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[First posted on April Fools Day, 2015; as the song goes, “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Ponder this.
We have always wondered: Why is the One True God, YHWH, threatened by “other gods” when no such gods exist? Our answer: because the one created being made in His Image has the propensity to invent gods or make himself a god. Yes, there is no competition when no gods exist, but the problem is YHWH has to compete with non-existent gods in the mind and heart of the only sentient creature who is able to willfully worship something, if not himself. So where does that leave the One True God? Competing with none-gods! What a conundrum.
One of our favorite attributions to Jesus when we were still Christians was “KING of Kings” and “LORD of Lords,” demonstrating that while there are human powers and authorities, i.e. kings and lords who rule known kingdoms of the world, there is Someone who is both human and divine who is above all human kings and lords. That’s overstating the obvious, at least from the Christian perspective.
Little did we know the True God was competing with another God for our recognition and worship of Him! As Sinaites, we now embrace the God of Israel, YHWH, as our God, our Lord, and our King. He is ONE as in ALONE, and not a Trinitarian Godhead whose configuration is confusing — three thrones for three persons or three persons sharing one throne? There is only One Throne for the one and only King and Ruler of the universe.
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This is Chapter 9 of Jon D. Levenson’s MUST READ/MUST OWN Sinai and Zion. Reformatted with highlights added.–Admin1]
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In our analysis of Israelite monotheism, we identified two themes that can be termed royal in nature, a general one and a specific one.
- The general theme is that —
YHWH is king and that all other beings, including the other gods, are therefore subordinate to him.
The comparative materials suggest that nothing in this notion of the kingship of YHWH, of divine sovereignty, conflicts with the idea of human kingship. On the contrary, just as the story of Marduk’s assumption of sovereignty did not undermine the kings of his city, Babylon, so did YHWH’s sovereignty offer no critique of the institution of human kingship in Israel. In fact, we shall see in the next chapter that some texts present the sovereignty of the world as a kind of unequal diarchy, in which YHWH has invested the Israelite monarch with the authority to rule a global domain in the name of YHWH (e.g., Psalm 2).
The perception of YHWH as sovereign is modeled upon the familiar image of human sovereigns, but without the demand to choose one or the other. YHWH’s temple, for example, is termed a palace (see Ezra 3:6), his prophets are viewed as royal envoys (Isaiah 6), and one of his sacrifices is termed “tribute” (minha).
The analogy between divine and human sovereignty was known in Israel; it is explicit in a post-exilic polemic (fifth century B.C.E.) against the priesthood, in which a prophet asks rhetorically whether the governor will accept maimed sacrifices of the sort the Jews are bringing to YHWH (Mal 1:7-9). In this passage, there is no tension between divine and human sovereignty.
- The second royal theme derives from the Near Eastern suzerainty treaty of the sort that we have been examining. What brought this theme into the discussion of monotheism was the proscription of other suzerains which is essential to the alliance. This proscription is the ultimate source of the prohibitions upon the worship of other deities in Israel, and, I have suggested, it underlies the depiction of them as unworthy, even, finally, unreal. We may call this second royal theme YHWH’s suzerainty. It is a more specific theme than the one of sovereignty in that, in origin, it is limited to the relationship between states and thus cannot be predicated of every king.
A king is sovereign by definition, but suzerain only if he is an emperor, that is to say, a master of vassals. In fact, they must acknowledge only one suzerain, the great king of their alliance. In the case of the treaty of Mursilis and Duppi-Tessub, the suzerain confers sovereignty upon his vassal or at least affirms that he will uphold his vassal’s kingship, if Duppi-Tessub proves faithful in covenant.
I drew a parallel between this and the statement in Exod 19:6 that Israel will, if she observes the covenant (v 5), become YHWH’s “kingdom of priests and a holy nation,”
In short, all of Israel is endowed with sovereignty, for the nation as a whole has become royal in character. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the mitsvot, the covenant stipulations of the Sinaitic pact, are as often couched in the second person singular as in the plural. Both Israel as a nation and the Israelite as an individual stand in the position of royal vassals of the divine suzerain.
Unlike the sovereignty of God, his suzerainty does place a limitation upon the potential for a human counterpart. If there can be only one suzerain, how can Israel enter into a covenant with any other lord?
Hence, we find, especially in those books in which the covenant idea is prominent, an unqualified rejection of Realpolitik, since all (human) alliances are equated with apostasy. Hos 7:10-13, for instance, contrasts Israel’s overtures to Egypt and Assyria with fidelity to YHWH their God.
“I am their redeemer,” YHWH complains,
“but they have plotted treason against me” (v 13).
This is the plaintive cry of the grieving and spurned suzerain. His vassal appeals to the conventional suzerains, the lords of politics, and in the process proves herself not only mindless, but rebellious and treasonous.
YHWH has redeemed them.
