Deuteronomy 17:14-17 English Standard Version

Laws Concerning Israel’s Kings

14 “When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16 Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ 17 And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.”

At this point in our walk we may have already read passages that indicate that the Kings of Israel did not obey these commandments.

We will probably think about King Solomon, if for no other reason than to recall the number of wives and concubines that this one king married and possessed.

1 Kings 4:21 Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.

King Solomon was said to be the richest king ever, legend went further into the land of fantasy as we know from movies like King Solomon’s Mines. But that is fiction and we do not deal in fiction. While Solomon might be the most famous, he was not the only king of Israel to fail at keeping God’s commandments.

Over and over again the bible documents those kings violating God’s commandments. The most egregious being following other gods. There is a common expression that history is written by the victors. History is questioned and rewritten to serve the ruling party’s demands. In light of that it is with all respect for the authenticity of the bible that the mistakes and sinful behaviors of the kings of Israel were not rewritten to honor the title and ignore their sins.

Now we have a King that sits on the throne of heaven that never sinned, lived in poverty and always put the needs of His people first. The only King that obeyed the King’s Law. He alone is worthy.

• Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,
• Revelation 5:12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Deuteronomy 6:4-10 English Standard Version

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build,

We must not allow confusion to shake our faith.

God gives Israel instructions to write His commandments on the doorposts and gates to homes they do not yet have. They are living in tents in the wilderness at the time. Putting that aside for the moment, let us move forward to a time in which they have taken possession of that promise.

Moses writes the history of Israel in the first five books of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy has a lengthy list of commandments. Surely the doorposts are not large enough to contain all the instructions, nor would the gates to their homes.

Given that Moses wrote one copy of the Pentateuch and an estimated 600,000 families took up residence there, how would those families obey the command without a copy of their own?

The logical answer is a vast number of copies would have been made. 

Deuteronomy 17:18-19 English Standard Version

18 “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them,”

This is the only scripture I could find that indicates copies were made and approved by the priest. It indicates who would approve them.

2 Chronicles 34:13 were over the burden-bearers and directed all who did work in every kind of service, and some of the Levites were scribes and officials and gatekeepers.

The word for scribe here is סָפַר çâphar, saw-far’; a primitive root; properly, to score with a mark as a tally or record, i.e. (by implication) to inscribe, and also to enumerate; intensively, to recount. Perhaps this is not a title here as much as an action. Scribe became a title later.