Why we make kings

As the new King's coronation approaches, Ian Bradley explores the deep roots of kingship as an answer to anarchy and disorder.

Ian Bradley

Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews.

A medieval illustration of King David being anointed by Samuel

Samuel anoints David king. An early 14th century illumination from the Vaux Psalter.

Lambeth Palace Library.

At the most solemn moment of King Charles III’s coronation on 6 May, the Westminster Abbey choir will sing Handel’s thrilling setting of words from the first chapter of the first Book of Kings:

Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king.

It provides a reminder that the anointing of the monarch with holy oil is carried out in direct imitation of a practice described in the Bible in connection with the inauguration of the kings of ancient Israel.

This is not the only link which the coronation will make with stories found in the Bible. Legend has it that the Stone of Destiny, on which Charles will be seated when he is crowned, started life as the pillow on which Jacob slept when he had a dream of the ladder leading up to heaven as described in Genesis. Jacob set the stone up as a pillar to commemorate the place where God had talked to him. Later stories identify it as the pillar beside which Abimelech was crowned king of Israel and King Josiah made his covenant with the Lord to keep his commandments and statutes.

The theme of monarchy looms large in the collection of books making up the Hebrew Bible which tells of God’s dealing with the chosen people of Israel and forms the Christian Old Testament. The word ‘king’ occurs 565 times and ‘kingdom’ 163 times. Six of the so-called historical books have the monarchy as their main subject matter, including the aptly named first and second books of Kings. The life of one particular king, David, occupies more space than that of any other figure, including the great patriarchs, Abraham and Moses.

By popular request

Kingship is presented in the early books of the Old Testament as both the popularly requested and the divinely appointed answer to the anarchy and disorder prevailing under the judges who ruled the people of Israel for the first two hundred and fifty years or so after their arrival in the promised land of Canaan around 1250 BCE. The Book of Judges emphasizes the corruption and lawlessness under this form of government, noting: ‘In those days there was no king in Israel: everyone did what was right in his eyes.’

The inauguration of the Israelite monarchy, which took place around 1020 BCE, is described in the Book of Samuel. A crucial role is played by Samuel, the last of the great judges who becomes the first king-maker and presides over the coronations of both Saul and David, the first two Israelite kings. Samuel is portrayed as prophet, seer and intermediary between Yahweh/God and the people, to whom the elders of Israel come asking for ‘a king to govern us like all the nations’. Samuel puts this request to Yahweh who is initially reluctant to accede to it and tells him to spell out to the people the dangers of kingship in terms of the accretion of private wealth and military might. These warnings are ignored, however, and the people continue to insist that they must have a king ‘to govern us and go out before us and fight our battles’. When Samuel reports this to God, he is told, ‘Hearken to their voice and make them a king’.

On king making

If there is a certain initial unease in God’s mind about the desirability of kingship, the institution is subsequently given divine blessing, with the king been seen as God’s chosen one – Messiah in Hebrew, or Christos in Greek. There is a sense of partnership between Yahweh and the chosen people of Israel in the making of kings. The emphasis is on a three way covenant between God, king and people. This concept of covenant is one of the most distinctive and central features of Israelite kingship, as is the idea that the monarch mediates and represents divine rule and stands for justice, fairness and truth.

During and after the long period of exile that followed the ‘Babylonian captivity’ of Israel in 597 BCE, Jews increasingly pinned their hopes on the future coming of a new Messiah, a king from the house of David, raised up by God to deliver Jerusalem from where he would reign, restoring and re-uniting Israel and bringing about a new world order of justice and righteousness, as looked forward to and promised in the Psalms and the writings of the prophets.

The theme of kingship, so fully explored in the Old Testament, continues to figure prominently in the New Testament, although its central focus is on the kingdom of God, inaugurated and proclaimed by Jesus, with its dethroning of the rich and powerful and exaltation of the humble and meek. All four of the Gospel writers use royal titles and monarchical allusions in their descriptions of Jesus. He is identified as the anointed king, the Messiah or Christos, leading his followers to be known as Christians. From his birth in Bethlehem in the house and family of King David, and his baptism where he is identified by God as his beloved Son, to his trial and crucifixion for being ‘King of the Jews’, the royal theme runs as a clear thread through his life and death.

Jesus himself redefines the concept of kingship. This is signalled most dramatically by his choice of a donkey on which to make his entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. He deliberately opts for an animal associated with humility, humiliation even, rather than a proud charger or stallion more fitting for a king on a triumphal progress. In washing his disciples’ feet on the first Maundy Thursday, he further shows that he is, in Graham Kendrick’s memorable words The Servant King displaying meekness as well as majesty. When Pontius Pilate repeatedly asks him whether he is indeed the King of the Jews, he gives the cryptic answer 'You have said so'. Jesus never repudiates the idea of kingship but gives it a wholly new meaning of humble servanthood which has been the inspiration for Christian monarchy ever since.

