Samuel's Academy of the Prophets became much more formalized, with at least three branches at one time, becoming more like a College of Prophets. It was they who wrote Samuel and Kings. The various royal court recorders gave us the Chronicles, which covers the same time frame. We note the College of Prophets did not require being spiritual, only committed, and capable of grasping some subtle nuances in what appears to have become a code of ethics, morals and practices. These were based on the rituals explained by Moses. Signs from God were granted according to the Law. In other words, having a professional class of prophets was a natural extension of the Covenant.
Unfortunately, the leaders of Israel didn't always pay attention to these prophets, spiritual or unspiritual. David pacified the nation's borders, amassed a pile of materials for the Temple, and gave his royal heir everything possible. Solomon began deeply spiritual, and knew enough to ask for a miraculous measure of wisdom. After a lifetime of writing some of the greatest material in the Bible, he still failed to put that wisdom in practice. Instead he chased skirts like his father, and allowed his wives to corrupt his loyalty to God. While his Temple was a huge drain on the people in terms of forced labor, it was acceptable. His equally painful continuation building up his palace and fortress was foolish. Worst of all, he introduced banking and credit into the kingdom. In the end, he dies a complete fool, deeply swayed by demons.
His profligate and crushing taxation was the basis for God calling up the chief political leader of the Northern Tribes to prepare his heart to obey God and receive a throne. We are aware there had long been a cultural division between the more cynically secular-idolatrous North and the prissy and pretentious religious South. Solomon's son was completely lacking in wisdom and gave Jeroboam the excuse he needed to make the break formal. Then the north promptly went officially pagan.
The North remained rather contentious until the Omride Dynasty, at the peak of which Ahab ruled long and wise, but deeply compromised and demon-possessed. In the end, the alliance between Israel and Syria was their doom, because Assyria was more than their match. Indeed, were it not for God's eternal purpose regardless of Judah's sins, she would have been swallowed up by Assyria, too. Sadly, that protection became the smug over-reliance on the presence of the Temple -- "God's Own House" -- which ended in another long reigning pagan king, Manasseh. His sins brought the final doom from Babylon, though not immediately.
A thousand compromises color this long decline. Solomon brought in horses, savvy political alliances with pagan nations, the rise of oppressive credit practices, and a sickening level of urbanity and silly emulation of the worst practices of the nations prophets condemned. Several prophets make much of exploiting the politically powerless peasantry. It was a major sin to leave behind the primitive tribal existence for high culture and high finance. The clan leaders fancied themselves nobility without actually being very noble. If people would open their eyes, they would realize the prophets condemned most of what we associate with "free market capitalism," though it's evil to demand we must then choose socialism. A primitive tribal economy and polity avoids the necessity of either extreme, because that false dichotomy is itself founded on removing all things into the impersonal realm, and destroying the familial ties inherent in tribal living. Families are neither left or right, but simply family. In essence, that root element of Lawful society was pushed aside.
God's polity is tribal; family is everything. God's economics are the personal thrift and gift economy. The person is central to everything, and everything is personal. Contract commerce, displacing the persons with a legal fiction of property as persons, remains today the cornerstone of greed and hatred. All the changes we see as Israel united, then divided, and finally Judah alone, slide down that long slope into avoiding personal responsibility and accountability. They become so very worldly wise in aping the worst failures, letting the gentle sweet whispers of demons reshape their society into just another ancient nation surviving only because God refuses to give up.
The Northern Tribes were lost, cut out of the Covenant. Judah was carried off to another land. To top it all off, the very worst of changes in their national character are yet to come.
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By Ed Hurst
30 April 2009
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