above

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The day the elders came to the Prophet Samuel and demanded for Israel's very first king never took God by surprise. He knew it would come even before His children ever stepped into the Promised Land. In Deuteronomy 17:14, God foretold, “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us….’” Notice that God introduced His announcement with a “when,” not an “if ever.” To God, the coming of the people’s king was inevitable.And so, in order for them to maintain their Israelite identity and not be like their neighbors in adopting their method of appointing their leader, God instituted His standard for Israel to implement.

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The king must be the one whom God chooses: “be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses”  (Deuteronomy 17:15). From being the first and only Theocratic Head of His people, God was not about to relinquish His rule to some flesh and blood bound to corruption following some leadership style substandard to His and subject to the limitations of the physical environment and the decisions of every human being sharing the world around. God the Creator and the One who sees all from above knows the origin and destination of all things; He therefore knows which way is the best to take in a life that to us is a maze of traps, errors, and regret. That’s the general consideration.

Now, because His people’s insistence of adopting the carnal model of leadership requires them to physically see to identify themselves with their leader, God must appoint a physical representation of Himself and arm this agent with authority to rule. It was therefore essential for God find “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) to lead His people as He expected, in largely His terms. For this, God “changed Saul’s heart” (10:9) and gave him His heart, a heart inclined to obey.

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The very reason why God laid down the ground rules for His people in choosing a king is to ensure that all variables have been aligned and streamlined for His chosen one to emerge. It was then appropriate for the Israelites to have brought their demand for a king to the Prophet Samuel. In 1 Samuel 8:4 to 5 it says that “all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel” and said to him, “appoint a king to lead us.” It was, however, very ironic that they came to the Prophet Samuel in full confidence knowing he perfectly knew the will of God but would not accept any other result from the Divine but the satisfaction of their demand for a king.

He must be an Israelite: “He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite” (Deuteronomy 17:15b). An essential stipulation adopted by most cultures is that a king must come from the same people he must rule. This regulation facilitates the implementation of the prior in that God’s chosen king can only come from among the Israelites.

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During this period, the monarchial government system had become so ubiquitous that it seeped into and modified the cultural fabric of many people, including the Israelites. Later on, God’s Spirit would adopt the concept of the king in presenting His promise of the Messiah. The prophet-for-hire Balaam, in Numbers 24:7, in attempted to bring down a curse on the Israelites, was instead compelled to prophesy about the people’s “king” who “will be greater than Agag.”

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Apparently the Amalekites were among the most feared people in the region where the Israelites traversed. “Agag” may have probably been a title of the kings these people had, similar to the “Caesar” of the Romans who came much later. It can be recalled that the Amalekite king whom Saul captured alive in 1 Samuel 15:8 was named Agag.

Moses’ prophecy in Deuteronomy 33:5 picturing Him as “king in Jeshurun” was an embryonic allusion to Jesus Christ. Later in King David’s life, God Himself foretold of the “offspring to succeed” him (2 Samuel 7:12), the one who would “come from [his] own body” (Ibid.), whose kingdom He would establish forever (verses 12 to 13). Around two thousand years later, Jesus came. Though He walked the earth, not yet as King but as a servant to die for the sins of many, He did not deny the fact that He was the King of the Jews (Matthew 11:27; Mark 15:2,12; Luke 23:3; John 18:33-37).

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“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2). Before Pontius Pilate ever asked the question, King Herod early in his reign shuddered on the throne he usurped when the Parthian magi came to him with the question,  "Do you know where the real King of the Jews is?--'Cause according to our calculations, you ain't!"

The mandate to choose the king from among the people was almost observed without partiality. After the death of Solomon, however, a fourth king arose in Israel whose parentage was not of pure Israelite origin. Cited in 1 Kings 14:21 and 31, Rehoboam was born of a mother named Naamah, “an Ammonite,” apparently one of the hundreds of foreign wives loved by his father Solomon (11:1). If the modern Jewish standard of determining pedigree can be applied with Rehoboam, it may yield that this king was not Israelite. During Rehoboam’s reign occurred the most ominous episode in Israelite history: the split of the kingdom. Three days after being crowned king, he decreed a more stringent policy on the political opponents of his father Solomon than accept their plea of conciliation and understanding (1 Kings 12:1-15). The result was a civil war leading to a secession of ten tribes, altogether establishing themselves as the independent Northern Kingdom (verses 16 to 17, verse 21); Rehoboam was left with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (verses 17, 21, and 23), as the Southern Kingdom.

