- Theology and Identity
- Season 1
- Episode 4
- Airdate: 11 December 2023
- Please note this is a script, and not a transcript. There may be slight differences between this text and the actual broadcast.
- All Bible quotations taken from the English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016)
Audio Links:
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As we have started to work our way through the IT, we have noted that the central theme of the text is the promise that God made to Abraham. Abraham would receive a blessing and Abraham would be a blessing to the nations. The driving question of the Scriputres is: How will this happen?
We’ve noted that od’s initial plan was to raise up the people of Israel to be a model nation. As they walked in covenant faithfulness, they would abide in the blessing of relationship with YWHW, and as they flourished they would be a blessing to the nations through the example that they gave.
In our last session, we looked at the book of judges, where everything appears to be going wrong. There is tremendous chaos and spiritual confusion that characterised the people of Israel during this time. The author of the book of judges seems to suggest that the problem was a lack of leadership. Four times in the final chapters he notes that in those days there was no king in Israel.
In this session we want to look more closely at this Issue of leadership. In order to be a faithful nation, in order to walk in covenant obedience, so that Israel may become a model people, is it necessary to have strong leadership? And if we say that leadership is necessary, exactly what kind of leadership are we talking about?
As we address these questions, we will discover in the text an emerging theology of leadership.
So lets back track a little bit. In the biblical text the first man that could clearly emerges as a leader of the 12 tribes of Israel is of course Moses. we first ask what were the diverse elements of Moses is leadership?
First and foremost Moses was a prophet.
He received the word of the Lord, and he relayed this word to others. He was chosen by God himself. He was not elected, he did not assert himself as a leader. Rather he was appointed by God to be a spokesperson, to proclaim the word of the lord.
Second, Moses was an example to the people. In Deut 34 the author notes that Moses was a prophet whom the Lord knew face to face and through whom God worked signs and wonders. So here we can note that an effective leader for Israel at this time what someone who had intimate relationship with God himself.
Third, Moses was a judge. We get a glimpse of this in Exodus 18 where Moses explained to his father-in-law ‘ the people come to me to inquire of God when they have a dispute they come to me and I and I decide between one person and another and I make them know the statutes of God and his laws..
Finally, we see that Moses that Moses was a manager. When he realised that the task of settling disputes was too big for him to do alone, he delegated the authority to judge to other elders in Israel, and we then assume that Moses would have maintained oversight of the men that he had appointed.
So in summary, the basic elements that we see in the leadership of Moses is that first he was a prophet, he was a spiritual example, he was a judge, and he was a manager.
Moses was succeeded by Joshua. And the leadership of Joshua was different than that of Moses. Nowhere in the text is joshua called a prophet. Joshua's primary task was to remind the people of the word that had been spoken through Moses. In chapter1 he said to the people ‘remember the word that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you.’ In chapter 8 it says ‘there was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel.’ So Joshua did not see himself as holding a prophetic role, as the one through whom new revelation would come to the people of Israel.
But this is not to say that God didn’t speak to him. YHWH did speak to Joshua, and guided his leadership. We see for example in chapter 3 where it says ‘the Lord said to Joshua I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel that they may know that as I was with Moses so I will be with you.’ Yahweh worked signs and wonders in order to show the people of Israel that Joshua was his chosen leader. The first miracle of this type being the parting of the river Jordan as the people crossed over into the land of Canaan.
Joshuas primary leadership task was to be a military commander. His role was to lead the 12 tribes in the conquest of the land of Canaan.
So a description of joshua's leadership role might look something like this: he was a man appointed by God to maintain the unity of the tribes, to hold them accountable to the words that they had received from Moses, and to lead them in the completion of the task that God had given the nation to perform: the conquest of Cannan.
As we noted in our last lecture, in the book of judges there is no strong and consistent leadership after the time of Joshua. There are judges who have short term victories, and who managed to deliver the people of Israel from the hands of their enemies. But no one who is really successful in confronting the spiritual chaos and bringing the tribes of Israel back into a pattern of covenant faithfulness.
The narrative of the last judge actually then begins in 1 Samuel. S the most effective judge of all, and the last judge of all was Samuel. He was also a judge, who settled disputes among the tribes. 1 Sam 7 ‘Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. 16 And he went on a circuit year by year to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah. And he judged Israel in all these places.
But the most outstanding element of samuel's leadership was that he was a prophet. In first Samuel chapter 3 it says
And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord. 21 And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.
And the heart of his prophetic calling was to bring the people back into covenant faithfulness. 7:3
And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” 4 So the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only.
So lets now step back to look at how the idea of leadership in the Torah and the time of the conquest. What we see is that leadership was primarily functional. What I mean to say by this is that leaders was not an identity marker for the nation. What gave Israel their identity was their unique relationship with Yahweh, their status as the chosen people of God, the covenant that God had made with them, and the merciful presence of God himself in their Tabernacle. These are the four pillars of Hebrew identity that we’ve mentioned previously: monotheism, election, Torah, and Tabernacle. Their identity was not rooted in their leaders.
