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.

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9 April 2025

4 min read

Is it OK to pray for the death of a dictator?

What happens when the mighty lose their thrones.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Bullet holes on a wall and white paint outlines mark the site of an execution

The wall where Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were executed.

NPR.

The end, when it comes, can be nasty, brutish and filmed.

Muammar Gaddafi, self-styled Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, spent the last moments of his life cowering in a Libyan sewer after an air strike on his convoy. On discovery, a mob subjected him to some ghastly final abuses before death – the kind of ending he had mercilessly condemned thousands to. It was almost biblical in its parabola, and it was recorded on a wobbly camera.

But it was not the first of its kind in this generation. On Christmas Day 1989, the disfigured face of Nicolae Ceausescu was broadcast on TV following his summary execution by hastily assembled opposition forces in Romania. Only days previously, he had been an unassailable dictator.

Vladimir Putin has spoken about Gaddafi’s ending, and it clearly troubles him, but perhaps Ceausescu’s death is lodged in the dark recesses of his mind because it was the one bloody end of all the communist leaders of eastern Europe.

Being a dictator is an all-consuming job. Too many domestic and foreign enemies are made along the way for the dictator to drop their vigilance. And their downfall often comes at the hands of those closest to them; by definition, these people know the dictator’s movements and weaknesses better than others and are best placed to exploit them. The military must be equipped to suppress dissent, but give it too much power and the generals pose a risk to the dictator. Yet if the military lacks the hardware, control of the population becomes harder. Many dictators surround themselves with specially trained loyal guards to defend against the military, but the rule of terror means no-one speaks the honest truth and so risks appear everywhere. No wonder dictators are usually paranoid and themselves racked with the fear that a culture of capricious violence induces in everyone.

These and other theories are explored by Marcel Dirsus in his compelling book How Tyrants Fall (John Murray, 2025). Dirsus notes how dictators require money, weapons and people to survive in office and for the elites around them to believe these goods will remain in place. They also need to immerse the surrounding elites in blood guilt, so that their fate becomes entwined with the dictator’s; Saddam Hussein compelled others to join him in the murder and execution of opponents.

For Dirsus, there are two ways to topple a tyrant. The most direct is to take them out, but this is rarely straightforward. Coup attempts are often shambolic in their planning and even well-orchestrated ones usually fail; the consequences for those implicated are always horrendous. The second route is patient and pragmatic, looking to weaken the tyrant, strengthen alternative elites and empower the masses. External powers often have minimal influence unless, like the US in Iraq, the country is invaded and the tyrant deposed. Sanctions often fail to hurt the elites; a state’s geographic proximity to the tyrant’s nation can be useful, as it gives a base from which opponents of the regime can work.

Modern technology is changing the face of political action, making it easier for large groups to mobilise against regimes, as seen in the short-lived Arab Spring. It also enables dictators to track opponents more successfully than even the feared Stasi in East Germany. Right now, it feels like the tyrants are ahead in this game.

Shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a friend said to me that he was praying for Putin’s death or downfall. I asked him how sure he was that the person who replaced Putin would be better. If the pragmatic route for toppling a dictator involves strengthening different elites and empowering the masses, the likelihood is that the elites will take over, not the masses. Dictators never allow the components of civil society to form; democratic institutions take decades to build. And they rarely anoint successors in advance, for fear alternative power bases are created. When dictators fall, it usually leads to initial chaos and violence before another elite can establish itself from which a new dictator will emerge.

In her inspired song of praise at the news she would give birth to the long-awaited Messiah, Mary observes how God ‘has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly’. It is a role reversal typical of St Luke, recorder of Mary’s song, a gift of eschatology many want realised today, not just in the world to come. When the powerful are brought down from their throne today, they are typically replaced by the next most powerful person, and if the throne remains vacant or is contested, what follows often feels like the spirit that went out of a person in Matthew Gospel returning with seven other spirits more evil than itself, meaning ‘the last state of person is worse than the first’.

This need not be a counsel of despair, but a call to informed intercessory prayer which is short on controlling advice for God’s geo-political strategy, and long on the wisdom and patience of the one throne that endures.

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