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It was also during Rehoboam’s reign when Jerusalem succumbed to a raid successfully launched by the Pharaoh Shishak of Egypt. In 1 Kings 14:26 it says that Shishak “carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace [of Solomon], [taking] everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made.” In all the seventeen years he ruled in Jerusalem (verse 21), he adulterated Jehovic worship with pagan Ammonite “sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and every spreading tree” (verse 23), male prostitutes, and all other practices “of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites” (verse 24).

[Yep. More to come.]

The King After God: Power from Above

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It is understood in 1 Samuel 9:15 to 17 that it was God Himself who chose Saul to be Israel’s first king. God revealed this in a word of prophecy that came to  the Prophet Samuel the day before Saul came to visit the prophet to ask regarding some lost donkeys (1 Samuel 9:15). when Samuel presented Saul before all the tribes of Israel, except for a few troublemakers, everyone there agreed that there was no one like him among all the people (10:24). From the time he was introduced in the Scriptures, his “impressive” stature always deserved highlight: “an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites—a head taller than any of the others” (9:2).

Many cultures around the world hold charisma as a fundamental qualification of a king. In its simplest concept, a king is a hero, a culture’s champion whose example in flesh and blood comes close to the ideals held by a people. Ideals, in turn, are based on the human urge to survive. To start with, an individual dealing with survival recognizes death as a—or perhaps the—conclusion of all life. The Sumerians understood this and so did the Egyptians. To the Babylonians, all hopes drained into death. This idea is reflected in Job 10:21 where the grave is described as “the place of no return”; Ecclesiastes 9:2 calls it “a common destiny” for “the righteous and the wicked.” In spite of this, however, no one from the ancient days held a way of life that promoted a passive, submissive advocacy to death and decay. All cultures the world around are an expression of the universal right to live. All cultures have been a search for a path that led to survival and to the ideals that lay above survival. And the ones who etched these paths were leaders variably known as heroes, champions, trailblazers, or kings.

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A king embodied a people’s ideals of survival. He was the understandable picture of the prosperity romanticized by his people. He was the specimen of what his people are or to become. His life and words are to advocate the superiority of his culture and the importance of keeping it pure and set apart from the inferior lifestyles of the other nations which lead to nowhere but death. A king must live, and lead the life aspired by his people; basically, therefore, he must look it. This is called charisma, the embodiment of authority, integrity, reliability, and credibility.

Saul towered at an impressive height: a head higher above the average Israelite. When he stood, he commanded the respect and obedience of his people. Or, at least, he was supposed to. To a Philistine, an Amalekite, or any pagan tribe, this quality may have worked tremendous wonders of authority, but not to the people of God. Though God chose someone as impressive as Saul, the authority to be obeyed, respected, and believed nevertheless came from Him. This principle was cited by Jesus in His conversation with Pilate when He said, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11). Or if it were taken away from you by the Above, just as what happened to Saul when he rebelled against mandate to destroy the Amalekites, as expressed in 1 Samuel 15:23,26 and 28:

“Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king. You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel. The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors—to one better than you.”

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The persuasion of physical beauty expresses perfection of ideals. The sight of a leader’s physical beauty declares to his people the hope that their culture holds and the glory they will become. The physical beauty of a leader will testify of the superiority of a people. Through his beauty, a king will convey to a subject who beholds his splendor that their being born into their nation or tribe was no mistake. This was the belief held by the nations outside the realm of the Israelite Theocracy. Israel, on the other hand, understood what it was like to be ruled by tribal chiefs and by an unseen God with prophets or judges, like Moses and Samuel, as His human intermediaries; but never by a king—a single human entity that embodied all their standards and desires. And one day, after a couple of hundred years of living in the Promised Land, the Israelites suddenly had a thought: Why not try out that government style that every nation’s been talking about—the one with a king; the one that’s been around even the time before their forefather Abraham; the one that made Sumeria, Babylonia, and Egypt great!

