_ADMINISTRATION OF THE KINGDOM._
2 SAMUEL viii. 15-18.
If the records of David's warlike expeditions are brief, still
more so are the notices of his work of peace. How he fulfilled his
royal functions when there was no war to draw him from home, and to
engross the attention both of the king and his officers of state, is
told us here in the very briefest terms, barely affording even the
outline of a picture. Yet it is certain that the activity of David's
character, his profound interest in the welfare of his people, and
his remarkable talent for administration, led in this department to
very conspicuous and remarkable results. Some of the Psalms afford
glimpses both of the principles on which he acted, and the results
at which he aimed, that are fitted to be of much use in filling up
the bare skeleton now before us. In this point of view, the subject
may become interesting and instructive, as undoubtedly it is highly
important. For we must remember that it was with reference to the
spirit in which he was to rule that David was called the man after
God's heart, and that he formed such a contrast to his predecessor.
And further we are to bear in mind that in respect of the moral and
spiritual qualities of his reign David had for his Successor the Lord
Jesus Christ. "The Lord God will give unto Him the throne of His
servant David," said the angel Gabriel to Mary, "and He shall reign
over the house of Judah for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be
no end." It becomes us to make the most of what is told us of the
peaceful administration of David's kingdom, in order to understand
the grounds on which our Lord is said to have occupied His throne.
The first statement in the verses before us is comprehensive and
suggestive: "And David reigned over all Israel; and David executed
judgment and justice unto all his people." The first thing pointed
out to us here is the catholicity of his kingly government, embracing
_all_ Israel, _all_ people. He did not bestow his attention on one
favoured section of the people, to the neglect or careless oversight
of the rest. He did not, for example, seek the prosperity of his own
tribe, Judah, to the neglect of the other eleven. In a word, there was
no favouritism in his reign. This is not to say that he did not like
some of his subjects better than the rest. There is every reason to
believe that he liked the tribe of Judah best. But whatever preferences
of this kind he may have had--and he would not have been man if he
had had none--they did not limit or restrict his royal interest; they
did not prevent him from seeking the welfare of every portion of the
land, of every section of the people. Just as, in the days when he was
a shepherd, there were probably some of his sheep and lambs for which
he had a special affection, yet that did not prevent him from studying
the welfare of the whole flock and of every animal in it with most
conscientious care; so was it with his people. The least interesting of
them were sacred in his eyes. They were part of his charge, and they
were to be studied and cared for in the same manner as the rest. In
this he reflected that universality of God's care on which we find the
Psalmist dwelling with such complacency: "The Lord is good to all; and
His tender mercies are over all His works. The eyes of all wait upon
Thee; and Thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest Thine
hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing." And may we not
add that this quality of David's rule foreshadowed the catholicity of
Christ's kingdom and His glorious readiness to bestow blessing on every
side? "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will
give you rest." "On the last, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood
and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." "Where
there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond
nor free; but Christ is all and in all." "Ye are all one in Christ
Jesus."
In the next place, we have much to learn from the statement that the
most prominent thing that David did was to "execute judgment and
justice to the people." That was the solid foundation on which all
his benefits rested. And these words are not words of form or words
of course. For it is never said that Saul did anything of the kind.
There is nothing to show that Saul was really interested in the
welfare of the people, or that he took any pains to secure that just
and orderly administration on which the prosperity of his kingdom
depended. And most certainly they are not words that could have been
used of the ordinary government of Oriental kings. Tyranny, injustice,
oppression, robbery of the poor by the rich, government by favourites
more cruel and unprincipled than their masters, imprisonments, fines,
conspiracies, and assassinations, were the usual features of Eastern
government. And to a great extent they are features of the government
of Syria and other Eastern countries even at the present day. It
is in vivid contrast to all these things that it is said, "David
executed judgment and justice." Perhaps there is no need for assigning
a separate meaning to each of these words; they may be regarded as
just a forcible combination to denote the all-pervading justice which
was the foundation of the whole government. He was just in the laws
which he laid down, and just in the decisions which he gave. He was
inaccessible to bribes, proof against the influence of the rich and
powerful, and deaf in such matters to every plea of expediency; he
regarded nothing but the scales of justice. What confidence and comfort
an administration of this kind brought may in some measure be inferred
from the extraordinary satisfaction of many an Eastern people at this
day when the administration of justice is committed even to foreigners,
if their one aim will be to deal justly with all. On this foundation,
as on solid rock, a ruler may go on to devise many things for the
welfare of his people. But apart from this any scheme of general
improvement which may be devised is sure to be a failure, and all the
money and wisdom and practical ability that may be expended upon it
will only share the fate of the numberless cart-loads of solid material
in the "Pilgrim's Progress" that were cast into the Slough of Despond.