The task of leaders was simply to help the 12 tribes fully become the people that Yahweh had called them to be. They spoke God's word. They settled disputes. When necessary they lead the people in military conquest. And ideally, they gave an example of righteous living and relationship with Yahweh. But again, the identity of the people of Israel was not constituted by its leaders. It was constituted by their relationship with God.
As we look at the historical context of these narratives, we get a better understanding of why Israel was tempted to make their leaders into something God never intended them to be.
When the 12 tribes first came in to the land of Canaan, they were a federation. This is two say that in a political sense they did not have a single king or leader. Each tribe had its own leadership structure, and this was supplemented by the roll of the different judges. In the broader Geo political context, this was a good time for the 12 tribes to occupy the land of Canaan. In the centuries previous to the conquest, this territory had been under the authority of egypt. For more than 300 years during the late bronze and early iron age, Egypt occupied the land of Cannan. But by the time of Joshua and the judges, egypt is pulling out of the region. So as the 12 tribes began to occupy the land there was little external pressure upon them.
This changed however, in the 12th century BCE, with the incoming migration of the Phillistines. As Egyptian dominance of the region was collapsing, the philistines as well as the Hebrews were attempting to fill in the power vacuum. The conflict with the philistines created external pressure for the tribes of Israel, and when it became clear that the philistines posed a very serious threat to the existence of the 12 tribes - their response was to appoint a king.
So we see in 1 Sam 8: Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
What's very interesting in the subsequent passages of first Samuel is that there seems to be conflicting perspectives regarding this idea of appointing a king.
- 1 Sam 8,seem to take a negative view.
But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
The passage goes on to say that Samuel reported these words to the people of Israel and he warned them that they were making a mistake. He told them that a king would take their property, he would send their children off to war, he would take their daughters away from them, he would take their fields in their orchards, a tenth of their harvest, he would take their servants and their animals. And then he said
And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”[4]
At the end of chap 8, the author reports
But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, 20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” 21 And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord. 22 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey their voice and make them a king
But then in Chapters 9 and 10 we read the account of how Saul was chosen to be the first king of Israel. And here we see a much more positive spin on what was happening.
Ch 9
Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.” 1 Sam 9:16-17
So it seems like there are some tensions between what we read in first Samuel 8, and first Samuel chapters 9 and 10. At first we see that God is hurt by Israel's request for a king. He sees it as a form of rejection. But he agrees to give the people what they asked for in spite of his own and Samuels misgivings.
But then in the next two chapters the idea of appointing Saul almost appears as God's idea. The perspective there is that God had heard their cries and seeing their sufferings and appointed Saul as an act of mercy.
What we need to bear in mind here is that as is the case in many books in the Old Testament, the final product that has come to us was shaped by different hands. This is not a controversial point. In the Torah for example there are comments about Moses’ humility, and his death. Of course Moses would not have written these things about himself.
So it is sometimes the case that different contributors have added material to the text, and in some cases this might result in what appears to be conflicts or tensions in the narrative. For me, this in no way affects the power of the text. Rather it simply reveals that not everyone in Israel had the same perspective on what had happened. One contributor to first Samuel believed that Israel was making a grave mistake by appointing a king. And another contributor tended to think that it was a good thing to have a king, and that it was a sign of God's mercy.
What this says to me is that at this time in israel's history - there was an internal debate around the role of leadership. No one would argue that leadership was unnecessary. As we've noted above leaders were needed to perform essential functions for the people of Israel. They were prophets, who spoke the word of the Lord, they were mangers, they were military leaders, and they were judges who settled disputes. But what we've been very clear to note is that these leaders did not give to Israel a sense of national identity. Their identity was rooted and their relationship with Yahweh alone, and the covenant that they had made with him. Their identity was rooted in the calling that they had received to become a model people through whom blessing would reach the nations and through whom the promise made to Abraham would be fulfilled.
What seems to be happening in the book of first Samuel is that the people of Israel are now asking for something more. They were comparing themselves to other nations who had kings and who - in their view - had a clear identity that emanated from that leader. And so the request for a king really is a way of saying we want a leader so that we can make a name for ourselves. So that we can have a clear sense of who we are. And this seems strangely reminiscent of what had happened at Babel. The people had built a tower as a visible sign of their own power and their own unity and their desire was to make a name for themselves to affirm their identity in their achievements.
If there is a theological lesson that we can draw from these accounts it's this. Yahweh does not want the people of Israel to build their identity on their possessions, on their achievements, on their power, and especially he does not want to build their identity on their leaders. The role of leaders is simply to help the people of Israel fulfil the covenant that they had made with Yahweh. Their identity and their purpose is to be grounded only in their relationship with Yahweh, and to be nourished by the leadership that he himself exercises over their lives.
And that is where we will conclude are reflections on the topic of leadership in the Old Testament. In our next podcast we will look at how things turned out for israel's first king, and then we will also look briefly at the life of the greatest king that Israel ever had, king david.