(158) S9E2 C&G: Government in the Old Testament
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. In the last episode, I laid out my brief journey into what pushed me towards rethinking my views on government. Today, we're going to start laying the foundation for what I think is the biblical view of government. And to do this, I wanna take a trip through the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. All too often, our modern theological views are shaped by a few proof texts rather than by looking at Scripture as a whole.
Derek:That often leads to individual verses being taken out of context or verses which should require more nuance in light of the totality of Scripture. They end up becoming our guiding verses which contradict a broader, more thoughtful reading of Scripture. When it comes to government, this is particularly pronounced. If you ask anyone what they think the Bible says about government, they will immediately go to Romans 13, or Jesus paying taxes in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, their minds likely go to somebody like King David.
Derek:You know, he was a man after God's own heart and a king, right? And God loved the nation of Israel, right? So government must be this good thing that God desires us to establish. It's impossible to discuss these deeply entrenched sentiments without looking at other portions of the Bible which not only speak just as powerfully against our notions of government, but which are also far more numerous. Today, we will look at the Old Testament, which will largely be a negative case against government.
Derek:The Old Testament is our swatch which I think provides us with a good comparison. God is going to show us the human problem and set the stage for His ultimate solution. So while we can definitely draw some positives about what God wants with government from the Old Testament, its power is going to come in providing us with a number of case studies in failed human attempts at government. We see something similar with things like marriage. Polygamy is practiced all throughout the Old Testament.
Derek:God doesn't like it, but He permits it and He works with it. Divorce is also a very famous one which Jesus says later in the New Testament, He's like, God didn't want that. Sure, He even gave you a law for it, but He doesn't like that law because it's no good. He just gave it to you to kind of deal with you at the moment because of the hardness of your hearts. So as we look at government today, we are going to have to be keenly aware that sometimes the things that we see are not prescriptions, but rather descriptions, and it's important to make note of those things.
Derek:So, without further ado, let's jump into the Old Testament overview of government. We'll start where the Bible starts us, which is in the Garden of Eden. And in the Garden, God gave humanity dominion, but dominion over whom or over what? Dominion was given to humanity over nature. Adam and Eve did not have dominion over God, they did not have dominion over one another.
Derek:Any potential dominion we see of one individual over another first came in the curse that God gave, which I would argue is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Woman grasping after man and man placing himself over the woman is a perfect description of what has happened all throughout history and that's not a good thing. That's not something that God wants nor is it the way that the garden was intended to be and it's not the way that the New Testament portrays our relationships which are to be defined by mutual submission And it's not the way that eternity is gonna be with Jesus Christ. Domineering over others is a curse, it is not a blessing and it's not a good thing. From the garden we move to Babel.
Derek:While there are cities mentioned in God's conversation with Cain, we don't really get too much information there. But Babel paints a pretty vivid picture for us and I would argue it might be the first image we get of a government in the Bible. In fact, our Bibles do a disservice to the text because the word Babel is not even in the original text. Instead, the name is Babylon as seen later in the Bible, at least in the English version. But in the Hebrew version, right, it's Babylon right there on that page in Genesis, I think it's 11.
Derek:So this is important because Babylon is the archetype for wickedness and government in opposition to God all throughout the Bible. And Babel then is the first depiction we get of government in the Bible in Genesis. And it's the last depiction we're going to get in the book of Revelation. As Babel shows us that humanity has grouped itself together for their common good. And what do we see humanity do?
Derek:They attempt to usurp the position of God. God's punishment then is to spread them out throughout the earth to prevent their unification. Apparently, humanity's tendency to group together and attempt to usurp God's kingship is so strong that God divides the nations to stall stall such a usurpation. To help cement this idea, I want to now draw from Josephus, the famous Jewish historian around the time of Jesus. Now Josephus, chapter four of his The Antiquities of the Jews, he writes a few paragraphs about Babel.
Derek:And I think it's gonna be insightful here to pull some things from the extended quote from from his work. So Josephus says, quote, now the sons of Noah were three, Shem, Japheth, and Ham, born one hundred years before the deluge. These first of all descended from the mountains into the plains and fixed their habitation there, and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, and so were very loath to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples. Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar. God also commanded them to send colonies abroad for the thorough peopling of the earth, that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth and enjoy its fruit after a plentiful manner.
Derek:But they were so ill instructed that they did not obey God, for which reason they fell into calamities and were made sensible, by experience, of what sin they had been guilty. For when they flourished with a numerous youth, God admonished them again to send out colonies. But they, imagining the prosperity they enjoyed was not derived from the favor of God, but supposing that their own power was the proper cause of the plentiful condition that they were in, did not obey Him, nay, they added to their disobedience to the divine will, the suspicion that they were therefore ordered to send out separate colonies, that being divided asunder, they might the more easily be oppressed. Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and a great strength of hand.
Derek:He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God but to bring them into a constant dependence on His power. He also said he would be revenged on God if he should have a mind to drown the world again. For that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach, and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers. Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God.
Derek:And they built a tower, neither sparing any pains nor being in any degree negligent about the work. And by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high sooner than any one could expect. But the thickness of it was so great, and was so strongly built that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick cemented together with mortar made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, He did not resolve to destroy them utterly since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners.
