This paper examines some ways the Old Testament narrative accounts of Israel’s monarchy have, and might continue to, contribute to western political theology. Mostly, the narratives of Israel’s great kings have been used as exemplars of what righteous political rule should be like. There are plentiful examples. As we saw recently, English monarchs continue to be coronated in ceremonies that draw explicitly on Solomon’s anointing. They are anointed with oil and crowned as “defender of the faith” to Handel’s resounding anthem, Zadok the Priest. Josiah was a popular model amongst the magisterial reformers to show the way God’s appointed monarch should exercise authority over ecclesiastical matters. Edward VI was framed precisely as a new Josiah for this reason. But Josiah’s reforms were also appropriated by more radical branches of the reformation to justify the destruction of property and dethroning rulers, in order to establish a more pure form of Christendom. The pilgrim settlers in the Americas also looked to Josiah, both as a model of how righteous political society should function, and the manner in which heathens and apostates should be dealt with. The US ideal of the “city on the hill,” a common motif in political discourse since that time, originates from the idea that righteous civil society is a real possibility, modelled after the reforms of the righteous Israelite monarchs.
The common thread across a wide variety of western cultures over a long historical period is a hermeneutic that appropriates Israel’s story as a model for Christian society, and the righteous Old Testament kings as a paradigm for Christian rule. But a more nuanced reading of both Kings and Chronicles, within a Biblical Theological framework, would question such appropriation. I explore some ways that the narratives of Kings and Chronicles frame the question of the Kingdom of God, as the kingdom promised to David, both in relation to internal political structures and external political threats. The concern of both books, in different ways, is twofold. First, they show that political power cannot establish a righteous kingdom, no matter how well intentioned. The narrative histories of Israel do not support most expressions of Christian nationalism. Second, they show it is feasible for the promised kingdom to be expressed within the realpolitik of this world in various modes, with or without political power. The powerless, underground Afghani churches are no less valid expressions of the kingdom promised to David, than the Zambian nation who are constitutionally Christian. Even though Israel’s histories expect the realisation of a Kingdom of God ruled by an anointed King, they allow in the meantime an expression of it administered by Babylon and Persia, a kingdom “not of this world.”