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They knew exactly what a king was; they have made treaties with them; one Hebrew even worked as the right-hand man of the Egyptian pharaoh; but never have they been under a king of their own. From their father Abraham of Ur, the Hebrews began existence as nomads, until Joseph, son of the patriarch Jacob. When he became viceroy of Egypt, a severe famine struck the Egyptian-Canaanite region, prompting him to open the fertile Egyptian district of Goshen for his father and brothers to relocate into (Genesis 45:12,17-18; 47:5-6,11). Here, for several hundred years, the Hebrews found a home and relatively became settlers for about a century and a half, until “a new king, who did not know Joseph, came to power in Egypt” (Exodus 1:8). Now they were known as slaves. For four hundred years, as foretold by God to Abraham (Genesis 15:13), this new Egyptian order mistreated the very people they sheltered in the “best part” of their land (Genesis 47:11) until a man came along to lead them back to Canaan. At that point they abandoned being slaves and re-donned their status as nomads for about what they believed to be eleven days until they reach the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 1:2). But what was supposed to be an eleven-day travel protracted into a forty-year meandering ordeal because of the unholy grumbling they voiced against God (Numbers 14:27,34). Throughout all the four difficult decades, their national dream of greatness remained an ethereal concept as they watched how nations of Egyptians, Amalekites, Midianites, Edomites, and Canaanites found their niche of power in the world around them, with their king to thank for, while the Israelites remained nomads lost in a vast blazing desert.

Photo: Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis

In this context, one can somehow come to understand how eager the Israelites were to finally produce a king of their own. While it is true that God made Himself vitally known to His people, dwelt with them in their midst in a specially designed compartment in a tent, God understood that the corrupting of sin will prove its grip stronger than His spiritual reality as their minds fall trapped within the realm of the flesh—the visible, the obvious, the instant gratification, the now, the simply understandable logic that “man is man, God is God.” Even with the representation of Moses as God’s intermediary to the people, the corruption of sin and its influence over their philosophy will keep their ideals ensnared by the seduction of a master in the flesh than keep their faith in an eternal God. There were, however, those who genuinely understood the rule of God, envisioned the benefit of its uniqueness from other nations, and took faith in the truth of His promise to bring Israel into glory. This is what made Moses raise his staff many times against Egypt and then at the Red Sea at the command of God; this is what electrified Caleb and Joshua when they explored the Promised Land for the first time (Numbers 14:7-9); this is what made the Levites rally beside Moses and slay the disobedient who celebrated the golden calf (Exodus 32:24-29); this was the zeal that took over Phinehas when he impaled with a spear a man caught fornicating with a Midianite woman (Numbers 25:7-8).

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But the corruption of sin will never be denied its share in human nature and entrench many in its culture of decay and impermanence, for after Joshua’s generation “had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10) and no sooner did the Israelites, recently wresting Canaan from its natives through a stunning string of decisive victories, wallow in the same poison that brought Divine judgment to the Canaanites.

“…they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist them. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress” (Judges 2:13 to 15).

In a place opposite Gilgal, the site where a covenant with God was sealed through circumcision, the angel of the Lord imposed another promise in consequence to the disobedience of an entire nation He calls His people:

“I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you’” (Judges 2:1-3).

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And as the occupying Israelites tolerated the existence of the Canaanite natives as slaves instead of obliterating them as they were Divinely charged, they absorbed elements of pagan culture, from the use of the olive oil lamp, worshiping of alien deities, to the aspiration for their own king. And in the turbulent years that followed, the frequent conquests crashed and wore away the Chosen People’s respect for their One True Theocratic Head. While judges rose to deliver the people at the point of their greatest need, for every invasion that followed as a result of the death of a judge, the idea of a king crystallized until the day they came before the Prophet Samuel, the judge at the time, and finally asked him for a king.

[And as before, there's more! Oh, shall it ever end?]

