[Avodah] Rav Hirsch on Kings David and Shlomo

[Professor L. Levine]

The following is from RSRH's commentary on Devarim 17: 14


14 When you will come to the land that God, your God, is giving you,
and you have taken possession of it and will dwell in it, you will say: I
will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me.

Among the kings appointed on the basis of this act [i.e., request] of
the people, there was one whose personality embraced all the qualities
required of a king. He had the military proficiency to prevail in protecting
the people and the Land, and, at the same time, he was filled with the
spiritual ideal of a Jewish king “after God’s Own heart.” Neither before
or after him did there arise anyone like him, who sang Israel’s song about
the relationships of man and the people to God. In impassioned and inspiring
tones he gave expression to ideas and emotions, and through his
psalms he has become the creator and bearer of the people of Israel’s
spirit. To this very day, and also far beyond Jewish circles, directly or
indirectly, every soul that seeks knowledge of God and help from God is
uplifted to God on the wings of his song. In this king, David, son of
Yishai, the two sides of the Jewish monarchy appeared — the sword and
also the lyre, the nation’s spiritual leadership beside the victorious defense
of the nation externally. One of the national poets, inspired by the king’s
spirit, called him simply a metziah, a “find,” for God found him and considered
him His instrument for His work: Matzasi Dovid avdi (Tehillim 89:21).

This king, God dedicated to be the royal root of a line of descendants
reaching until the end of days; and a coming generation, which will realize
God’s Torah completely, will also bring the pure realization of the
Torah-king in Israel. This future king will bring about the fulfillment of
this reality, and “God’s spirit will rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and
understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and
fear of God.” By the word of his mouth he will rule the earth, and because
of his spirit lawlessness will die away. He will empower justness and faithfulness
to such a degree that the “wolf ” will dwell with the “lamb,” and
the “tiger” will lie down with the “kid”; and on the earth, which aspires
to the Mount of God’s Sanctuary, no evil or wrongdoing will be found,
“for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, as water covers
the sea.” This future king will realize the ideal of the Torah-king. He will
emerge like a shoot from the stock of Yishai, which had apparently been
cut down long ago, and like a long-awaited twig he will sprout from its
roots, which were hidden by darkness (Yeshayahu 11).

The military side of David’s kingship disqualified him from building
God’s Sanctuary (see Divrei Ha-Yamim I, 22:8), and this task was left for
his son, to whom he had bequeathed the peace he had victoriously fought
for. But this aspect of kingship “in the manner of the other nations” existed
in the case of his son even during the peace. “Shlomo,” the great
son of David, the prince of peace, whose wisdom enlightened his people
and amazed distant peoples, was not a king according to the Torah’s ideal.
He did not set as his ideal the spiritual and moral perfection of his people;
rather, he imitated the ways of peace of the kings of “all the nations.”
Their daughters became his wives, and he competed with these kings and
even exceeded them in seeking splendor and luxury. When he violated
the three articles of the law for the king and acquired many horses, many
wives, and vast stores of silver and gold, he himself ruined the foundations
of his own enterprise, thereby paving the way for the destroyers of the
Sanctuary he had built for God’s Torah. An ancient tradition says:
On the day that Shlomo married the daughter of Pharaoh,
Gavriel, the “messenger of God’s power,” came down and planted a staff
in the sea, on which a sandbank settled, on which the great city of Rome
was built (Sanhedrin 21b, according to the version of the Yalkut).

YL



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