Collapse of Theocracy; United
Kingdom
We are now going to look at
the collapse of the theocracy and the rise of the monarchy in the nation Israel. The book of Joshua is basically laid out in two
parts. The first half of the book up through chapter eleven talks about the
campaign to take and conquer the land; the second half of the book talks about
how they take control of the land. They take control by seizing the major areas
of the land. The spiritual application that flows from this is found in Hebrews
3:7 to the end of chapter four. What is important here is that when we look at
Old Testament events they happened as they are portrayed in the Scripture.
Sometimes when we start getting into typology and analogy some people say it
really didn’t happen that way, they just roll it that way so they can make
spiritual applications. No, that is false. Te reason they can make spiritual
applications is because this is viewed as accurate history, is exactly what happened,
and on the basis of that we can make application. The Scripture itself tells us
how to properly interpret these Old Testament events.
Hebrews 3:7 NASB
“Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “TODAY
IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, [8] DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME, AS
IN THE DAY OF TRIAL IN THE WILDERNESS…”
So there is a warning to the church today, based upon the actions of the Jews
in the wilderness and their rejection of God’s provision. [9] “WHERE YOUR FATHERS TRIED {Me}
BY TESTING {Me,} AND SAW MY WORKS FOR FORTY YEARS. [10] THEREFORE
I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, ‘THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR
HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS’;
[11] AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, ‘THEY SHALL
NOT ENTER MY REST.’” The
promised land is pictured as the rest for Israel—not that they would not have
struggles but that that was the promise of God and in the land was the place
where they would have all of the place of blessing from God, just as in
Christian life when we are in fellowship and are faith-resting that doesn’t
mean that we are free from adversity, trial and struggle, but that is the place
where we see God give us victory over these things, and we can have the peace
of God that passes all comprehension and have the happiness of God that goes
above and beyond the circumstances.
Hebrew 3:12 NASB “Take care, brethren, that there not
be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living
God. [13] But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is {still}
called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of
sin.” The principle that we learn from this is that the Bible always tells us
how to interpret itself.
In the book of Joshua we
see this tremendous victory that God gives them over all the Canaanites. But
something happens. They don’t maintain the victory, they don’t maintain the
initiative; they become somewhat complaisant and begin to compromise with God’s
commands. As we have seen in Judges they come to the point where they completely
give up and lose control of many portions of the land.
1 Samuel
4:1 NASB “Thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out to meet the Philistines in battle and camped
beside Ebenezer while the Philistines camped in Aphek.”
This is the most
significant battle in Israel’s history. The events of Exodus took place in 1446 BC. The
Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness which means that in 1406 they
went into the land. We know from comparing various other Scriptures that in the
conquest, the three campaigns of Joshua to seize control of the land takes
seven years. By the time Joshua and Caleb die it is approximately 1350 BC. We know then
that Saul comes to power as king in about 1050, so there are about 300 years
covering the period of the Judges and the battle of Aphek
takes place at approximately 1100 BC. The last two judges mentioned in the book of Judges
are Jephthah who fights the Ammonites and the
Amorites in the east, and at the same time as Jephthah God is raising up Samson in the west to deal with
the Philistine threat. By the time Samson dies Samuel has already been born and
Eli is the high priest. Eli is also functioning as a judge. At the time of the
battle of Aphek Eli is 98 years old. Samuel is
somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Israel has been completely disobedient to God and has not at
all turned back to God after the oppression of the Philistines. They have not
sought deliverance or confessed their sins, so God is going to judge them. That
is the context of 1 Samuel chapter four.
1 Samuel 4:2 NASB
“The Philistines drew up in battle array to meet Israel. When the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines who killed about
four thousand men on the battlefield.” This is phase one of the battle. Israel is shocked and dismayed because they have been
defeated but look at how they respond to this problem. [3] “When the people
came into the camp, the elders of Israel said, ‘Why has the LORD defeated us today before the
Philistines? Let us take to ourselves from Shiloh
the ark of the covenant of the LORD, that it may come among us and deliver us from the power of
our enemies’.” This was just a lucky charm to them,
there was no sense of spiritual reality, no obedience or submission to God. [4]
“So the people sent to Shiloh, and from there they carried the ark of the covenant
of the LORD of hosts who sits {above} the cherubim; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, {were} there
with the ark of the covenant of God.”
The two sons of Eli are the successors in the priestly line, so we need
to catch what is happening here. They were like bandits, incorrigible and
depraved. But they are in the priestly line so the people are not only going to
bring the ark out, they are going to bring Hophni and
Phinehas out and that will give them victory, they
thought. [5] “As the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth
resounded. [6] When the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said,
‘What {does} the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews {mean?}’
Then they understood that the ark of the LORD had come into the camp.