Derek:But He caused a tumult among them, by producing in them divers languages, and causing that, through the multitude of languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before. For the Hebrew, Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language when she says thus, When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven. But the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower and gave everyone his peculiar language and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon.
Derek:But as to the plan of Shinar, in the country of Bologna, Hestacius mentions it, when he says thus, Such of the priests as were saved took the sacred vessels of Jupiter, Inalias, and came to Shinar of Babylonia. End quote. Okay, a few things to pull from this. First, God wanted humanity to spread out and not bunch together. Second, humanity coming together led to a sense of power.
Derek:They not only felt that they had power, but that their blessings were a result of themselves. God was forsaken, but not only forsaken, He became a threat and an enemy to overcome. Those under this government sought security against God's judgments and against a loss of provisions. So the tower wasn't some benign attempt at doing something really cool like, hey, let's just see how high we can build this, let's see if we can get up to God. It was actually an attempt to usurp and replace God.
Derek:God recognized that this desire was so ingrained in humanity, He didn't simply just punish the few who embarked on the journey. He didn't even just divide up humanity into like two factions. He divided humanity up into many, many, many groups. We know today that there are thousands of language groups and many have died off, especially in the past century. Now sure, some languages have developed, certainly, but also a lot of languages have died off.
Derek:So whatever the actual number of languages was, and if this is a historical account, you know, doesn't really matter. Point is, that whatever God is trying to say here is that, look, when people group together, a lot of times they try to create this power structure that seeks to usurp my position. So whatever the actual number of languages were there, we do get in the table of nations the number of 70. We get, a lot of times we get like this idea of 70 nations. So I'll put a link, you can see Michael Heiser link in the notes for details, but the number is important because we see later that when Jesus sends out the 70 or the 72, whatever book you're reading, it could be 70 or 72 for various reasons, this is likely representative of Him sending out somebody with the Gospel for each nation, likely each nation represented here at Babel.
Derek:So that sending out of the 70 is kind of a throwback to God saying, okay, I divided you because you yourselves were trying to usurp me. But now that I've established my kingship, me, let's bring you all back together under your true king. So there are some finer points that we could get to here as, know, Heiser argues that God divided the nations based upon some divine counsel and spiritual beings and things. But whatever, that's not really view here. If you wanna look into more of this, you can check out his book, The Unseen Realm or any of his YouTube videos.
Derek:He does have good stuff and it is helpful to understand that Genesis, which, you know, a lot of these stories we look at as just kind of kid stories and silly stories, they do come into play later when we're talking about the fulfilling of prophecy and the things that Jesus did and some of the significant meanings. So I think it's really important that we do start here in Genesis and with Babel. So with Babel, we see how humanity grouping and trying to establish a system of security leads to a usurpation of God. But that's just one instance, right? What else do you have?
Derek:Well, Abraham ends up being called out of his nation and told that God was going to make him the exemplar nation through which all other nations would be blessed. God's essentially saying, hey look, these other nations, they're gonna end up being repeat babbles, but you, you're mine, and I'm going to contrast your nation with all the other nations. So Abraham has called it out from among the nations to be a unique and separate nation. But his journey is a tumultuous one and his family ends up in another nation. And while God initially does use the nation of Egypt to save Israel, Abraham and his descendants settle in and get comfortable.
Derek:And then nations do what nations do. Egypt began to oppress and enslave the Israelites and God had to come against the nation and against Pharaoh because they set themselves up as gods. Once again, nations sought to usurp God and they dehumanized and exploited people for their gain because that's what nations do. From Egypt, Israel traveled on to Canaan where we find that the nations are worshiping other deities. As Paul says in Romans, they worship the creature rather than the creator, which likely stems from this desire to manipulate rather than submit.
Derek:Why worship the sun or the weather or fertility? Because by having gods that can be manipulated, it's really to put humanity in charge. I can manipulate those things. It seeks to manipulate nature for prosperity, whether that's the harvest or child bearing. And this once again led to the exploitation of others.
Derek:In Canaan, one of the most egregious examples was the slaughter and torture of children, all in the name of manipulating the gods for prosperity and survival. Despite what Israel saw of other nations and despite God's continual provision for them in both abundance and salvation throughout the book of Joshua and Judges, Israel no longer wanted God to go before them and fight for them like He said He was gonna do. Instead, we find in First Samuel eight that they want a king. How? Like the other nations.
Derek:Israel wanted to be like the other nations, not the unique nation that He told Abraham He wanted them to be, but they wanted to be like the other nations. They wanted to join the 70, those non unique nations that do what nations do. And this is so important to understand here that God did not call for a king over Israel, the people did. And they did so not because it was a good thing, but because they wanted to copy the nations. You know, the very nations that God set up in juxtaposition to what Israel was to be.
Derek:God did not want a king. That needs to be clear. God did not want a king. And don't just take my word for it. Twice in first Samuel eight, God says that this push for a king is a rejection of him and a forsaking of Him for other gods.
