[This is part 30 in an article series on Sin, Repentance, Salvation, and Revival. See part one. two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty one, thirty two, thirty three, thirty four, thirty five]
Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris
As we continue exploring the connection between statism and various Biblical concepts expressing some idea or another of revolting against God (such as sin, iniquity, transgression, or rebellion), let us finally narrow the argument to the specific case of seeking human kings in order to show that the chief sins and rebellion against God by men have always been political in nature. Once we look at episodes of setting up human rulers in Scripture, such as that which is found in Samuel 8 and Hosea 8, it is clear that statism—whether the belief in human government, the practice of establishing rulers, or the wicked deed of ruling over other men—is not merely a speculative sin but is truly representative of what sin and evil are all about in God’s eyes.
The case of Samuel 8
We have already established a strong theological basis for statism as sin in the previous articles, showing that the sins, evils, transgressions, and iniquities that God identifies through His prophets and elsewhere in Scripture are often the very kinds of violence, plunder, and bloodshed that we know is inseparable from the statist political systems that those rebukes clearly point to. But this position is not only defensible in theory, or by drawing inferences from the corrupt and wicked acts of violent societies and arguing that they obviously point to man-made political order as the root of the violence, robbery, and other evils condemned by the prophets. Rather, Scripture is explicit here that the chief evils and sins of men are statists in nature, i.e., that the main rebellion against God by man has always had to do with raising up rulers and seeking their protection and aid. That the desire for human rulers and human government is a rebellion against God’s kingship and anarchistic Kingdom order is made clear in God’s grief over Israel—originally a people with no king other than the Lord—who in Samuel 8 sought to have other kings besides the Lord their King.
“And the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king. Just as they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking Me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you’” (1 Samuel 8:7-8).
Seeking and serving other gods is to seek and serve others rulers, e.g., Caesars and Romes, Pharaohs and Egypts, Presidents and Americas. Men reject God as their King when they make men their kings. Men sin against God when they become statists, i.e., when they raise up human civil governments to begin with, support them once they are in existence, or—perhaps worst of all—become them by running for office, enlisting in the military, or signing up at the police academy to become one of the plunderers themselves, as opposed to standing on the sidelines as a mere “back the blue” or “support the troops” cheerleader, who doesn’t directly put in the boot for Pharaohs but supports the stomping.
Spurning God’s rule
The Hebrew word for “reject” in Samuel 8 is מָאַס (Strong’s H3988). This word is transliterated as ma’ac (pronounced maw-as’). It is defined as “to spurn” (or to despise or disdain) and is often used against a people who have rejected the Lord’s laws and statutes (Leviticus 26:15, 26:43; 2 Kings 17:15; Isaiah 5:24; Jeremiah 6:19, 8:9; Ezekiel 5:6, 20:13, 20:16, 20:24; Amos 2:4). It is also often used for God’s rejection of a people (Jeremiah 6:30, 14:19; Lamentations 5:22).
Men spurn and despise God’s Law when they raise up false gods (i.e., human rulers) to legislate man-made legal decrees and to “order” their societies for them. And God, in turn, rejects those who organize their societies on the basis of violence and plunder instead of living freely in a Godly-anarchist society with God’s Law written on their hearts. Men show that they do not have God’s Law written on their hearts whatever when they seek man-made systems of so-called law, and God likewise shows that He has no need for such a people anymore. As Samuel 8 concludes, after telling the people the evils that will result of the sin of statism,
“And ye shall cry out on that day, because of your king, whom ye have chosen you, and the Lord will not hear you on that day” (1 Samuel 8:18).
Though human rulers are raised up by sinners and are never part of the perfect will of God, who always desires that men make the Lord their only King and ruler, nevertheless they serve a divine purpose of leading people to realize their sin once they are under judgment, so that they may then repent and cry out to God alone again to save them from the evils they brought upon themselves by rebelling against His anarchistic natural order.
Translator treason?
To strengthen the already clear case that raising up human rulers is man’s foremost rebellion and sin against God, we find that the Hebrew word most often translated as “evil” (ra’) so happens to be used in the Israelites’ demand for a king. Yet most popular Bible translations render Samuel’s reaction to this act as “displeasing” (1 Samuel 8:6). This wording has surely softened the severity of the offense, which may have been purposeful given that the Israelites’ request for a king is really a turning point of scripture where the sins of men finally come to a head and the rebelliousness of God’s people, who have made many errors up to this point, has now fully manifested into seeking human rulers as the characteristic mark of their revolt against God’s rule.
Even if we do not suspect any foul-play here, in the very least the idea of seeking kings as merely being “displeasing” does not convey the seriousness of the sin here. It sounds more like a mother being upset with some relatively harmless, though less than ideal, behavior of her children, rather than God’s main grievance with the men of the earth, who have whored themselves out to Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, and Americans for their bread and protection. Lesser known translations give a more accurate rendering to the original Hebrew, rather than this act being merely “displeasing.” The Legacy Standard Bible renders this request for a king as “evil in the sight of Samuel.” All of the common literal translations (Literal Standard Version, Young’s Literal Translation, and Smith’s Literal Translation) also give us the word “evil” rather than “displeasing,” which simply lacks the connotations that English speakers would assign to the much stronger word “evil.” The Holman Christian Standard Bible goes even further and translates that “Samuel considered their demand sinful.”