Article

Advent

Attention

Christmas culture

Culture

21 December 2024

1 min read

The Visitation and Wicked taught me about welcoming

See, behold, recognise, welcome.

Jessica Brown

Jessica is a researcher, writer, and singer-songwriter. She is studying at Trinity College Dublin, and is an ordinand with the Church of Ireland.

A Renaissance painting of Elizabeth greeting the Virgin birth show two woman reaching out to hug, while others look on.

Pontormo's Visitation, 1528.

Pontormo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

It is a gift when we encounter something — a walk, conversation, work of art — that gives insight into a story we’ve long held dear (or often, long wrestled with). Last week in a cinema in Limerick, a moment in the film Wicked did just that.

For the last year or so, I have been thinking about an event in the Gospel of Luke traditionally called the Visitation. This is the moment when Mary, the mother of Jesus, after realizing she was pregnant, traveled from Galilee to the hill country in Judea where her cousin Elizabeth lived. Elizabeth was also pregnant with a son, who would be John the Baptist. When these two women see each other, the word ‘greet’ is used several times in quick succession: a moving ethos occurs of this very human act of greeting — seeing, beholding, recognizing, welcoming. In a moment of abundant overflow, they vocalize praises from the deep heart; Elizabeth calls out to Mary, and Mary responds back.

This Visitation moment has captured hearts and minds through the centuries. One of my favourite examples is the sixteenth-century painting by Pontormo, and a 1995 work of video art by Bill Viola, which brings this painting to life. In both of these pieces, we see the kind of beholding that the Visitation involves. We see warmth enveloping warmth. We see the brightness of recognition. We see tender enfolding and embrace. We see welcome. I have come to believe that this greeting we humans long for.

They see, greet, and welcome each other in an overflowing moment of beholding and recognition.

So, last week in the cinema. I am a big fan of Wicked and from the start of the film was thrilled with the cinematic version. But at the start of the scene when Elphaba (played luminously by Cynthia Erivo) walks onto the dance floor of the local disco, the film shifted. It was as if the whole movie slowed into something different: a kind of halved-open, shadow-light play of the heart.

Elphaba, realizing how the hat she had put on was all too wrong, instead of running, leans into this electrifying space of vulnerability and exposure. As silence pounds, she lifts her hand to her forehead and bizarrely wriggles her fingers. Steps of a strange dance follow. Others look on, mortified and disgusted. Galinda (played incandescently by Ariana Grande) watches, her face stamped with distress. She had given Elphaba that hat, as a trick. Then, she decides and acts: she joins Elphaba on the dance floor and tries to follow the steps.

Narratively, the moment is the hinge to their friendship, securing them together in scenes that follow. But, before the narrative arc moves on, it dips down and stretches out. The lens rests closely on the two faces, separately, and we are drawn into the slopes of Elphaba’s face and the shine in Galinda’s eyes — and in the way they are drawn into the reality of the other’s face.

They see, greet, and welcome each other in an overflowing moment of beholding and recognition. Such seeing shapes both. Such seeing brings them to be part of something whole. Sitting there in the cinema, my breath caught: I felt I was watching an iteration of that moment in Judea’s hill country from long ago, when two women also greeted each other.

Serendipitously, because we are in Year C of the Anglican Church’s Lectionary — as in, we are in the third set of scheduled readings from the Bible — this year’s fourth Sunday of Advent reading presents the Visitation. This Sunday, as we tip from Advent season (a stretch of time marked by waiting) into Christmas (celebrating the birth of Christ and God-made-flesh, God-with-us), the long-suffering waiting of Advent funnels through this stunning moment of recognition. As the nativity narrative unfolds around them, Mary and Elizabeth enact this mutual, abundant recognition, and we have the chance to behold them beholding each other, so that our own sensibilities for seeing and being seen are given a glimpse into how this kind of wholeness-making can happen.

I think too their praises give us an even deeper glimpse into what makes this wholeness real. They rejoice in the God who comes to us, and is-with-us, who heals us so that we too can participate in this kind of greeting — with God, with ourselves, and with one another. And that healing is so needed; as Mary’s words ring out unfettered, she praises God for empowering the lowly, those caught in dreadful structures of power. The ethos of deep greeting can happen no other way.

A dear thing happened right after that Wicked dance moment. In the dark theatre, I looked over to my friend, three kids between us, with a smile — and without missing a beat, she raised her hand to her forehead and wriggled her fingers. Her daughter and I followed suit. We were all wriggling our hands at our foreheads, communicating a new, just-seen signal for the abiding welcome that friendship means.

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