Theological Commentary: Click Here
As we read
through the history of the kings, there are a few trends that will appear. First of all, notice that the kings of Israel
have an irrepressible string of evil.
Every single king who comes to the throne does evil in the sight of the Lord.
They are focused on themselves and doing what is right in their own eyes. When leaders come into power because of their
own ambition, it isn’t likely that they are going to put on an amazing display
of humbleness. Humbleness doesn’t come
from self-centered beginnings.
On the other
hand, another trend that we’ll see is that the kings from the line of David
will ebb and flow with respect to their faithfulness. In the kingdom of Judah, the kings rise to
power from their heritage. They won’t
squabble of the throne, they will inherit it.
This doesn’t naturally make them any better. After all, we’ll see more bad kings than we
do good kings.
Yet, we will
see good kings. We will see that some of
the kings in the Davidic line do pursue the ways of the Lord. They aren’t going to be perfect, but there
will be glimmers of hope. There will be
kings who pursue God’s ways and try to invite their constituents to do the same.
When we put
this altogether, we do come up with a picture of hope with respect to
leadership. In the case of leaders who
claw and scrap to get into leadership, we have little hope of humble
leadership. However, in cases where
leadership is bestowed rather than sought, we do see that the occasional leader
will have what it takes to be godly. In
fact, notice that among the kings of Judah that quite often a good king will
follow an incredibly evil king! There is
always reason to hope that leadership will humble themselves before God and
submit to His ways.
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