The Pursuit of Peace

We have seen peace mostly as a river; some of us have no problem seeing it as a protective wall. Very, very few of us, however, see it as a blessing that holds all the other blessings of God in place. Notice that the vital requirement of prosperity is peace. It is almost inconceivable for us to have prosperity without peace. A nation at war, for example, is stuck in the present with all its resources struggling to stay above critical level. Conflict has the power stagnate a nation. Note the United States, however, after  World War 2: an unexpected prosperity flooded the nation that influenced a sudden unprecedented growth in the population, the generation being called the Baby Boom era.

Peace is the consolidator of all natural elements for the blessings of God to come together. It is best to view peace as the strap that wounds around a sheaf of grain during harvest time.

We can also say that peace is the table upon which our meals are set upon. I spoke with someone before who told me: "Dude, God loves you! God loves you so much, in fact, that He gives you everything you ask for in prayer! But if you ask for something, make sure you've got somewhere to lay His blessings on!" I didn't get the specific gist of what he was telling me until I got hold of this concept of peace. Back then, I was a zealous Christian who went for every opportunity for God by heart, but with not much brains to back it up. I never took time to consolidate and thank God for many things. I just wanted to go. One day, I got a hold of the Book of Genesis in my devotions where it said, a lot, that "he saw that it was good" after completing a step of His project of Creation. God could have created the heavens and the earth in one day, no problem! But He decided to do it with the light first, then the separation of night and day, and then, this, then that. Notice, however, that after one creation, the Bible said that He looked at what He made and "saw that it was good." It did not take Him one entire day to make, say, the light. He just spoke it, and it was so. Then after that, He looked at His creation for one whole day and "saw that it was good." God celebrated each step of His work with rest, with peace. Some of us just need to learn to relax!

For prosperity to enter, there must be peace. For healing to come, there must be peace. And it is not difficult to find peace since we can find it in Jesus. He promised us: "Peace I leave you; my peace I give you" (John 14:27). He already had given us His peace. All we need to do now is use it. And in using it, we must preserve it, for He entrusts this peace in stewarding hands.

There is an interesting story in 2 Kings 23:29 that invokes the question as to why did not bless the godly King Josiah with success when he decided to come against the Pharaoh Neco of Egypt. The story is given more detail in 2 Chronicles 35:20–21:

"Neco, king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah marched out to meet him in battle. But Neco sent messengers to him, saying, 'What quarrel is there between you and me, O king of Judah? It is not you I am attacking at this time, but the house with which I am at war. God has told me to hurry; so stop opposing God who is with me, or he will destroy you."

Just a thougt: Did God really speak to Pharaoh Neco? During this time, Egypt was allied with Assyria. This battle would later be called The Battle of Megiddo, an important encounter that delayed the Egyptians in aiding the Assyrians against the Babylonians. The Battle of Megiddo later led up to the Battle of Carchemish that wiped out Assyria and the Egyptian army against, mainly, the Babylonian force. Because Egypt and Assyria were allied, the first one adopted the latter's style of how it intimidated and blackmailed their victims into surrendering. Notice how the Assyrian king Sennacherib tried to threaten Judah into surrendering:

National Geographic Society/Corbis

"...have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from the Lord? The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it" (2 Kings 18:25).

See any difference in the way the Pharaoh Neco spoke to King Josiah?

But King Josiah stood his ground. He refused a peaceful transit of Assyria's ally. The King knew that the Assyrian empire was now in its downfall and was greatly impelled towards a dream of reuniting all Israel once again. It was, however, God's decision to send the ten tribes of the North to exile a little more than a century before this, and that it was God's will for Judah to remain still while the transition of world power was at its most turbulent. Josiah would not keep off his saddle. It was a rude realization for all Judah and her king to find that God was not in the battle to give them the victory.

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God wanted Josiah out of the war. Judah during this time was experiencing a tremendous time of peace and prosperity following a wonderful revival of Judaism after the Law of Moses was rediscovered in the holy Temple. Spiritual truths were beginning to take root once again; significant festivals like the Passover last celebrated during the time of the Prophet Samuel back in the tenth century was once again being held. The Word of God was prospering in the land, so much in Judah that outreaches were already being made to the lands of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel.