This idea of equal justice to all, and especially to those who had no
helper, was a very beautiful one in David's eyes. It gathered round it
those bright and happy features which in the seventy-second Psalm are
associated with the administration of another King. "Give the king Thy
judgments, O God, and Thy righteousness to the king's son. He shall
judge Thy people with righteousness, and Thy poor with judgment." The
beauty of a just government is seen most clearly in its treatment of
the poor. It is the poor who suffer most from unrighteous rulers. Their
feebleness makes them easier victims. Their poverty prevents them from
dealing in golden bribes. If they have little individually wherewith
to enrich the oppressor, their numbers make up for the small share of
each. Very beautiful, therefore, is the government of the king who
"shall judge the poor of the people, who shall save the children of the
needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor." The thought is one on
which the Psalmist dwells with great delight. "He shall deliver the
needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He
shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.
He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence, and precious shall
their blood be in his sight." So far from need and poverty repelling
him, they rather attract him. His interest and his sympathy are moved
by the cry of the destitute. He would fain lighten the burdens that
weigh them down so heavily, and give them a better chance in the
struggle of life. He would do something to elevate their life above the
level of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. He recognises fully
the brotherhood of man.
And in all this we find the features of that higher government of
David's Son which shows so richly His most gracious nature. The cry
of sorrow and need, as it rose from this dark world, did not repel,
but rather attracted, Him. Though the woes of man sprang from his own
misdeeds, He gave Himself to bear them and carry their guilt away.
All were in the lowest depths of spiritual poverty, but for that
reason His hand was the more freely offered for their help. The one
condition on which that help was given was, that they should own
their poverty, and acknowledge Him as their Benefactor, and accept
all as a free gift at His hands.
But more than that, the condition of the poor in the natural sense
was very interesting to Jesus. It was with that class He threw in
His lot. It was among them He lived; it was their sorrows and trials
He knew by personal experience; it was their welfare for which He
laboured most. Always accessible to every class, most respectful
to the rich, and ever ready to bestow His blessings wherever they
were prized, yet it was true of Christ that "He spared the poor and
needy and saved the souls of the needy." And in a temporal point
of view, one of the most striking effects of Christ's religion is,
that it has so benefited, and tends still more to benefit, the poor.
Slavery and tyranny are among its most detested things. Regard for
man as man is one of its highest principles. It detects the spark of
Divinity in every human soul, grievously overlaid with the scum and
filth of the world; and it seeks to cleanse and brighten it, till
it shine forth in clear and heavenly lustre. It is a most Christian
thought that the gems in the kingdom of God are not to be found
merely where respectability and culture disguise the true spiritual
condition of humanity, but even among those who outwardly are lost
and disreputable. Not the least honourable of the reproachful terms
applied to Jesus was--"the Friend of publicans and sinners."
We are not to think of David, however, as being satisfied if he
merely secured justice to the poor and succeeded in lightening their
yoke. His ulterior aim was to fill his kingdom with active, useful,
honourable citizens. This is plain from the beautiful language of
some of the Psalms. Both for old and young, he had a beautiful
ideal. "The righteous shall flourish as the palm tree; he shall
grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of
the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still
bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing"
(Ps. xcii. 12-14). And so for the young his desire was--"That our
sons may be as plants, grown up in their youth; that our daughters
may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace."