In short, when looking at the original text and Hebrew words used to describe this pivotal moment of Israel seeking a human king to be their protector and savior instead of God, we see that Samuel identified the request for a king to be evil; God did not disagree and added His own complaint to Samuel’s righteous assessment, that the people had rejected Him as their King to go after other gods to serve them.
The sin of trusting in man’s protection
The essence of the sin in Samuel 8–12 is thoroughly statist in nature: the people traded the Lord as their King and Protector for the security they wrongly believed could be found in human rulers and their governments. Rather than fearing and trusting the Lord alone to save them, they sought salvation in a human king and his army, who they thought could provide what they did not believe God would or could. For God’s salvation has never just been a merely spiritual or heavenly rescue detached from life on earth; the exodus from Egypt in itself provides a simple case against this purely spiritual and otherworldly conception. Rather, God has always wanted and intended to be our King in precisely the way men imagine can only be found in human kings and their lawmakers, which is why seeking protection through men and human governments is to distrust the Lord and to make men into one’s saviors. This rejection of God’s kingship is thus seen directly in the people’s abandonment of Him as their physical protector, liberator, and deliverer in the face of real-world enemies.
“When you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was moving against you, you said to me, ‘No, we must have a king to rule over us’—even though the LORD your God was your king” (1 Samuel 12:12).
The statist pursuit of human kings to protect and save them is directly referred to as evil by God. As scripture records it, using the Hebrew word (ra’) for evil, we read of “what a great evil you have committed in the sight of the LORD by asking for a king” (1 Samuel 12:17). To seek human kings has always been evil in the eyes of God, whether in the days when the Israelites’ rebellion reached its peak in seeking a king or when statists today raise up presidents as their “commander in chief.” All quests for human rulers is to forsake the Lord God as one’s King and Savior.
There is no denying that setting up human kings as one’s protectors is called sinful and evil by the Lord our God. The result of seeking a human ruler, which the Israelites themselves eventually recognized was sinful and evil, brings these two ideas together in the English translations. The words chatta’ah, commonly translated as “sin,” and ra’, commonly translated as “evil,” are used directly in connection with the raising up of rulers.
“Pray to the LORD your God for your servants so that we will not die! For we have added to all our sins the evil of asking for a king” (1 Samuel 12:19).
Whatever the sins of the Israelites were before demanding a king to rule over them, this episode of seeking protection in a human ruler was the sort of culmination of their sin — the final and crowning mark of a people who were in rebellion to God and the main point at which such sin and evil was finally completed and full-grown.
Statism as man’s main sin
This episode of Israel seeking a human king to rule over them represents the height of man’s sin in the Bible. This was the climax of Israel’s sin and rebellion against the God who had brought them out of the bondage of Egypt — a divine act that is referenced all throughout Scripture and stands as a Biblical example of the holistic and physical form of salvation that God provides to a people who seek His ways again and repent of the sins that led to their bondage. Men seek human governments to rule over them only when they forget the Lord as their savior, who can and will physically deliver His people—that is those who keep His commandments—from the slavery of statism that men go into for their own sins. God crushing the Egyptians—proving thereby that He is a literal and physical savior who leaves no excuse for human kings—was the history of the Israelites (Nehemiah 9:9-15), which should have remained on their hearts and minds if they had kept to their ways and heeded the instruction given to them. It has always been a failure to remember the work of the Lord against the Egyptians—God drowning Pharaohs and their armies in the sea—that is directly causal to setting up human kings, particularly in this case the Israelites but true also for everyone who falls into this sin today. As scripture makes clear,
“But they and our fathers became arrogant and stiff-necked and did not obey Your commandments. They refused to listen and failed to remember the wonders You performed among them. They stiffened their necks and appointed a leader to return them to their bondage in Egypt” (Nehemiah 9:17).
Only a people with a hardened heart and stiff neck, who have turned their minds away from the Lord as their only King, can pursue the sinful effort to raise up human rulers. Such an endeavor of statism — that is, the upbuilding and advancement of human government to any extent — is exclusively the domain of reprobate idolaters who are so far gone from the Lord that they can’t even see they are but men who take His name in vain, claiming to be Christians but choosing for themselves other lords and kings to protect them on earth. It was always in this context — the episode recorded in Samuel 8 — that scripture often invokes the words “evil” (Nehemiah 9:28) and “sin” (Nehemiah 9:29).
