“However, he is not to acquire many horses for himself or have the people return to Egypt to obtain more horses, in as much as Adonai told you never to go back that way again.”-Deuteronomy 17:16
Out of the four types of human authorities (judges, priests, prophets, kings) presented to us in Scripture, we are currently in the midst of studying about kings.
From this point in Deuteronomy, it will be approximately 300 years before Israel would crown its first king, Saul,
Therefore, what we are reading here in Deuteronomy 17 concerning what limitations should be placed on a king of Israel are prophetic because they look well into the future.
Another point we should grasp is that giving Israel a king was a concession on the Lord’s part.
God foreknew that Israel would want to be more like the nations around them rather than be seen as unique, chosen and set apart as a nation unto Him.
Therefore, in response, the Lord made a provision for Israel to have an earthly king BUT…
…He placed certain restrictions and conditions on how much power a king should be allowed to have.
When I say the Lord wasn’t so crazy about Israel having a king, it’s kind of similar to how He views divorce.
God doesn’t like divorce.
However, in His foreknowledge and in His grace, the Lord knows that some marriages in this fallen world will just not work out.
Therefore, He has set up a way for fallen mankind to deal with it by providing a divorce clause in His Torah.
But again this was a concession and not His Divine Will nor desire for married couples.
In the same way, God isn’t setting up the procedures and boundaries of kingship because He’s happy with the idea of a man ruling His people as a king.
He allowed it because He knew that Israel would eventually demand that a king be appointed over them and by golly that is exactly what happened.
But again, there would be certain non-negotiable limitations attached to the kingship in Israel.
These limitations would cover the following three different spheres of influence…
-Military
-Political
-Economic
The first restriction we’re given is that a king was not to amass too many horses.
There were multiple reasons why the Lord prohibited this but the most important one was since the best and most well-trained horses came from Egypt, God wanted to make sure that Israel would NOT seek to rebuild ties with their former slave masters in order to acquire these animals to build up their army.
We will continue this discussion the next time we meet.
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