The aftermath of the Battle of Megiddo, however, left a wide gaping hole of opportunity for Pharaoh Neco to seize. King Josiah's mistake caused the people to wiggle out of the security of the peace of God and into the feeble comfort of their own ability. King Josiah gets mortally wounded and dies (2 Kings 23:29); his twenty-three-year-old son Jehoahaz is placed on the throne. Neco makes an appearance in Jerusalem, carries Jehoahaz away, appoints Judah the king he wished, and imposes a heavy tax levy on the holy kingdom. The subsequent kings were no longer like Josiah was "did right in the eyes of the Lord." Four kings after Josiah, in 586 B.C., the Kingdom of Judah is carried into Babylonian captivity.

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King David said it many generations before in Psalms 34:14, and Saint Peter, centuries later, seconded it in 1 Peter 3:11: "seek peace, and pursue it."

OTHER PHOTO CREDITS:
   1. ©Owain Kirby/Illustration Works/Corbis
   2. ©David Arky/Corbis
   3. ©Darren Kemper/Corbis

Peace On the Night He Was Betrayed

No, this is not about Saul. We're taking a break from the first Israelite king and getting down into something more basic, something more light.

For the longest time, we have conceived of peace as a large white cloud or puff of smoke descending vertically from Heaven and everyone it settles upon goes into a high, like, “Peace, man!” It’s about time we kicked away that outdated hippie concept, including why we need to maintain a peaceful lifestyle.

We have always defined peace as the absence of conflict. And for as long as I could remember, this definition had always elicited immediate responses like “uh-huh,” or “ohh…kay,” or “I ssseeee,” all indicating a doubtful and incomplete agreement that, because it’s so obvious, to further elaborate on the statement is generally pointless.

There are, however, some of us who have at one point rebelled against this point of view and have kindly demanded elaboration, but all we got was a restatement of the meaning delivered in a sterner tone. In our gut, we have always felt that peace is something more than just an absence of something. Understanding peace in its framework against confrontation is downright limiting, in the same was as we would call “white” as the opposite of “black,” or “red” as not the other colors in the color wheel.

The most popular definition of peace is contentment. With this, it is pictured as a river running across a lush green nature garden where various species of creatures great and small thrives. Because of the abundance promoted by the eternal water, there is an absence of slaughter, struggle, and disenfranchisement. Because of the river, there is a harmonious interaction of species in that local system and the welfare of all is secure. Through, therefore, the context of contentment, we fit the virtue of “counting our blessings” instead of pursuing that which we have not. Ideally, this will bring peace, or a stillness, in our lives as we detach ourselves from selfish aspirations.

But alas, we also agree that we are creatures of needs, that our bodies will always be dependent on the basic attention of the environment. So long as the water keeps flowing, the peaceful cooperation of the creatures in the environment will perpetuate. But what if for some reason, the water stops flowing? We picture the entrance of distrust, discord, territorialism, the hedging of one’s own interest. By then, the stillness and the security  will be gone, peace therefore threatened. There will be a struggle to control the remaining resources; those not strong enough to withstand will leave in search for the same environment watered by a “river of peace."

Is this the peace that Jesus promised His disciples in John 14:27 where He said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid”?

It was that significant night, the night of the last supper of Jesus, when this statement was made. What was supposed to be a time of jolly fellowship of feasting was sat in distasteful restiveness. On that night, Jesus predicted His betrayal (John 13:18, 26), and Peter’s denial (verse 38); Thomas wanted to know where He was going (14:5), and Philip—speaking for the group—requesting to see the Father in a way to still the trouble in their hearts (verse 8). It was a very unsettling time. For the disciples, that is. Jesus, on the other hand, was in perfect peace, as living up to the Scriptural fulfillment (as always!) of Isaiah 26:3: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee”—the very essence of which He condenses into a command for His disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” (verse 1).

