RealPolitick – the Problem with Kings

The OT warning against having a king was the wickedness they would lead people into and  the oppressive burdens they would lay.  Both get born out.

But one of the bigger problems is the realpolitick.  The main point of having a king was the impressive power they could wield coordinating the Israelites against their enemies.  The secondary point was the glamor of their magnificent life style.

But concentrated power and concentrated wealth . . . people will vie for that.  Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. 

So David (who was functionally a usurper) fought off rebellions from within his own household.  Solomon inherited via palace intrigue; promptly had to connive at the deaths of several rivals and threats;  and got rid of priests who had supported the other faction and elevated to high office the son of Nathan (his own religious faction).

In the famous verses where Solomon asks for wisdom, 1 Kings 3 https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1-Kings-Chapter-3/ beginning around verse 5, the sense I get is that he has three reasons, only one of them being the famous benevolent one that we all know.

1. Dealing with all the plots and intrigues is hard, he needs wisdom.
2. He needs to offer good judgment to keep his throne stable, people expect it. (Considering that the kings had replaced the judges within living memory).
3. People need good judgment for their own benefit (this is the benevolent one.)

He gets led astray by all his foreign wives, whom he has to marry and placate to cement alliances.  The wealth that Solomon concentrated in his palace and the temple, which ended up attracting serious invaders like the Assyrians and the Babylonians, was probably necessary to maintain his rule.  Which rule was put in place to help the Israelites fight off invaders.

The switch from the judges to the kings is the classic case of going from a decentralized unofficial system that had lots of troubles to creating a centralized, systematic system that solved those problems but created its own ultimately even worse problems.  Too big too fail.

By the way, the judges – kings conflict in the Book of Mormon is different from the OT.  The OT judges weren’t a government system at all, whereas the Book of Mormon judges and kings were two competing government systems.  The Book of Mormon judges were post state formation and post monarchy, whereas the OT judges were pre-state formation and pre-monarchy.