Covenant Love: Introducing the Biblical Worldview
Lesson Five:
A Throne For All Generations
Lesson Objectives
1. To finish reading the Old Testament (from Joshua to Malachi) and to read with understanding.
2. To understand the broad outlines of the history of Israel in light of God's covenant with Abraham.
3. To appreciate the crucial importance of God's everlasting covenant with David.
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Lesson Outline:
I. Review and Overview
II. Entering the Promised Land
a. Joshua at Jericho
b. Barbs and Thorns Remain
c. Judging By Their Weakness
d. Born in Bethlehem
III. The Rights and Wrongs of Kings
a. Hannah the Handmaid
b. Making a Monarchy
IV. Israel's Shepherd - Priest and King
a. The Lord's Anointed
b. Capitalizing Jerusalem
c. An Everlasting Covenant
d. Abraham's Covenant Remembered
V. Entering the Kingdom
a. The Shape of Things Under Solomon
b. Psalms and Wisdom
VI. Two Nations Under God
a. North-South Divide
b. Raising Prophets
c. Good Kings, Bad Kings
d. Punished by Babylon
e. Writing in Exile
VII. After the Exile
a. Restoration and Rebuilding
b. Persecution and Revolt
c. Hasmonean Times
d. The Consolation of Israel
VIII. Study Questions
I. Review and Overview
With this lesson we reach the summit of the Old Testament - God's promise of an everlasting Kingdom to David.
As we will see, the covenant with David is in the near background of every page of the rest of the Bible - indeed, until into the last page of the Book of Revelation, where Jesus reveals that He is "the root and offspring of David," promised in the covenant (see Revelation 22:16).
It will be useful, then, before we consider the Davidic Covenant, to try to summarize what we've been trying to accomplish in this course.
We've said that the story of the Bible is a history of salvation - of God's desire and plan to bestow His blessing, the gift of His divine life, on all creation.
As The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it: "From the beginning until the end of time the whole of God's work is a blessing. From the liturgical poem of the first creation to the canticles of the heavenly Jerusalem, the inspired authors proclaim the plan of salvation as one vast divine blessing" (see no. 1079).
As it unfolds in the words of the inspired authors, God's plan of salvation, His work of blessing, unfolds in a sequence of covenants.
The premise of this course is that in studying these covenants we enter into the heart of the "biblical worldview" - the way God intends us to understand the history and destiny of the world and our individual lives (see "The Covenant Principle: Testimony from Scripture and Tradition" in our first lesson).
Put another way: The covenants reveal who God is, who we are, the meaning of our individual lives, and the destiny of our lives together as members of the human race. God relates to His people - the whole human race - and to each one of us, individually, by means of covenant.
This premise is reflected even in the division of the Bible into "old" and "new" testaments, a word that means covenant.
We have identified five covenants in the Old Testament - with Adam and creation, with Noah, with Abraham and his seed, with Moses and Israel, and finally, with David and the Kingdom of all Israel.
In a sense, these covenants are all aspects of a single covenant - what the prophet Daniel calls God's "merciful covenant" (see Daniel 9:4,27; 11:30,32), what the Bible's last book calls the "everlasting good news [gospel] to...those who dwell on earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue and people" (see Revelation 14:6).
The covenant begins with the blessing of all living beings, and especially Adam and Eve (see Genesis 1:28), the representatives of the human race. This covenant is renewed in the covenant with Noah (see Genesis 6:18, 9:9,11).
With Abraham the covenant is given a historical focus, a trajectory that points it toward a future in which all nations will be blessed (see Genesis 17:2,4,7). The covenant with Israel is made to fulfill God's "holy word to His servant Abraham" (see Psalm 105:8-12,42). And as we'll see in this lesson, God's covenant with David is made to renew and fulfill the promise to Abraham.
What is God's purpose with His covenant? To bless the human race, transforming into a single family of God, to make each individual what Adam was intended to be - a son of God the Most High, heir to the kingdom of heaven, a ruler of creation, a "priest" who sees his or her life as a work of worship and thanksgiving, a sacrifice of praise.
The language of the covenant in the Old Testament is "marital" or "nuptial" - God swears Himself to be the people's God and the people swear to be His people (see Leviticus 26:12; Deuteronomy 29:12).
Like marriage vows in the human sphere, the Bible's covenants create a family.
We see this from the very start - Adam and Eve are to "fill the earth" with their children (see Genesis 1:27). This mandate is renewed in the covenant with Noah (see Genesis 9:1,9). Likewise, Abraham is called to be "the father of a host of nations" (see Genesis 17:4; 22:17-18). By His covenant with Moses, God established Israel as His "first-born son" through whom all the peoples of the world would be blessed (see Exodus 4:22).