Derek:God did not want a king. This in first Samuel eight where Israel tries to get a king, this was a usurpation of God. Rather than having God lead them and fight for them, they wanted a king to go out before them in battle. They pursue this even after God warns them of the evils a king would do. You know, if God's like, look, you're rejecting me, okay, but I also wanna tell you, besides rejecting Me, you're gonna get the fruit of what rejecting Me does.
Derek:So you might not wanna do this for Me, but I'm gonna tell you, this is what's gonna happen and it's gonna happen to you. And so even out of self interest, Israel can't do the common sense thing because God warns them that there are gonna be evils like conscription, taxation, and property acquisition, things that are not good, right? These things are not goods, they are evils and God warns them about it. And we see exactly that happen. What happens when they get a king?
Derek:Property is taken, men are conscripted, women are brought into concubinage, and wars galore. Whereas the expectations for kings found in Exodus shows that kings were not supposed to have a standing army as represented through the, you know, not amassing all these chariots and stuff. We see standing armies and warfare galore under the kings, even within the bounds of Israel. In fact, David's harshest punishment, a lot of people think, oh, well David was punished for Bathsheba, he lost his son. Yeah, that was, I'm sure that was heart wrenching for David.
Derek:But the harshest punishment in terms of just the sheer horror of the punishment, the numerical aspect, was not for committing adultery and murder, but for numbering his army. And an angel goes through and slaughters tens of thousands of people. And one wonders how much of this displeasure stems from God's expectations for his nation and how David in his hubris was attempting to usurp God even more. So we not only see Israel attempt to usurp God and control Him through kingship, but we see them attempt to do the same thing religiously. God did not want a temple as the other nations had.
Derek:God desired to move with and tabernacle with His people. The temple was an ostentatious, localizing attempt to confine and control God, something that God never wanted. While it's not my purview here to make the case for this, I will put a link in the show notes where you can go check this out. The point is that just as humanity sought to usurp God and control Him politically, they they also sought to do that religiously. The politicians, David Solomon, sought to control God by localizing Him and making a temple for Him.
Derek:And that's exactly the type of things we see governments do today. They control religion either by outlawing it so that the state is the religion, like China, or they're going to do it like The United States does and you get the syncretism which tries to take on religion and use it for the state. So when we do get to Solomon, the one who actually built the temple which David had initiated and planned out, we notice that Solomon ends up being set up as a type of Pharaoh. Now, you can read about Solomon and come out thinking everything was pretty good, right? He learned his lesson, he asked for wisdom, oh that was a good thing, know, a good humble thing to do.
Derek:God gave him wisdom and in his wisdom he does the dumbest things he can do and sins over and over and does terrible things that God told him not to do and maybe by the end of it, you you can read some of his wisdom literature, and you can say, you know what, I think he kind of, he learned a lesson from that. But at least at the beginning, he seems like he's off to a good start. In the first few chapters of Kings, you can see that they seem kind of neutral, if you're not really looking for anything. There are portions where Solomon's praised and things seem to be going kinda good. But people miss out on the ways in which Solomon is typified here.
Derek:So in chapter three of Kings, Solomon makes an alliance with Egypt, something which is always a no no in the Old Testament. Really bad, you don't do that. And in large part because it's seen as not relying on God and because it leads to idolatry. Yet that's one of the first things that Solomon does. And then Solomon immediately gets working on the temple that God didn't ask for and he builds it by doing the things that God warned Israel a king would do.
Derek:Solomon conscripted, AKA enslaved, his own people to work on the temple and boy, was the temple grand, it was beautiful. But not coincidentally, we immediately get to see what Solomon's Palace was like because it's built in the chapter immediately following the temple. And what we should notice is that his palace was almost twice as large as the temple. Almost all of the numbers are, they're all around, twice as large. So Solomon's Palace is double the size of the temple.
Derek:It's nice. And not only does that say something about priorities, but it also should key us into the fact if Solomon needed all those tributes and slaves from the people to make the temple, then he needed about twice as much to make his palace, or twice as much time, which I think it says that it took. So while Solomon accrued a lot of wealth and had peace under his reign, he did much of this through an unholy alliance with Egypt and by breaking the backs of his own people. Israel's subsequent downfall, through the rest of its history, owes itself in no small part to the stage Solomon, Israel's pharaoh, set up. Throughout the rest of Israel's history, we find God's words to Samuel coming true, as the nation spirals into chaos and eventually into exile.
Derek:Through this time, we get glimpses of hope like those in Isaiah nine which promise a Messiah who will bear the government upon his shoulders. Israel, of course, saw this as a promise of an established kingship in the vein of David. But as we know, God of course had other things in mind and gave us glimpses of these all throughout the prophets. The prophets also more and more viewed Israel as diaspora, as resident aliens. While a hope for a return to their homeland lingered, and it was stronger in some of the prophets than in others, God was preparing Israel to be a borderless nation, a nation with an identity which transcended physical boundaries.
Derek:Now through exile, destruction of the temple, oppression by the Babylonians and Assyrians, the Greeks and then the Romans, God never allowed Israel a real rest. It's almost as if God allowed His people's vision of government to fail in preparation for some magnificent revelation. And it's to this revelation that we will turn in our next episode. That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.
Derek:This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.