But was there really peace? In the ensuing events, Jesus gets arrested in the garden of Gethsemane and Peter draws out a concealed sword and successfully chops off one of the arresting deputy’s ear (18:10), Peter denies his Master three times (verses 17, 25 to 27), Jesus was shackled like a criminal (18:12), bounces from one judge to another and ends up dead on a cross. In a span of a few hours after that night of the last supper, it seems like the river quickly ran dry and all that depended on the life it promoted had since then “scattered” (Zechariah 13:7, Matthew 26:31). To them who see desolation as peace, then there was peace. A counterfeit type of peace, that is.

In our illustration of that ecosystem with the river running through it, we made notice of the relationship of those benefiting from the water. When Jesus spoke peace during the last supper, He spoke to all His disciples, who were all present (except for Judas Iscariot who earlier took off to consummate the betrayal). He revealed Himself to be the Source of peace: “Peace I leave with you.” So that peace is a river then? Not exactly, and this is a part of our spiritual lives where we miss a lot of those good things we are supposed to be thankful to God for.

Do you remember that story about Jesus and the storm? Let’s take the version in Mark 4:36 to 41. The scene begins with Jesus concluding a long day of teaching with parables, thoroughly teaching a “crowd…so large” that Jesus had to stand on a boat as a pulpit since the people all thronged “along the shore at the water’s edge” (Mark 4:1). Now, Jesus was no fisherman, so you can understand how rather unfamiliar He was with boats, that Jesus had to fight for balance every time He shifted His weight just a little to assume a momentary posture that relieved the strain of another. And He was teaching them “many things” (verse 2). In addressing a large crowd, He shouted every word He uttered, making sure that they understood “as much as they could” (verse 33). In addition, He continued to elucidate His teaching “when he was alone with his own disciples” (verse 34). So you could understand that when evening came, Jesus was sapped. This explains why Jesus was sleeping soundly on a cushion in the stern in the middle of a “furious squall” that threatened to drown the vessel and everyone in it!

Notice the cry of the disciples in verse 39: “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” It’s just like the Psalmist who said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning” (Psalm 22:1). Honestly, there were times when we felt that God, in our ordeal, just stood there, and by not “doing anything” had made Himself invisible and as deaf and motionless as an idol. Think of how that would make you feel if your daughter whom you love with all your heart and soul said thatto you! By doubting God of His very concern to save you in your time of need is virtually an insult to His character!

Now, think of how you’d feel if you were Jesus being told, “Yo, Jesus, we’re drowning here! Whatever’s wrong with you can probably wait!” But Jesus, thank God, was—and is—one who understands. He was also, at that time, physically exhausted: probably His arms and hips hurt after all that strain to hold the boat steady; His neck was yearning for a massage, His jaw wanting to shut for a month, and His voice sore. But He gets up and addresses the wind and the waves: “Shut up!” And the elements shut up! In this account, He says nothing to His disciples whether before or after He rebukes the storm. In Matthew 8:26, He encourages them with an emphatic: “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” In Luke 8:25, it was “Where is your faith?” The accounts are very clear: Jesus delivered one rebuke and it was to the storm, not to the disciples. If we were to understand, it was to go as such: “It’s okay, guys, just relax. Everything’s gonna be just fine.” And it was this assurance—this peace—that Jesus delivered to the disciples on the night of the last supper.

On that evening on the stormy lake, the stability of the disciples’ peace was like a line attached to Jesus as an anchor. Their faith was there, but it was predisposed to be buffeted by the wind and the waves of life. In John 14:27, Jesus delegated the peace that their faith was anchored to into their very hearts because He was about to leave them (John 14:1–4). How did He do this? By promising the “Counselor” from the Father, to be with them forever (verse 16). You could say that He was “leaving a part of Him in their lives.” But it was really more than a part of Him; He was appointing His Spirit to “live with [them] and will be in [them]” (verse 17). Very reassuringly, He says: “I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you” (verse 18). And by that promise, He left them His peace. It was then up to the disciples to take care of that peace, as good stewards.