The covenant unions God establishes are meant to extend His blessings, His family to the ends of the earth. All this comes into sharp focus with the story of the Davidic Kingdom.
But before we consider the Kingdom, we need to pick up where we left off in the story of our salvation.
II. Entering the Promised Land
a. Joshua at Jericho
We pick up the story with the career of Joshua, Moses' hand-picked successor (Deuteronomy 31:14-15,23; 34:9).
The Book of Joshua is a bridge between the Pentateuch (the name given to the five books of Moses - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and the remainder of the Old Testament.
Joshua leads the people across the Jordan and, in a series of campaigns against the Canaanite kings (see Joshua 1-12), lays claim to much of the land God promised first to Abraham and again to Moses and the Israelites (see Genesis 17:8; Exodus 3:8).
His most famous battle was no battle at all - the siege of Jericho (Joshua 6). We all know the story: For six days the Israelites marched around the city with seven priests in the lead, carrying the Ark of the Covenant which God had ordered Moses to build at Sinai to be with the people in their wanderings (see Exodus 25:10, 21-22; Numbers 10:22; 14:44). On the seventh day, they marched around around the city seven final times, then blew a horn, gave a loud shout and watched as the walls of Jericho collapsed.
This was to be emblematic of the character of the Israelites' conquest of the Promised Land. At every stage, it was to be won, not by military might, but by priestly and religious means.
As the Israelites were led out of Egypt across the dry bed of the Red Sea, led by the pillar of cloud, the presence of God, so Joshua leds the people across the dry land of the Jordan, behind the Ark of God's presence (see Exodus 12-14; Joshua 3:13-14). Their crossing takes place in the same month as the Exodus (see Joshua 3:15; 5:10) and - again as with Moses and the Exodus - they're circumcised and celebrate the Passover before crossing the waters (see Joshua 5).
The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord is crucial to the religious character of Joshua's mission. As you will notice throughout the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings and Chronicles, the Ark is a defining symbol of God's election of Israel as His chosen people.
The Ark contained signs of God's covenant with Moses - the tablets of the Law, the staff of Aaron, some manna from the wilderness (see Hebrews 9:4). It was God's dwelling place, the sign of His real presence among the Israelites.
But notice that already in Joshua, the Ark is not merely the sign of Israel's "tribal" or "national" deity. It is a sign of the Lord of the Universe, of the one God who wants to dwell with all peoples.
As Joshua says: "This is how you will know that there is a living God in your midst...The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of the whole earth will precede you into the Jordan" (see Joshua 3:10-11).
b. Barbs and Thorns Remain
Despite Joshua's victories, at the time of his death, Israel had conquered much - but not all - of the promised land (see Judges 1:27-36; 3:1-6).
This failure to secure the entire land will become a decisive factor in the subsequent history of the God's people.
God had ordered Israel to drive out all the inhabitants of Canaan and to destroy all their idols (see Numbers 33:50-52). If any Canaanites were permitted to remain, God warned, they would become "as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides....and I will treat you as I had intended to treat them" (see Numbers 33:55-56).
We're often troubled and find it difficult to comprehend how God could order or permit the Israelites to wage ethnic genocide against the peoples living in the Promised Land (see Deuteronomy 20:16-17).
Mass murder, of course, is not God's way. What we see in these commands is an example of the divine Father's reluctant concession, His sorrowful accommodation to His first-born son's spiritual weakness.
Later, under the monarchy of David and Solomon and word of the prophets, Israel's true character will be revealed - a people living among the nations as a sign of God's providence and wisdom, a people sent to teach and convert the nations to the ways of the living God.
But at this early stage in their history, God knew that His chosen children weren't ready, spiritually or morally, to live among the idolatrous pagans across the Jordan. He knew they could never live among them without succumbing to idolatry themselves (see Deuteronomy 20:18).
c. Judging By Their Weakness
The history we read in the Book of Judges bears this out.
The "plot" of Judges pivots on the Israelites' repeated fall into the snare of idolatry, their giving in to the worship of the gods of the Canaanites. The entire book, in fact, is built on this "testing" of Israel's faithfulness to its covenant with God.
The narrator of Judges tells us that God allowed the pagans to remain in the Promised Land precisely to test Israel's faithfulness to its covenant - "so that through them [the pagans left in the land] He might....put Israel to the test, to determine whether they would obey the commandments the Lord had enjoined on their fathers through Moses" (see Judges 3:1,4).