“But they were disobedient and rebelled against You; they flung Your law behind their backs. They killed Your prophets, who had admonished them to return to You. They committed terrible blasphemies. So You delivered them into the hands of enemies who oppressed them, and in their time of distress they cried out to You. From heaven You heard them, and in Your great compassion You gave them deliverers who saved them from the hands of their enemies. But as soon as they had rest, they again did evil in Your sight. So You abandoned them to the hands of their enemies, who had dominion over them. When they cried out to You again, You heard from heaven, and You delivered them many times in Your compassion. You admonished them to turn back to Your law, but they were arrogant and disobeyed Your commandments. They sinned against Your ordinances, by which a man will live if he practices them. They turned a stubborn shoulder; they stiffened their necks and would not obey” (Nehemiah 9:26-29).
It is by setting up princes and kings, which is always done against God’s will and commands, that men fling God’s Law behind their backs. It is by pursuing systems of human government, which the Lord never instructed men to seek, that they come under divine judgment for the sins associated with this wicked practice. It is by partaking in the evil deeds of statism, all while claiming to be of the Lord, that men blaspheme the Lord’s name and prove themselves to be worldly idolaters who hate God. It is through seeking man-made systems of law, maintained by presidents, legislators, and law enforcers who operate through coercion and compulsion, that men violate God’s law-word and all His warnings to be a people who are distinct and separate from those statists around them Numbers 23:9; Deuteronomy 7:6). Not surprisingly, we read in the Israelites’ demand for a king that it was to “be like all other nations” (1 Samuel 8:20). Men seek human rulers when they deviate from the godly path, or in other words, deviating from the godly path is necessarily always characterized by people chasing after human rulers to be their gods.
The case of Hosea 8
The evidence for sin having everything to do with man’s political whoredom is also damning against statists when we see that the Hebrew word pesha—the word often translated into transgression—is used by the prophets directly in the context of raising up human kings behind God’s back.
“Put the ram’s horn to your lips! An eagle looms over the house of the LORD, because the people have transgressed My covenant and rebelled against My law. Israel cries out to Me, ‘O our God, we know You!’ But Israel has rejected good; an enemy will pursue him. They set up kings, but not by Me. They make princes, but without My approval” (Hosea 8:1-4).
The sinfulness of setting up princes and kings and trusting in them for protection, justice, law and order, or other forms of provision is further confirmed in the following verses, where God explicitly identifies them as sin and iniquity.
“Though I wrote for them the great things of My law, they regarded them as something strange. Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to Me, and though they eat the meat, the LORD does not accept them. Now He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins: they will return to Egypt” (Hosea 8:12-13).
God gave men His Law, which forbade them from chasing after other gods to rule over them, but they expressly transgressed it by begging to have princes and kings ruling over them instead, as the chief outward expression of the inward rebelliousness in their hearts.
The rebellion of statism
Though it always benefits idolaters to dilute the concept of sin into nothing more than the inherent condition of mankind, so that they can never be pinned down for specific and explicit acts of evil like setting up princes and kings which would expose them as willful rebels against God and His Kingdom, we see that Scripture—especially in the instances of Samuel 8 and Hosea 8—is not speaking of some vague or general sins and evils of mankind, but shows the statist ideas and practices of men to be the primary way that men revolt against God’s rule and substitute human systems of government for the anarchistic Kingdom of God. Though the statist idolaters of the world would always prefer to conceive of sin in a vague and general way that allows them to continue calling themselves “Christians” while existing as the foremost rebels against God’s Kingdom, we see in all the words that are closely related to the concept of sin—whether rebellion, transgression, iniquity, or error—that man’s main way of revolting against God is always political in nature, i.e., that it is namely through raising up human rulers and man-made systems of law that men sin against God and do evil. It is in a rejection of God’s offer to “take you as My own people and be your God” (Exodus 6:7) that men raise up human rulers, both Biblically and throughout history.
It is in the political ideology and acts of statism that we find sinful people who have forsaken the Lord as their God and turned aside to false gods to rule them instead. It is never possible to know God and seek human rulers, as seeking presidents and congressmen is the primary way that men demonstrate they do not know the Lord as their King and Lawgiver. All statists are people who have forgotten their Maker (Hosea 8:14), which is why they went and built palaces and raised up rulers over them and their neighbors instead of living freely under the Lord as their only King. If men knew the Lord, they wouldn’t be statists. And when they are, this sinful ideology and practice stands as the primary evidence that they do not know Him.
God’s natural order is a decentralized, anarchistic social order based around families of Godly men who exist as the primary political unit of society, serving their families and their neighbors and practicing the pure religion of actually being their brother’s keeper. It is an anarchist society of people living freely under God that is the socio-political order of God, yet which men have always gone astray from in their quest to raise up authoritarian systems of human government and human rule, all which are a deviation from the divine natural order and a violation of God’s Law. All of the systems of human civil government around the world have arisen out of man’s rebellion against God’s natural, anarchistic order and out of their sinful decision to not have God as their only provider and protector anymore. And all of them represent the main evidence of an ungodly people, or rather, a people who have other gods than the Lord.
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