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PDF FormatThis ambiguous easing of moral demands exacts its price in that under monarchy, the Israelites are no longer to be judged directly before God, but through the public virtues of their king—that is, through their state. The people’s inability to maintain the high level of freedom and responsibility that it enjoyed in the period of the judges, under the direct sovereignty of God, is shown in Samuel’s plea to God: “Samuel was displeased that they said, ‘Give us a king to govern us.’ Samuel prayed to the Eternal, and the Eternal replied to Samuel, ‘Heed the demand of the people in everything they say to you. For it is not you whom they have reviled; it is me they have reviled, as their king.’”105
From this point on the king and his deeds will decide the fate of Israel, both in relation to worldly affairs (whether within Israel or with other nations) and in relation to the divine. This is the essence of Samuel’s warning to the people about the cost of establishing the monarchy: “The day will come when you cry out because of the king whom you yourselves have chosen; and the Eternal will not answer you on that day.” But Israel’s response is that they have tried the more difficult road, and it has proved too much for them: “But the people would not listen to Samuel’s warning. ‘No,’ they said. ‘We must have a king over us, that we may be like all the nations: Let our king rule over us and go out at our head and fight our battles.’”106
Yet Israel is not “like all the nations.” Even with its monarchy, Israel, unlike any other people, must maintain a moral society combining its commitment to the ideal presented in the Tora with the sociopolitical realities common to every polity. This combination gives rise to the concept, unique to the political construct presented in the Bible, of the “righteous” community, a political community which acts in conformity with the criteria of universal natural morality. Placed within the tradition of the Tora, however, this is seen as merely the basis for more exalted moral aspirations.
From the time the monarchy is established to the destruction of the Temple, the state—through the king—is the barometer of Israel’s moral condition. The Israelites’ success or failure in meeting the necessary moral criteria of “righteousness” is judged according to the stature of the political community as a whole, as now embodied by the king. The people must bear the consequences of the monarchy they so desired, whether or not they agree with their rulers’ deeds. The sins of the wicked kings and the failures of the incompetent ones are visited upon the people, collectively, because these by definition are not private matters but failings of the state: The king is the heart of authority of the political commonwealth, and his sins, like his punishment, are matters of state. So long as the king does not transgress a small number of especially stringent moral prohibitions, God will not intervene, even if the people suffer greatly under the rule of an ineffectual or cruel king. From now on, the people and their king are judged as one.107
The new criteria for judging the nation are evident in Samuel’s warning to the people at the coronation of the new king: “I will continue to instruct you in the good and right path. Above all, you must revere the Eternal and serve him faithfully with all your heart; and consider how grandly he has dealt with you. For if you persist in your wrongdoing, both you and your king will be swept away.”108 Samuel enumerates three stages for the proper conduct of affairs in the nascent state: Israel is commanded to walk in the “good and right path”; this way is depicted as leading them to serve God “with all their heart”; and they are enjoined not to engage in wrongdoing. What this “wrongdoing” is appears to be quite clear, as does the idea of serving God “with all your heart” as an ideal to which the people must aspire. But what is the “good and right path” for Israel to follow, that it may enjoy divine favor? Are these two words, “good” and “right,” merely poetic repetition, or do they refer to different things? Is the biblical “right” the same as the biblical “good”—or is it something else?
The answer lies in the description of another coronation ceremony, two generations later. As his reign draws to a close, King David speaks to his people, reviewing the path he has taken and summing up his career, before transferring the scepter to his son Solomon. Like the close of Samuel’s tenure, this too is occasion for taking stock, but of a far more tempestuous reign full of upheavals and complexities on both the personal and political levels. David states:
I know, God, that you search the heart and desire righteousness. I, of righteous heart, freely offered all these things; now your people, who are present here—I saw them joyously making voluntary offerings. O Eternal, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, our fathers, remember this forever to the thoughts of your people’s hearts, and turn their hearts toward you. As for my son Solomon, give him a perfect heart to observe your commandments, your admonitions and your laws, and to fulfill them all, and to build this Temple which I have prepared.109
David uses different terms to distinguish his reign from what he wishes for his son, and the difference has great significance. Of himself, David says that he acted “of righteous heart,” but he asks God to grant his son a “perfect heart.” A comparison of David’s summary with the earlier speech by Samuel indicates the significance of these two wordings. While stating that he acted with righteousness, David hints that perhaps he did not act with a perfect heart; for this is what he desires of his son. What was lacking in David’s reign that he could not describe himself as having acted with a “perfect heart”? His use of the word “righteous” while avoiding the word “good” may explain Samuel’s equation of decades before: The ideal that David wishes for Solomon is the perfect heart, composed of two elements, the “right” and the “good”—but David himself succeeded only in the first.110
This biblical distinction between “right” and “good” in relation to the deeds of kings emerges time and again, in the summary of each king’s reign, a sort of moral scorecard provided by the biblical narrative. Of Jehu, the king of Israel who eliminated the cult of Ba’al and restored the rites of the God of Israel that had been accepted in the northern kingdom,111 it is said: “The Eternal said to Jehu ‘Because you have succeeded in doing what was right in my eyes, having carried out all that I desired upon the house of Ahab, four generations of your descendants shall occupy the throne of Israel.’ But Jehu was not careful to follow the Tora of the Eternal, the God of Israel, with all his heart; he did not turn away from the sins that Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.”112 Jehu took care to do what was “right,” but not what was “good”: The text plainly states that he did not “follow the Tora of the Eternal... with all his heart.” In other words, his eliminating what was evil—destroying the cult of Ba’al and deposing the house of Ahab—demonstrated his “righteousness,” and the merit of this would endow the line of Jehu with long years in power. Still, these acts were not what was “good”—the full observance of the laws and ideals of the Tora.
This classification system marks the biblical verdicts on other kings, as well. Jehoshaphat’s reign, for example, was generally considered positive; still, he did not correct the worship of other gods in the land. Accordingly, the Bible avers that “he followed all the ways of his father Asa and did not turn aside from doing what was right in the eyes of the Eternal.”113 Similar statements are made about Amaziah, Azariah, Jotham and others.114 The summary description of Amaziah is particularly explicit: “He did what was right in the eyes of the Eternal, but not with a perfect heart.”115
As against all these—as well as, obviously, the many kings who were simply evil—there were two kings, Hezekiah and Asa, who are said to have done both right and good, and only they are described as having served God “with all his heart” or “with a perfect heart,” as monarchs who not only were politically successful, but also instituted religious reforms to eradicate idolatry. Of Hezekiah, the Bible relates: “Hezekiah did this throughout Judah. He acted in a way that was good, right and true before the Eternal his God. Every work he undertook in the service of the house of God or in the Tora and the commandments, to worship his God, he did with all his heart; and he succeeded”;116 and of Asa it is written: “Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Eternal his God.”117 Although Asa’s efforts to eliminate idolatry meet with only partial success, they won him the epithet “good,” which also made it possible to describe his heart as perfect: “The shrines, indeed, were not abolished in Israel; however, Asa was of perfect heart all his life.”118
Thus, the kings the Bible describes as “righteous” are those who meet the criteria of natural morality: They directed the affairs of state while observing the basic social and moral standards, and refraining from unambiguously evil sins. But only those righteous kings who also sought to realize the ideal of Tora observance are described as being of “perfect heart,” as combining what is good with what is right—even if, like Asa, they were less than perfectly successful.