That is his claim and consorts with other lords, the great powers, in hopes of obtaining that of which YHWH has already proven himself supremely capable: deliverance.
The radicalism of this aspect of covenant theology must not be missed. The covenant with YHWH is here presented as the alternative to conventional political relations. Israel (Ephraim) must choose one or the other. It is either Egypt/Assyria or YHWH, but not both, for the divine suzerain will not tolerate a human competitor any more than he will a divine one.
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This proscribing of international politics is thus the political equivalent of covenantal monotheism. In each case, Israel’s special identity demands a radical separation from the ways of the nations.
The whole world is YHWH’s,
but Israel is to be his
“treasured possession…
a kingdom of priests
and a holy nation”
(Exod 19:5-6),
a sacral state, not a political one.
What are the implications of divine suzerainty for Israel’s internal governance? If all Israelites are vassals of the great king, then it follows that one Israelite may not be set up over his fellows as king. There is no such thing as a “vice-suzerain” to whom vassals in covenant may do homage without harming their relationship with the great king. In short, the directness of the two-party relationship of YHWH and Israel, including even the individual Israelite, precludes human kingship.
YHWH is her suzerain, YHWH alone.
Even within Israel, therefore, the covenantal institution undermines the basis for politics. Hence, in some biblical texts, the institution of human kingship, which lay at the very center of the religions of many other ancient peoples, was denounced as an act of treachery against God.
As an example, consider this exchange between the victorious general (“judge”) Gideon and the men of Israel:
22 The men of Israel said to Gideon,
“Rule over us—you, your son, and your grandson as well,
for you have rescued us from the power of Midian.”
23 But Gideon replied,
“I will not rule over you, and neither shall my son.
YHWH will rule over you.”
(Judg 8:22-23)
And when the people demand a king from Samuel, last of the “judges,” YHWH answers him with these words of dejection and grief:
Heed everything the people say to you,
for it is not you whom they have rejected,
but me whom they have rejected as their king.
(1 Sam. 8:7)
Here, “king” is to be read in the light of suzerainty, for the demand for a human king is a rejection of the divine king. The two cannot coexist. In the theo-politics of this stream of tradition, there is no room for earthly government. The state is not part of the solution to the problems inherent in human society, but itself one of the problems.
The difference between sovereignty and suzerainty should not be overdrawn. After all, the two concepts are expressed in biblical Hebrew by the same word, “king” (melek). Just as law, the proper concern of kings, and covenant, the concern of suzerains, combined into an indissoluble mesh in Israel from an early date, so did the concepts of YHWH as king and YHWH as lord in large measure merge. We usually do not know which nuance lies behind the term melek.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that early Israelite kingship was elected in character, a fact reflected in the continuing ceremony in which the people acclaim the new king as their sovereign, even though YHWH designated him.
In the case of David, the king responds to his election by making a covenant with his subjects (2 Sam 5:1-3). It is quite possible that in some instances in which the Hebrew Bible speaks of a covenant with YHWH, the reference is to a royal one like that between Israel and David in 2 Samuel 5 and not to a suzerainty treaty along the lines of the Hittite exemplars. It is impossible to know for sure.
I have stressed the distinction between sovereignty and suzerainty in order to shed light on the bifurcated attitude towards human kingship in ancient Israel. In some texts, on the one hand, the divine and the human monarchs appear together, with no tension between them. This model we shall examine in Part 2.
On the other hand, there are texts, such as those we saw from Judges 8 and 1 Samuel 8, in which divine and human monarchy are mutually exclusive. Any king other then YHWH is an intruder into the pristine covenant relationship; his establishment derives from an act of defection.
In this theology,
Sinai serves as an eternal rebuke
to man’s arrogant belief
that he can govern himself.
The state is not coeval with God.
Rather, it was born at a particular moment in history
and under the judgment of a disappointed God.
In a better world,
one in which man turns to God with all his heart,
it would not exist.
Moreover, this anti-monarchical stream in Israelite religion served to inhibit a simple identification of the people Israel with the states they evolved. For the theological tradition maintained that Israel had been a people before she was a worldly kingdom, a people to whom laws and even a destiny had already been given. She owes neither to the state.
Thus, it is of the utmost significance that—
the Torah, the law of the theo-polity,
was, for all its diversity,
always ascribed to Moses and not to David,
to the humble mediator of covenant
and not to the regal founder of the dynastic state.
In Israel, law was not coterminous with the state; the latter found its justification only within the context of Torah, and the Davidic dynasty itself, as we shall see in Part 2, was established through a variation of the idea of covenant, which affirmed in its own way the suzerainty of YHWH.
Israel was a sacral state before she was a political state, she had her law (according to the canonical theology) before she raised up a king, and what is perhaps unparalleled in human history, she survived the destruction of her state and even dispersion into the four corners of the world without the loss of that essential identity conferred at Sinai.
She was “a kingdom of priests and a holy people” both before and after she was a kingdom of a more mundane kind.
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