Moral beauty, and especially the beauty of active and useful lives,
was the great object of his desire. Can anything be better or more
enlightened as a royal policy than that which we thus see to have
been David's--in the first place, a policy of universal justice; in
the second place, of special regard for those who on the one hand are
most liable to oppression and on the other are most in need of help
and encouragement; and in the third place, a policy whose aim is to
promote excellence of character, and to foster in the young those
graces and virtues which wear longest, which preserve the freshness
and enjoyment of life to the end, and which crown their possessors,
even in old age, with the respect and the affection of all?
The remaining notices of David's administration in the passage before
us are simply to the effect that the government consisted of various
departments, and that each department had an officer at its head.
1. There was the military department, at the head of which was Joab,
or rather he was over "the host"--the great muster of the people
for military purposes. A more select body, "the Cherethites and the
Pelethites," seems to have formed a bodyguard for the king, or a band
of household troops, and was under a separate commander. The troops
forming "the host" were divided into twelve courses of twenty-four
thousand each, regularly officered, and for one month of the year the
officers of one of the courses, and probably the people, or some of
them, attended on the king at Jerusalem (1 Chron. xxvii. 1). Of the
most distinguished of his soldiers who excelled in feats of personal
valour, David seems to have formed a legion of honour, conspicuous
among whom were the thirty honourable, and the three who excelled in
honour (2 Sam. xxiii. 28). It is certain that whatever extra power
could be given by careful organization to the fighting force of the
country, the army of Israel under David possessed it in the fullest
degree.
2. There was the civil department, at the head of which were
Jehoshaphat the recorder and Seraiah the scribe or secretary. While
these were in attendance on David at Jerusalem, they did not supersede
the ordinary home rule of the tribes of Israel. Each tribe had still
its prince or ruler, and continued, under a general superintendence
from the king, to conduct its local affairs (1 Chron. xxvii. 16-22).
The supreme council of the nation continued to assemble on occasions
of great national importance (1 Chron. xxviii. 1), and though its
influence could not have been so great as it was before the institution
of royalty, it continued an integral element of the constitution, and
in the time of Rehoboam, through its influence and organization (1
Kings xii. 3, 16), the kingdom of the ten tribes was set up, almost
without a struggle (1 Chron. xxiii. 4). This home-rule system, besides
interesting the people greatly in the prosperity of the country,
was a great check against the abuse of the royal authority; and it
is a proof that the confidence of Rehoboam in the stability of his
government, confirmed perhaps by a superstitious view of that promise
to David, must have been an absolute infatuation, the product of utter
inexperience on his part, and of the most foolish counsel ever tendered
by professional advisers.
3. Ecclesiastical administration. The capture of Jerusalem and its
erection into the capital of the kingdom made a great change in
ecclesiastical arrangements. For some time before it would have been
hard to tell where the ecclesiastical capital was to be found. Shiloh
had been stripped of its glory when Ichabod received his name, and
the Philistine armies destroyed the place. Nob had shared a similar
fate at the hands of Saul. The old tabernacle erected by Moses in
the wilderness was at Gibeon (1 Chron. xxi. 29), and remained there
even after the removal of the ark to Zion (1 Kings iii. 4). At
Hebron, too, there must have been a shrine while David reigned there.
But from the time when David brought up the ark to Jerusalem, that
city became the greatest centre of the national worship. There the
services enjoined by the law of Moses were celebrated; it became the
scene of the great festivals of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.
We are told that the heads of the ecclesiastical department were
Zadok the son of Ahitub and Ahimelech the son of Abiathar. These
represented the elder and the younger branches of the priesthood.
Zadok was the lineal descendant of Eleazar, Aaron's son (1 Chron.
vi. 12), and was therefore the constitutional successor to the
high-priesthood. Ahimelech the son of Abiathar represented the
family of Eli, who seems to have been raised to the high-priesthood
out of order, perhaps in consequence of the illness or incompetence
of the legitimate high-priest. It is of some interest to note the
fact that under David two men were at the head of the priesthood,
much as it was in the days of our Lord, when Annas and Caiaphas are
each called the high-priest. The ordinary priests were divided into
four-and-twenty courses, and each course served in its turn for a
limited period, an arrangement which still prevailed in the days of
Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. A systematic arrangement
of the Levites was likewise made; some were allocated to the service
of the Temple, some were porters, some were singers, and some were
officers and judges. Of the six thousand who filled the last-named
office, "chief fathers" as they were called, nearly a half were
allocated among the tribes east of the Jordan, as being far from the
centre, and more in need of oversight. It is probable that this large
body of Levites were not limited to strictly judicial duties, but
that they performed important functions in other respects, perhaps as
teachers, physicians, and registrars. It is not said that Samuel's
schools of the prophets received any special attention, but the deep
interest that David must have taken in Samuel's work, and his early
acquaintance with its effects, leave little room to doubt that these
institutions were carefully fostered, and owed to David some share of
the vitality which they continued to exhibit in the days of Elijah
and Elisha. It is very probable that the prophets Gad and Nathan were
connected with these institutions.
