King of Israel

Role as Judge

Job chapter 34 discusses the righteous judgement of God, and verse 30 expresses the hope: “That the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared.” In the old kingdom, the role of the king was as the ultimate judge of the people, and we see as much in the prayer of Solomon upon his becoming king, at 1 Kings 3:9 where he said: “Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?” It says at 1 Kings 7:7: “Then he made a porch for the throne where he might judge, even the porch of judgment: and it was covered with cedar from one side of the floor to the other.”

When our people rejected Yahweh as King, we invited hypocritical human judgement upon ourselves, and have been naturally punished by it ever since. One of the promises of Christianity is that Christ be our judge, and then we shall all be judged fairly, before God who knows all, and not before man whose judgement is clouded and partial and whose knowledge is incomplete.