Joshua had foreseen Israel's weakness. At the end of his life, like Moses, he called on Israel to renew its covenant with God (see Joshua 24:13-28). He told the people they must choose - "decide today whom you will serve - the gods your fathers served beyond the river [Jordan] or the gods of the Amorites in whose countries you are dwelling" (see Joshua 24:15).
But like Moses, Joshua also predicted they wouldn't be able to keep the covenant (see Joshua 24:19; compare Deuteronomy 31:16,24-29).
He was right. Israel failed the test. That's the message of Judges. That's why the history we read there seems to repeat itself in a sad cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, forgiveness, and backsliding into sin again.
d. Born in Bethlehem
But even in the midst of the corruption and weakness of His people, God continued unfolding His saving plan. That's what we learn from the Book of Ruth, a slice-of-life story from "the time of the judges" (see Ruth 1:1).
Ruth appears at this point in the canon of the Bible as if to remind us that, beneath the big political and military events of Israel's history, God was still working quietly, in the hidden lives of ordinary people - non-Israelites even - to fulfill His covenant promises.
During Joshua's conquest of the Promised Land, God used Rahab - a pagan and a woman and a harlot to boot - to ensure the success of His plan (see Joshua 2; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25). And during the time of the judges, God again resorts to a pagan woman, the servant girl Ruth, to advance the objectives of His saving plan - in a way that also involves Rahab again.
Rahab had the faith to recognize the Israelites' God as the true God (see Joshua 2:11; 6:25). Similarly, Ruth vows herself to the Israelites' God, using covenantal language - "Your people shall be my people and your God my God" (see Ruth 1:16).
Ruth marries Boaz, a righteous man from Bethlehem who, as it turns out, is the son of Rahab (see Ruth 1:1,19; Matthew 1:5-6). Ruth bears Boaz a son, Obed, who will become the father of Jesse. "Jesse, as the last line of the book tells us, "became the father of David" (see Ruth 4:17,22).
This is the first mention of David in the Bible.
III. The Rights and Wrongs of Kings
a. Hannah the Handmaid
The establishment of the eternal kingdom of David, which occupies the rest of Bible - including the New Testament - is prepared by Samuel, the last of Israel's judges.
Samuel is born in a time of political and moral chaos best reflected by the refrain of Judges - "in those days there was no king in Israel - everyone did what he thought best" (see Judges 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25).
Israel's infidelity, symbolized by the corruption of Eli's priesthood (see 1 Samuel 2:12-17, 27-36; 3:11-14) is punished by the attack of the Philistines, who kill 4,000 Israelites, including Eli's wicked sons, Hophni and Phineas, and carry off the Ark of the Covenant. Upon hearing of the Ark's theft, Eli topples back in his chair and breaks his neck and dies (see 1 Samuel 4).
Eli is succeeded by Samuel, born in answer to a barren woman's prayers and consecrated to God (see 1 Samuel 1).
Samuel's faithful mother, Hannah, prepares the way for Mary, the mother of Jesus (see Catechism, no. 489). Three times, Hannah describes herself as the Lord's "handmaid," using the same term that Mary will use in vowing to bear Jesus (see 1 Samuel 1:11,16; Luke 1:38). In Mary's great song, the Magnificat, we will hear numerous echoes of Hannah's hymn of thanksgiving (compare 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Luke 1:46-55).
b. Making a Monarchy
Hannah's son Samuel grows up to be a good and holy man who succeeds in turning "the whole Israelite population" back to the Lord (see 1 Samuel 7:2-3).
But in his old age, the people demand that he appoint them a king "as the other nations have" (see 1 Samuel 8:5).
Israel's request is sinful, blasphemous. It shows that they still have not embraced their special character as God's chosen people, His first-born son.
"It is not you they reject," God tells Samuel. "They are rejecting Me as their king" (see 1 Samuel 8:7; 12:12,17,19-20).
Moses had predicted that the people would want a king. He even made provisions so that any Israelite king might truly serve God's purposes - requiring especially that the king copy the entire Law of God and read it every day for the rest of His life (see Deuteronomy 17:14-20).
The Israelites, however, aren't looking for a godly king. They tell Samuel they want one "to lead us in warfare and fight our battles" (see 1 Samuel 8:19-20). They don't mention God or worship and they seem to have utterly forgotten Israel's original charter to be a holy, priestly people (see Exodus 19:5-6).
In Saul, they get the kind of king they want, a man after their own heart - a warrior-king skilled in battle but with no concern for right worship or the commandments of God. Symbolically, during his first campaign Saul ignores Samuel's instructions and offers priestly sacrifices himself - something that God presumably didn't want His kings doing (see 1 Samuel 13:8-13).
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