It is scarcely possible to say how far these careful ecclesiastical
arrangements were instrumental in fostering the spirit of genuine
piety. But there is too much reason to fear that even in David's time
that element was very deficient. The bursts of religious enthusiasm
that occasionally rolled over the country were no sure indications of
piety in a people easily roused to temporary gushes of feeling, but
deficient in stability. There often breathes in David's psalms a sense
of loneliness, a feeling of his being a stranger on the earth, that
seems to show that he wanted congenial company, that the atmosphere was
not of the godly quality he must have wished. The bloody Joab was his
chief general, and at a subsequent period the godless Ahithophel was
his chief counsellor. It is even probable that the intense piety of
David brought him many secret enemies. The world has no favour for men,
be they kings or priests, that repudiate all compromise in religion,
and insist on God being regarded with supreme and absolute honour.
Where religion interferes with their natural inclinations and lays them
under inviolable obligations to have regard to the will of God, they
rebel in their hearts against it, and they hate those who consistently
uphold its claims. The nation of Israel appears to have been pervaded
by an undercurrent of dislike to the eminent holiness of David, which,
though kept in check by his distinguished services and successes, at
last burst out with terrific violence in the rebellion of Absalom. That
villainous movement would not have had the vast support it received,
especially in Jerusalem, if even the people of Judah had been saturated
with the spirit of genuine piety. We cannot think much of the piety of
a people that rose up against the sweet singer of Israel and the great
benefactor of the nation, and that seemed to anticipate the cry, "Not
this man, but Barabbas."
The systematic administration of his kingdom by King David was the
fruit of a remarkable faculty of orderly arrangement that belonged
to most of the great men of Israel. We see it in Abraham, in his
prompt and successful marshalling of his servants to pursue and
attack the kings of the East when they carried off Lot; we see it in
Joseph, first collecting and then distributing the stores of food in
Egypt; in Moses, conducting that marvellous host in order and safety
through the wilderness; and, in later times, in Ezra and Nehemiah,
reducing the chaos which they found at Jerusalem to a state of order
and prosperity which seemed to verify the vision of the dry bones.
We see it in the Son of David, in the orderly way in which all His
arrangements were made: the sending forth of the twelve Apostles and
the seventy disciples, the arranging of the multitude when He fed the
five thousand, and the careful gathering up of the fragments "that
nothing be lost." In the spiritual kingdom, a corresponding order is
demanded, and times of peace and rest in the Church are times when this
development is specially to be studied. Spiritual order, spiritual
harmony: God in His own place, and self, with all its powers and
interests, as well as our brethren, our neighbours, and the world,
all in their's--this is the great requisite in the individual heart.
The development of this holy order in the _individual_ soul; the
development of _family_ graces, the due Christian ordering of homes;
the development of _public_ graces--patriotism, freedom, godliness, in
the State, and in the Church of the spirit that seeks the instruction
of the ignorant, the recovery of the erring, the comforting of the
wretched, and the advancement everywhere of the cause of Christ--in
a word, the increase of spiritual wealth--these very specially are
objects to which in all times, but especially in quiet times, all
hearts and energies should be turned. What can be more honourable,
what can be more blessed, than to help in advancing these? More life,
more grace, more prayer, more progress, more missionary ardour, more
self-denying love, more spiritual beauty--what higher objects can the
Christian minister aim at? And how better can the Christian king or
the Christian statesman fulfil and honour his office than by using his
influence, so far as he legitimately may, in furthering the virtues and
habits characteristic of men that fear God while they honour the king?