If you’re thinking, “Wait, he skipped Ruth,” I didn’t. Ruth is not part of the Deuteronomistic History. That book was actually written somewhere between 200 and 300 years later; it’s part of the Writings. The Greeks re-sorted the scriptures into chronological order—putting Ruth after Judges and before Samuel—and, for convenience, splitting some of the bigger books, like Samuel and Kings, into two. That’s why Christian bibles have 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings. (Some Catholic bibles skip the name “Samuel” and make this 1 Kings through 4 Kings) So I’ll get to Ruth later. But not yet.
The History, and Samuel, continues with the birth of Samuel, a prophet who became Israel’s last judge. Samuel, and his predecessor Eli, personally typify Israel’s problem: Even though they know and follow God (though that’s a bit debatable in Eli’s case) they don’t bother to raise their own children to likewise follow God. This was a particularly big deal in Eli’s case: He was God’s high priest, and this was a hereditary job. But his sons were such screw-ups that they decided to use God’s Ark of the Covenant as a magic charm in a battle against the Philistines… and lost the Ark. (1Sa 4) The only reason the Hebrews got it back was because God plagued the Philistines with mice and hemorrhoids (which most bibles politely translate as “tumors”) until they gave it back. (1Sa 5)
Despite Samuel’s own success, his kids were likewise poor successors, and the Hebrews figured the solution to the problem was for them to have a king like the Philistines and all their other oppressors. (Clearly they didn’t catch the irony in solving Samuel’s succession problem with a hereditary monarchy. But oh well.)
Samuel appears to have two opinions about the use of a king, and they appear at first glance to contradict one another:
- A king is bad. “It is Me they are rejecting, not you,” God explained to Samuel, “They don’t want Me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually abandoned Me and followed other gods. And now they are giving you the same treatment.” (1Sa 8.7-8) Samuel was then ordered to warn the people of all the horrible stuff a king would do to them:
Still, they were okay with that.This is how a king will reign over you. The king will draft your sons and assign them to his chariots and his charioteers, making them run before his chariots. Some will be generals and captains in his army, some will be forced to plow in his fields and harvest his crops, and some will make his weapons and chariot equipment. The king will take your daughters from you and force them to cook and bake and make perfumes for him. He will take away the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his own officials. He will take a tenth of your grain and your grape harvest and distribute it among his officers and attendants. He will take your male and female slaves and demand the finest of your cattle and donkeys for his own use. He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you will be his slaves. When that day comes, you will beg for relief from this king you are demanding, but then the LORD will not help you.
—Samuel, 1 Samuel 8.11-18. NLT
- A king is part of God’s plan. Despite all the negatives of having a king—and we see these negatives over and over again in the rest of the Deuteronomistic History, as these kings take Israel to depths of apostasy and idolatry that the judges never could—we likewise see that God has an ideal in mind—an ideal king, the Messiah, which God reveals to the best king of the bunch, David:
Furthermore, the LORD declares that he will make a house for you—a dynasty of kings! For when you die and are buried with your ancestors, I will raise up one of your descendants, your own offspring, and I will make his kingdom strong. He is the one who will build a house—a temple—for My name. And I will secure his royal throne forever. I will be his father, and he will be My son. If he sins, I will correct and discipline him with the rod, like any father would do. But My favor will not be taken from him as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from your sight. Your house and your kingdom will continue before Me for all time, and your throne will be secure forever.
—The LORD (via Nathan), 2 Samuel 7.11-16. NLT
Saul and David.
The first of the kings, Saul, was selected by God to rescue Israel. He did so through the creation of a permanent army. No prophet himself, God’s directions to Saul were given via Samuel, who was no longer judge but still functioned as God’s mouthpiece. Problem is, Saul, a stubborn man, took advantage of his position and overstepped his boundaries. He ignored Samuel’s instructions about destroying Amalek, and as a result Samuel predicted that one of his neighbors would be given the throne instead of him. Rightly guessing that this neighbor was David, one of his captains, he slowly became insane from jealousy, and alienated himself from God (who is depicted in Samuel as deliberately driving Saul mad). Saul killed himself after a terrible defeat by the Philistines.
David, picked by God to be the next king while still a shepherd boy, rose to prominence by killing the Philistine warrior Goliath armed only with a sling. Saul drove David out of the country, where he and his followers were forced to hide among the Philistines until Saul’s death. He returned to become king of his tribe, Judah… but Saul’s son Ishba’al (or Ishbosheth) had taken the other eleven tribes, and the result was a seven-year civil war that finally ended when Ishba’al’s servants murdered him.
David then united the kingdom, conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital, and moved the Ark there. He successfully defeated his enemies and, a prophet himself, is known for writing a great many of the Psalms. He’s widely considered Israel’s greatest king.
But like Saul, David overstepped his boundaries: He impregnated a loyal soldier’s wife, then had the soldier killed to cover it up.
Unlike the kings of other nations, David was a Hebrew, under God’s covenant. Other ancient kings had considered themselves to be the son of a god, and therefore able to do as they liked. But Yahweh’s kings—though He recognized them as His adopted sons, (Ps 2) where under His covenant. They were expected to follow God’s commands and listen to His prophets.
