Hezekiah is thankfully giving us a break in the “Game of Thrones” era of the Old Testament. There has been a lot of bloodshed in the claim to be king and a lot of “not doing right in the sight of God”. Psalm 2 asks, ”Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed?” Oh yeah, His “anointed”. Let’s review who they are.
God told Samuel to anoint Saul (1 Samuel 10) and to anoint David (1 Samuel 16, 2 Samuel 2,5). God had Nathan and Zadok anoint Solomon. God had Elijah anoint Jehu over Israel specifically to destroy Ahab and the Baals. The next time we read about a king being anointed was 7yr old Joash (or Jehoash) by Jehoiada, a priest who wrote a covenant to follow God, but without any record of divine instruction. We will see “the people”, not God, anoint Jehoahaz and he will survive a full 3 months. There is no record of most of the kings of Israel and Judah being chosen by God and anointed.
The original sin of Adam was to try to be his own king instead of following God. The history of the governments on Earth show that same tendency. Reformer John Calvin wrote “they who rule unjustly and incompetently have been raised up by Him to punish the wickedness of the people” and “a wicked king is the Lord’s wrath upon the earth”. That seems plausible, but I am not bold enough to claim to know Gods big plan, however there have a lot of rebellious people and bad rulers.
Samuel gave us this warning after anointing Saul. (1 Samuel 12:13).
“Now here is the king you have chosen, the one you asked for; see, the Lord has set a king over you. If you fear the Lord and serve and obey him and do not rebel against his commands, and if both you and the king who reigns over you follow the Lord your God—good! But if you do not obey the Lord, and if you rebel against his commands, his hand will be against you, as it was against your ancestors. “But when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was moving against you, you said to me, ‘No, we want a king to rule over us’—even though the Lord your God was your king.”
I do know the next time a king was anointed by God, it was often talked about in Greek. Christ means anointed. God anointed a human while taking the crown back at the same time.
As we celebrate our nation’s Independence Day, I remind you of a quote from founder John Adams, “ We recognize no sovereign but God, no king but Christ”