Word had gone out and
everyone is the area knows about the ark of the Lord. 1 Sam 4:7 The Philistines
were afraid, for they said, “God has come into the camp.” And they said, ‘Woe
to us! For nothing like this has happened before. [8] Woe to us! Who shall deliver us from the hand of
these mighty gods? These are the gods who smote the Egyptians with all {kinds of}
plagues in the wilderness.” They think the game is over, all is lost at this point. [9] ‘Take courage and be
men, O Philistines, or you will become slaves to the Hebrews, as they have been
slaves to you; therefore, be men and fight.’ [10] So the Philistines
fought and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent; and the
slaughter was very great, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers.” This was a
devastating defeat for Israel.
In context this was as
devastating a defeat for Israel as the dropping of the atomic bombs were on Japan at the end of World War II. This is crushing.
Psychologically as a nation this just wipes them out. They think God has left
them. There is no more hope, they are absolutely devastated and they go into one
of the darkest periods of their history.
1 Samuel 4:11 NASB “And the ark of God was taken; and
the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas,
died.” The ark was the throne of God; He was the King of the nation. The throne
is taken. With the death of Hophni and Phinehas it was the end of the priesthood. At this point
there was no successor. It was the end of everything. That is how they were
looking at this. This is it; God has left us, the priesthood is dead, there is
no more hope.
1 Samuel
4:12 NASB “Now a man of Benjamin ran
from the battle line and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn and dust on his
head. [13] When he came, behold,
Eli was sitting on {his} seat by the road eagerly watching [an idiom; Eli was
blind], because his heart was trembling for the ark of God. So the man came to
tell {it} in the city, and all the city cried out.
[14] When Eli heard the noise of the outcry, he said, ‘What {does} the noise of
this commotion {mean?}’ Then the man came hurriedly and told Eli. [15] “Now Eli
was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes were set so that he could not see.
[16] The man said to Eli, ‘I am the one who came from the battle line. Indeed,
I escaped from the battle line today.’ And he said, ‘How did things go, my
son?’ [17] Then the one who brought the news replied, ‘Israel has fled before the Philistines and there has also
been a great slaughter among the people, and your two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead,
and the ark of God has been taken.’ [18] When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli
fell off the seat backward beside the gate, and his neck was broken and he
died, for he was old and heavy. Thus he judged Israel forty years.”
1 Samuel 4:19 NASB “Now
his daughter-in-law, Phinehas’s wife, was pregnant
and about to give birth; and when she heard the news that the ark of God was
taken and that her father-in-law and her husband had died, she kneeled down and
gave birth, for her pains came upon her.” The news was so crushing that she
immediately goes into labor. [20] “And about the time of her death the women
who stood by her said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a
son.’…” In other words, there is hope. The priestly line would go forward.
“…But she did not answer or pay attention. [21] And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, ‘The glory has departed from Israel,’ because the ark of God was taken and because of her
father-in-law and her husband. [22] She said, ‘The glory has
departed from Israel, for the ark of God was taken’.” Ichabod
means “no glory.” Every time his name was pronounced they would be reminded of
the defeat at Aphek. The one who is left in the
high-priestly line, the grandson of Eli, was a reminder that glory had departed
from Israel and the ark of God had been taken.
This shows that the
theocracy ends with this battle. After this there is a time elapse of somewhere
between twenty and forty years, but God is going to come along and institute
the monarchy. What we are going to see is that the people want a king for all
the wrong reasons. God always intended to give them a king but the people
wanted to jump the gun, they were impatient, they wanted to be like every other
nation, and so God gave them Saul.
After the battle of Aphek the Philistines pursue
their victory and their initiative, they come to Shiloh
and destroy the tabernacle. They wipe out everything, there is nothing left.
The priesthood is almost destroyed, the only one left
is Ichabod, a baby incapable of fulfilling the role,
so how are they going to have a spiritual life as a nation? This is devastating
and a major turning point of history and it is the end of God’s direct rule. It
is almost a dispensational shift. Every time God changes His way of
administering human history we mark as a dispensational shift. This is a major
shift from God’s rule of Israel to rule through a human king. This is a major event
that is often overlooked in the history of Israel.
Why was it necessary that
they were defeated? First of all, from a natural viewpoint the Philistines were
militarily and technologically superior. They had entered the iron age and they would not allow the Hebrews to have
blacksmiths. It is always the way of the tyrant to keep the citizen from being
able to own the latest technology in order to protect themselves.
The issue is not sportsmanship, the issue is the
personal protection of the home against the possibility of an encroaching
federal power. The real issue in Israel, though, is not that the Philistines were
technologically superior but that they were spiritually in rebellion. They have
lost the capacity to enjoy their freedom and to live responsibly. The principle
that we see here is: As goes the believer, so goes the nation. The decisions
that we make affect the nation.
