Читать книгу The Kingdom of God - John Bright - Страница 11

But let us return to Israel as she first emerges into history in the Promised Land in the thirteenth century B.C.

1. It must be understood that the Israel of the early days in Palestine was not at all a nation as we would understand the term. On the contrary, she was a tribal league, a loose confederation of clans united one to another about the worship of the common God.²¹ There was no statehood or central government of any sort. The clans were independent units unto themselves. Within the clans there was recognition of the moral authority of the sheikhs, or elders, but organized authority was lacking. Furthermore, society exhibited no class distinctions, no wide rift between rich and poor, ruler and subject, but that rather complete democracy characteristic of nomad life. The focal point of the clans was the shrine of the Ark, which moved from place to place and finally came to rest in Shiloh (I Sam. 1–4). Here the tribesmen gathered on feast days to seek the presence of their God and to renew their allegiance to him. This tribal structure corresponds perfectly to the covenant-people idea and may be assumed to be an outworking of it. The covenant league was a brotherhood; it was ruled only by the law of the covenant God.

One may best see how the primitive order in Israel operated from a reading of the book of Judges. Here we see the clans maintaining a precarious existence, surrounded by foes but without government, central authority, or state organization of any sort. In times of danger there would arise a hero, one upon whom the spirit of Yahweh rushed (Judg. 3:10; 14:6), called a judge (shôphēṭ). He would rally the surrounding clans and deal with the foe. While his victories no doubt gained him prestige, he was in no sense a king. His authority was neither absolute over all Israel nor permanent; in no case was it hereditary. The battle strength of the judge was the voluntary levy of the clans; he had no standing army, no court, no administrative machinery whatever. His authority rested solely in those dynamic qualities which made him the man of the hour. This type of authority has aptly been called charisma.²² And charisma well represented the primitive theocracy of Israel: it was the direct rule of God over his people through his designated representative.

2. Now this tribal theocracy was an incredibly stubborn and tenacious pattern. It did not give way quickly. The conquest, it is true, led Israel into an entirely new situation. It represented a shift from the nomad to the agrarian life. And while the shift was not at all uniform (on the desert fringe it was never completed), Israel speedily became a nation of small farmers. This meant some economic betterment, as archaeology abundantly shows. Indeed that is why the nomad covets the soil. It also meant the beginning of that long adjustment to the superior material culture—and the religion—of the Canaanites which was to be so portentous for Israel.

But Israel did not at once surrender the old order. On the contrary, for some two hundred years after the conquest (through the period of the judges) the old order persisted. Israel remained a tribal league, a racial (if such a hodgepodge as early Israel could be called a race) and religious unit, not a geographical or political one. The principle of leadership remained the charisma. She did not organize a state or make any move to do so. Specifically, she did not imitate the city-state pattern of Canaan.

Nor was this an accident. On the contrary, the idea of monarchy was consciously rejected. This is illustrated in the words with which stout Gideon spurned a crown: “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you” (Judg. 8:23).²³ It echoes in the fable told by Jotham (Judg. 9:7-21), which makes it plain that only a worthless bramble of a man, who had no useful employment, would aspire to be a king. In both the spirit of old Israel, of the tribal league, speaks. Only in the light of such an ingrained feeling can one understand the conduct of Samuel, himself the father of the monarchy, when the people demanded a king. We hear the old prophet castigate the notion of monarchy as a craven imitation of pagan ways and a flagrant rejection of Yahweh (I Sam. 8).²⁴

3. So might matters have remained indefinitely had not a new menace appeared: the Philistines. Of Aegean origin (cf. Amos 9:7) they were one of the “Peoples of the Sea” who had battered at Egypt’s door during the reigns of Marniptah and Ramesses III. They were a part of a great racial migration (not unconnected with the story of the Iliad) which had overrun all the Hittite Empire and the Syrian coast. Presumably they settled on the coastland of Palestine after their defeat by Ramesses III in 1188 B.C.²⁵ Thus their arrival fell approximately within the half century after that of the Israelites.

The Philistines put charisma to a new and severer test. The Israelite conquest had been possible, humanly speaking, because the Canaanite petty states could offer no unified resistance. And the tribal league had been able to survive in Palestine because its foes—petty kinglets or Bedouin raiders—were such that the informal rally of the clans could deal with them. In short, charisma had survived because Israel had never been called upon to meet a well-organized military state. But the Philistines were just that. They were a tightly-knit, well-armed, disciplined military people. They gradually began to dominate Palestine. It was their aim to inherit the hegemony over the land which had but recently slipped from the hand of the pharaohs.

It was an emergency which threatened Israel with permanent slavery. The decisive blow, of which we read in I Sam. 4, came about 1050 B.C., although border fighting such as that reflected in the Samson stories had been going on for years. It was utter defeat. Israel was cut to pieces; the Ark—the holy object of the covenant league—captured; Hophni and Phinehas, priests of the Ark, killed; and Shiloh with its shrine razed to the ground (as archaeology tells us). It was the deepest military and spiritual humiliation. Thereafter we see Philistine garrisons in the heart of Israel (I Sam. 13:4), and Israel itself disarmed and its war potential destroyed (I Sam. 13:19-23). Charisma had failed; the people of Yahweh were crushed.

4. In the face of this emergency the first step toward statehood was made. It was made with reluctance, and it ended in failure. Now we are neither surprised that it was made nor that this was done reluctantly. It was done, as has been said, out of sheer necessity. The ill-trained, unorganized clan militia could not face the Philistine army. It was a case of do it or be enslaved, and for a freeborn Israelite the choice was clear. Yet this was a hard choice, for it represented a step toward an authority totally foreign to Israel’s tradition. In the light of this tension we may understand the enigmatic figure of Samuel, who appears now as Saul’s patron (I Sam. 9), now as bitterly reluctant (I Sam. 8), and who, when Saul got out of hand, deserts him and breaks him (I Sam. 13:8-15; 15).

Saul is a fascinating figure. Of giant size and fine looks (I Sam. 9:2; 10:23), fiercely courageous (11:1-11), modest (9:21), of magnanimous spirit (11:12-13), there was nevertheless in him the taint of a mental and emotional instability which was his undoing. We cannot here trace his story. The reader will find it in I Sam. 9–31. There he will read of the initial victories (13–14) which broke the Philistine hold on central Palestine; of the break with Samuel, who never did really approve; of that jealousy of David which drove the king to madness and suicide.

Now Saul, although king, was as little a change from the old order as possible. He rose in the old-fashioned way, as a charismatic man upon whom the spirit of Yahweh rushed (I Sam. 11:6-7). Indeed he scarcely differed from the judges at all except that he was acclaimed king²⁶ “for the duration” (11:15), and the “duration” outlasted the life of Saul (14:52). Nor did Saul alter the internal structure of Israel. While he no doubt made some effort to weld Israel together more tightly,²⁷ in no sense did he create a state. He had no administrative machinery, levied no taxes, and his court was so modest it hardly deserves the name (I Sam. 22:6). It is true that he began to gather about him a bodyguard of tough soldiers (14:52), but, although this was an innovation that had in it the seeds of a standing army, it could hardly be regarded as more than plain military necessity. And when Saul died a suicide on the field of Gilboa (I Sam.31), all that he had worked for was lost. His army was dispersed, his three sons were slain and their bodies, together with his own, shamefully exposed, while the one surviving son—Ish-baal (Ish-bosheth)—fled as a refugee east of the Jordan (II Sam. 2:8-10). The Philistines regained control, and their garrisons were once more to be seen in the land (II Sam. 23:14). Night had returned to Israel.