[Footnote 65: 1 Samuel viii. 19-22.]
The world's history offers no example where the merits and defects of absolute monarchy were so rapidly developed, where they were displayed so strikingly, as in this little Hebrew monarchy, instituted with the view of escaping from anarchy by the express desire of the people itself. Three kings succeed to the throne, in origin, character, conduct, and reign absolutely dissimilar. Saul is a warrior, chosen by Samuel for his strength, bodily beauty, and courage; ever ready for the combat, but without foresight, without perseverance in his military operations; easily intoxicated with good fortune; hurried away by brutal, capricious, or jealous passions; now engaged in furious struggles, now appearing in a dependent position, with his patron Samuel, his son Jonathan, his son-in-law David; a genuine barbarian king, arrogant, changeable of humour, impatient of control, prone to superstition, a moment serving Israel against her enemies, but incapable of governing Israel in the name of its God.
David, on the contrary, is the faithful and consistent representative of religious faith and religious life in Israel; the fervent and submissive adorer of the Eternal; he is so at all the epochs and in the most varying aspects of his career, whether of humility or of grandeur; at once warrior, king, prophet, poet; as ardent to celebrate his God in his character of poet, as to serve Him in the capacity of warrior, or to obey Him in that of king; equally sublime in his thanksgiving to the Eternal for his triumphs as in his invocation to Him in his distresses; accessible to the most culpable human weaknesses, but prompt to repent the offence once committed; and giving always to impulses of joy or pious sadness the first place in his soul; very king of the nation that adores the very God. David accomplishes the work of his time: he obtains the object for which the monarchy had been demanded and instituted: he leaves behind him the tribes of Israel reunited at home, and reassured against foreign enemies, proceeding too in the path of good order and confidence. Heir to his father's work, his father's success, Solomon comes next, and reigns forty years—years of almost as much repose as splendour: "God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore." [Footnote 66] "And he had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon." [Footnote 67]
[Footnote 66: 1 Kings iv. 29.]
[USCCB: Footnote 66 should be: 1 Kings iv. 9.]
[Footnote 67: Ibid. 24, 25.]
[USCCB: Footnote 67 should be: 1 Kings iv. 4, 5.]
The kingdom and the kingly authority rose under the government of Solomon, and throughout all Western Asia, to a degree of power and splendour before unknown to the Hebrews. A prosperity out of all proportion with the position of a new king and a small state, and which reminds us of the rapid histories and the political comets of the East. Solomon at this point lost sight of both wisdom and virtue: the first hereditary prince of the Hebrew monarchy terminated his life like a voluptuous sovereign of Ecbatana or of Nineveh; the son of the pious King David became a sceptical moralist; although a profound observer of the nature and destiny of man, such observation had led but to feelings of disgust. Nor did the monarchy survive the monarch: the nation became effeminate and corrupt, in the effeminacy and corruption of its sovereign. Scarcely was Solomon dead, when his monarchy was divided into two kingdoms, which, at first rivals, became soon openly hostile to each other; sometimes a prey to tyranny, sometimes to anarchy, and almost always to war. It was not, as formerly, merely a bad phase of transition in the history of the Hebrew nation; it was the commencement of national decline—decline irremediable, hopeless.
But what, in this decline, will become of the law revealed on Sinai to Moses? Is it destined to fall with the monarchy of Solomon, or to languish and die out in the midst of the struggles and disasters of Judah and of Israel? Quite the contrary: the religious faith and law of the Hebrews will not only perpetuate themselves, but will again shine forth at this epoch of political ruin.
Above the fortune of states are the designs of God, to which instruments are never wanting; the kings continue to perpetrate acts of violence, and the people to show marks of weakness; but amidst all, the prophets of Israel will maintain the ancient Covenant, and prepare the coming of that new Covenant which is to make of the God of Israel the God of mankind.