Psalm 78 goes back and
rehearses these particular events and the tragedy that took place in the nation
at this time. Psalm 78:60 NASB “So that He abandoned the dwelling
place at Shiloh, The tent which He had pitched among men,
[61] And gave up His strength to captivity And His
glory into the hand of the adversary. [62] He also delivered His people to the
sword, And was filled with wrath at His inheritance.
[63] Fire devoured His young men, And His virgins had
no wedding songs. [64] His priests fell by the sword, And His widows could not weep.”
Another principle that we
should get from all of this is that our use of our volition might be a matter
of privacy but its consequences affect everyone around us—either cursing by
association or blessing by association. No man is an island.
We have seen that Israel spiritually trusted God when they went into the land
under Joshua. Then by the time 300 years goes by they are in absolute defeat,
the theocracy is ended, the priesthood collapses, the tabernacle is in ruins.
What is it that took place during this time? That takes us back to the book of
Judges. We saw that the main idea in Judges was that everyone did what was
right in their own eyes. The ultimate authority was no longer the Word of God;
it was whatever anybody wanted to do. The spiritually mature Jews who conquered
the land were unable to pass on their faith to the subsequent generation. There
was a failure of their parenting so that Judges 2:10 describes the next generation as the generation who
did not know Yahweh. Even Moses’
family failed. We are told in Judges 18:30 NASB “and Jonathan, the
son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh [actually
Moses—textual problem], he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.
[31] So they set up for themselves Micah’s graven image which he had made, all
the time that the house of God was at Shiloh.” So we see
the continuous collapse of the nation throughout the period of the judges.
We come to the changes now
in society. There are various changes as a result of the kingship that is going
to take place.
1.
They are going to
have a visible, tangible leader now. There will be a dynastic succession,
something they have not had in the past. Under the judges they had no idea who
would come up next; God would just raise up a deliverer.
2.
There would be a
centralization of power. Now there would be one man who would impose his will
on the people. He would have an army, would be able to impose taxes, extreme
taxes in order to do whatever he wanted to do. God warned the nation that
because they wanted a king this is what they would have to put up with.
3.
There would be a
privileged class within the society. Now they were going to have a king, and
with that king there would be the development of royalty and an aristocracy
supported by the taxes of people. So there would be a complete transformation
of Jewish society as a result of this king coming.
The initiation to
kingship: 1 Samuel 9:1 NASB “Now there was a man of Benjamin whose
name was Kish the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the
son of Aphiah, the son of a Benjamite,
a mighty man of valor. [2] He had a son
whose name was Saul, a choice and handsome {man,} and there was not a more
handsome person than he among the sons of Israel; from his shoulders and up he was taller than any of
the people.” He had a majestic presence, a regal bearing, and he looked like a
man who should be king.
1 Samuel 9:3 NASB “Now
the donkeys of Kish, Saul’s father, were lost…” He eventually finds them
through the help of Samuel and it is demonstrated that Saul is the one who is
going to be designated king. But our picture is that the last thing that he
wanted was to be king. But God chooses him to be king and there is a vast
difference between Saul and David. Remember that at this time the nation is spiritually,
economically and militarily bankrupt. The ark was taken to Ashdod by the Philistines where it was put in the temple of Dagon. When the ark comes back to Israel what does Saul do? He ignores it. Saul is totally
self-absorbed when it comes to his reign. He is not concerned for God or the
priorities of God and so he just ignores the ark.
Saul goes into battle with
the Amalekites and defeats them but he doesn’t
annihilate them. He rationalizes his disobedience. Saul is rejected because he
doesn’t obey God, but the interesting this is that Saul is rejected because he
doesn’t kill somebody. David is not rejected though he commits adultery and
murder and conspiracy and cover-up. What makes the difference? Saul is
indifferent to God; David has a heart for God. At the very core of David’s
person, no matter how much he might mess up and how badly he sinned, he wants
to do what God wants him to do. He wants God’s priorities for his life. That is
the difference. David is called a man after God’s own heart, and that is
exactly what that means.
Ps 132:1 Remember, O LORD, on
David’s behalf, All his affliction; [2] How he swore to the LORD And vowed to
the Mighty One of Jacob, [3] ‘Surely I will not enter my house,
Nor lie on my bed; [4] I will not give sleep to my eyes Or slumber
to my eyelids, [5] Until I find a place for the LORD, A dwelling
place for the Mighty One of Jacob. [6] Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah, We found it in the field of Jaar’.”
All this time throughout Saul’s reign the ark is just left sitting out in a
field. He just doesn’t care, he is negative to God. David is positive. That is
what makes the difference.