Peace is one of the promises God had always guaranteed to all who put their trust in Him. Not all who put their trust in Him, however, understand that, like prosperity, peace is something that must be upheld. God had already provided His guidelines for peace in His Word, that is, the Bible. And in it, the procedures of preserving it must also be observed through lifestyle. The Apostle Peter in his first epistle charged the believers to “seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:11); centuries before him, King David said the same thing in Psalms 34:14. The Apostle Paul taught that to have peace, one must first choose to live in peace (2 Corinthians 13:11). It was, to him, a simple equation: you choose it, you’ll have it. It is therefore clear that peace is already present, and all we need to do is use it! Jesus had left us His peace since that night of the last supper.

Jesus, along with Peter, Paul, and David, almost a thousand years before, discovered and shared a concept of peace that what most of us to this day conceive of something as a situation, which shatters at the slightest rumor of conflict.

After discovering peace, using it, and finding that it works, we are told to “pursue it,” or maintain it. The most pervasive reason why many choose and maintain peace is because we’re scared of conflict. By this, our illustration of peace transforms from the life-giving river into a life-preserving wall. But there’s also another reason why we see peace as a protecting wall. The walls of peace convey power, confidence, and sovereignty. A very good supporting example for this is how painstakingly and vigilantly Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem to get rid of the distress and reproach of Israel (Nehemiah 2:17).

Maintaining peace is a mandate Jesus had provided all Christians to pursue. He left His peace into our stewardship. Stewardship? Now, there’s a word we have always associated with prosperity, but not really with peace! We understand stewardship in the context of a parable where three servants were left with certain amounts of money to develop while their employer was away on a long journey (Matthew 25:14–30). In the story, the money loaned to them was carefully measured according to the ability of each to generate profit. It was a fair deal. The first two produced the expected revenue; the last one kept it in a hole in the ground. This last scheme is what some of us do with peace.

Jesus taught, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). But what do many Christians do? They sue each other “before the ungodly for judgment”—meaning, before courts of law—“instead of before the saints” (1 Corinthians 6:1)—or, settling the dispute before the elders of the local church who know what is best for the flock. Jesus told us to promote peace as we would the Gospel, calling us “peacemakers,” in addition to “Christians.” First, He makes known that “the kingdom of God”—to which all believers belong to—“is…a matter…of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Then, He commands us to “make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (verse 19). He adds: “anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men” (verse 18). If there is something the people of God and the world share in understanding, it’s “peace” through “mutual edification.” The only—big—difference is that to the people of the world, peace and mutual edification is a slippery, if not unattainable, ideal; to the people of God, however, they are realistic, livable perspectives.

As peacemakers, Christians are not to be a source of turbulence, controversy, intrigue, or anything that provides hatred, doubt, and disrespect for the Name of Jesus. Peacemakers promote unity in the Body of Christ and in the way they conduct their lives in the sight of the unbelievers, even subservience, compliance and respect toward temporal authority (Romans 13:1–7), the concept and fire of the zealot of Jewish nationalism, the Apostle Paul abandons and discourages all believers to adopt. There should be no trace of rebellion or agitation against established authorities, in the local church or in a country’s government. That personal goes for us who have mostly or entirely lived our lives in a democracy thinking it perfectly fine to speak against the government without any responsibility or accountability of whether we have planted a seed of rebellion or discord in anyone who happened to be listening to us.

Perhaps the final thing (as of yet) that could be said about peace, which we have not really completely grasped, is that it is the agent that holds all the other blessings of God in place. If we go back to our illustration of peace as a river, we will notice that there was a place for the species to gather on while the source of life ran in the midst of them. What kept the opportunity for unique growth and proliferation was their positioning, that without the careful positioning of each life according to their capabilities, only a few forms would endure: probably aquatic and amphibian, and even some reptilian. What secured this opportunity for the mammals to join the system was the physical channel, the confinement of the river into a specific body. Peace functions in the same way: it is the entrenchment by which the blessing of God’s prosperity flows through.

[There's more on peace--I know, I know! I know you're thinking that every article I make never ends! Well, this one's gonna--on our Part II of this subject on Peace. So...peace!]

Photo Credits:
   1. David Barnet/Illustration Works/Corbis
   2. Frans Lanting/Corbis
   3. Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis
   4. Brooklyn Museum/Corbis
   5. Brooklyn Museum/Corbis
   6. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
   7. Frans Lanting/Corbis