Though God forgave David, this adultery—as well has his own crappy parenting, same as Eli and Samuel—blighted his reign. His newborn son died; David’s eldest son Amnon raped his daughter Tamar, and in return Amnon was murdered by David’s next-eldest son Absalom; Absalom led a coup d’état against David and was killed; Saul’s relative Sheba likewise led a rebellion; and David’s third son Adonijah attempted to interfere with David’s chosen successor, his son Solomon.
And this was the greatest of Israel’s kings. But one thing David did have going for him—one thing that his successors didn’t often demonstrate, and the one thing that made the Deuteronomistic Historian compare every later king with David—was that David wholeheartedly loved God. David was “a man after My own heart,” God said; “He will do everything I want him to do.” (Ac 13.22) David becomes the main focus of Samuel because the Historian would regularly return to his example throughout Kings.
Kings.
David died at the beginning of Kings, leaving Solomon in charge. Solomon was known for his wisdom, built God an impressive cedar and gold temple, and God made him ridiculously wealthy. But he slid into mismanagement and apostasy, and under Solomon’s successor Rehoboam, the kingdom was split into two states: Northern Israel (sometimes called Ephraim after its largest tribe) and Southern Israel (often called Judah after its largest tribe). Northern Israel was led by Solomon’s former official Jeroboam, and Judah was led by the House of David… for David’s sake.
Jeroboam, fearing that the worship of God in Jerusalem would undermine his authority, built two golden calves—either as heretic forms of Yahweh, or as outright pagan idols—and created worship centers for them in the cities of Dan and Bethel. The Historian refers to this throughout Kings as “the sin of Jeroboam” and compares the activities of every future king of Israel to it. Since all the Northern kings allowed the calves, all of them were condemned for it. Not one meets with the Historian’s approval. And, unlike the House of David, each of their dynasties come to terrible ends.
Solomon permitted idolatry in Jerusalem for the sake of some of his pagan wives, and as it spread, God allowed them to be conquered by their neighbors, same as He had in Judges. Occasionally they would be freed from their enemies when the king turned to God. Interestingly, this was often the result of bad parenting: Whereas Eli, Samuel, and David, in being inattentive parents, produced lousy kids, it seems this worked the other way around in the case of a lot of kings: A pagan king would, from time to time, have a son who decided he wasn’t gonna worship his father’s gods; he was gonna worship Yahweh. So it worked both ways.
Some of the good kings of Judah include Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Hezekiah, and Josiah. And sometimes some of the pagan kings, like Manassah, would repent and turn to God eventually.
Still, when things got bad, they got really bad.
Prophets.
Terrible times require powerful prophets. Where before there were only one or two prophets mentioned in the History, now there are hundreds. The greatest of these prophets was Elijah and his successor Elisha.
Elijah was up against Ahab, the worst of the kings of Northern Israel, who considered the sin of Jeroboam to be “trivial.” He was a wholehearted worshipper of Ba’al, the Phoenician storm, harvest, and fertility god. Elijah attacked Ba’al directly: First, he declared that it would not rain, despite Ba’al’s ability to control weather; and it didn’t for three years. He then arranged a contest between the 450 prophets of Ba’al and himself: Whichever god could personally set fire to a sacrifice, Yahweh or Ba’al, would be the god Israel followed. Ba’al did nothing, whereas Yahweh’s fire consumed not only the water-logged sacrifice, but the very stones of the altar. (1Ki 18.20-39)
Elijah later ascended to heaven in a whirlwind. His student Elisha was known for healing lepers, raising the dead, making an axhead float, and announcing the future.
The fall of Israel.
Great prophets aside, the sins of Israel and Judah were eventually more than enough for God, and had to be stopped. Shalmaneser V of Assyria invaded Israel in 722 BC, its capital Samaria was burned to the ground, and most of the Israelis were carried off as slaves and exiles. The Assyrians replaced the people with Assyrian subjects, who eventually turned to God (although inaccurately) and became the Samaritans.
During this invasion, Judah surrendered and survived as a vassal state of the Assyrian Empire. Occasional revolts against Assyria were unsuccessful (though God got them out of a scrape or two) and while Josiah was making his reforms, the neo-Babylonians conquered the Assyrians, then moved south and conquered Judah in 586 BC, and most of the Judahis were likewise carried off as slaves and exiles.
The Deuteronomistic Historian is quite clear in his reason for the end of Israel: They hadn’t followed the covenant. He gave this reason in detail:
This disaster came upon the people of Israel because they worshiped other gods. They sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them safely out of Egypt and had rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. They had followed the practices of the pagan nations the LORD had driven from the land ahead of them, as well as the practices the kings of Israel had introduced. The people of Israel had also secretly done many things that were not pleasing to the LORD their God. They built pagan shrines for themselves in all their towns, from the smallest outpost to the largest walled city. …
Because the LORD was very angry with Israel, He swept them away from His presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained in the land. But even the people of Judah refused to obey the commands of the LORD their God, for they followed the evil practices that Israel had introduced. The LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He punished them by handing them over to their attackers until He had banished Israel from his presence.
The Deuteronomistic History does end on a slightly positive note: Thirty-seven years into the new king of Babylon decided to let the defeated king of Judah out of prison, and treat him well. (2Ki 25.27-30) This foreshadows the eventual return of the Judahis—or Jews—in Ezra and Nehemiah, and shows that God clearly wasn’t done with His people. He never is. After all, they have a covenant.