Kings of Compromise
Effeminacy and the Downfall of Israel's Monarchy
As we prepare to launch into the topic of birth control, we felt the need to pause and address the issue of effeminacy, a root cause condition underlying this issue, as well as several others we will be covering in our series on The Seven Deadly Sins of American Christianity. Chapters I and II of the present eBook, The (Ef)feminization of the Church: How American Christianity Lost Its Way by Losing Its Manhood, can be found here and here.
We three kings
In the first installment in this series we demonstrated effeminacy’s leading role in permitting sin into the world through male passivity, as typified by Adam’s sin in the garden. In the second installment, we examined effeminacy’s core calling card, namely, yielding to sin in moments of great testing, using Samson’s life as our template.
From these examples, we have concluded that 1) effeminacy, and not feminism, is a primary cause1 of sin’s entry into the modern American Church because 2) effeminate male leaders have been accommodating evil practices under external and internal pressures to do so, rather than standing uncompromisingly against them. We will expand on these conclusions as they pertain to the American Church both here and especially in the coming entries in this series.
For now, we will reinforce these themes by surveying the role of effeminacy in defining moments in the lives of Israel’s first three kings: Saul, David, and Solomon. Through their faltering examples, we will see how an effeminate lack of resolve to resist evil and pursue the good led to untold ruin, not only in their own lives, but in the lives of all God’s people. As the scriptures say, “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zechariah 13:7; Matthew 26:31; Mark 14:27).
But before we begin, we wanted to include a brief note on our approach to understanding effeminacy and its impact on the Church.
Some of you might be wondering why we have chosen to analyze Old Testament figures in an attempt to understand a trend among Christians living millennia after these individuals. It is our conviction that one of the primary purposes of the Old Testament accounts is to guide believers in all ages into the true knowledge of God so that we can rightly relate to Him as His people (1 Corinthians 10:11):
“These things [i.e., the exodus and wilderness wanderings] happened to them [i.e., Israel] as examples and were written down as warnings for us [i.e., Christians], on whom the culmination of the ages has come.”
Based on this principle, studying the lives of Adam, Samson, and Israel’s kings can help Christians better understand both themselves and God. Armed with this knowledge, Christians can serve the Lord in a manner that is most pleasing to Him, receiving the fullness of the blessings He intends for the righteous (Psalm 1; 2 Corinthians 5:9; Colossians 1:9, 10).
We will focus more intently on the Church and the example of her Savior in the newsletters that follow. But since the New Testament is chock-full of admonitions drawn directly from the events and personages of the Old Testament, we trust that following the same pattern here will yield fresh insight into the life of the Church in our day.
The Lord knows how badly we need it.
How the mighty have fallen
The period of Israel’s kings came on the heels of the judges period and lasted the roughly five centuries starting from Saul’s reign (c.1050 B.C.) to the end of king Zedekiah’s reign at the time of the Babylonian captivity (586/7 B.C.). During this period, at least in the southern kingdom of Judah,2 the pattern we observe is one of alternating good kings and bad kings, with the latter outnumbering the former at a greater than two to one ratio. This state of affairs persisted until a point of no return was reached under king Manasseh’s reign of terror (2 Kings 23:26, 24:4), at which point national judgment by military conquest and exile became inevitable.
King Saul kicked off Israel’s monarchy on a decidedly tragic note, foreshadowing the trajectory of the entire period. Like Samson before him, Saul was as impressive a physical specimen as one could find in Israel at the time (1 Samuel 9:2):
“And he [i.e., Kish] had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.”
He checked all the external, fleshly boxes that the people craved for in a potential king (1 Samuel 8:4, 5): young, tall, dark, and handsome, a truly imposing figure to trot out before the troops as they approached enemy lines.
It would take many volumes to psychoanalyze Saul’s morbidly fascinating fall from start to finish, but that is not our intention here. Instead, we will focus on the effeminate tendencies at play in two pivotal episodes from his life that together led to his forfeiture of the kingdom.
The first episode involves Saul’s failure to follow simple instructions from the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 10:8):
“Go down ahead of me to Gilgal. I will surely come down to you to sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, but you must wait seven days until I come to you and tell you what you are to do.”
Sounds easy enough, right? How about following these orders in the face of an encroaching sea of enemy soldiers (1 Samuel 13:5), a growing stream of defectors (1 Samuel 13:6–8), and an almost intolerable delay of schedule (1 Samuel 13:8)? Not so easy anymore, is it? 1 Samuel 13:8–14:
“He [i.e., Saul] waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel. But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him. So Saul said, ‘Bring the burnt offering here to me, and the peace offerings.’ And he offered the burnt offering. As soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came. And Saul went out to meet him and greet him. Samuel said, ‘What have you done?’ And Saul said, ‘When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash, I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the LORD.’ So I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering.’ And Samuel said to Saul, ‘You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the LORD your God, with which He commanded you. For then the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after His own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over His people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.’”
The simple truth is Saul broke, losing his nerve to hold out in obedience to God’s commands. When push came to shove, he took matters into his own hands, even when doing so meant disobeying God’s clear directives. This is the prototypical effeminate move: go along with the Lord’s will until doing so proves too difficult or uncomfortable; then, chicken out and sin.
Later, Saul would again disobey God’s instructions to completely destroy every Amalekite man, woman, child, and animal as vengeance for their opposition to the Israelites during their journey to the promised land (1 Samuel 15:2; Exodus 17:8). 1 Samuel 15:9:
“But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.”
What could possibly have possessed Saul to jeopardize his royal dynasty for such meager compensation (1 Samuel 15:28)? Apparently, nothing more than a little peer pressure (1 Samuel 15:24, emphasis mine): “Saul said to Samuel, ‘I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.’” Saul was trapped by the snare that is the fear of man (Proverbs 29:25), for he cared more about what man thought of him than what God thought of him (John 12:42, 43). Thus, when God’s commandment squared off against man’s suggestion, Saul sided with the latter, lacking the courage to stand up to popular opinion.
Instead of leading his people into steadfast obedience to the Lord’s commands, Saul’s flagrant disregard for God’s will amounted to nothing short of open rebellion (1 Samuel 15:23). According to Samuel, in despising the word of the Lord (1 Samuel 15:26), Saul might as well have led the people in a national séance3 or flagrant idolatry, which equate to the very same thing in God’s eyes (1 Samuel 15:22, 23).
For these presumptuous capitulations, the Lord tore the kingdom away from Saul and gave it to a better man (1 Samuel 15:28, 24:17). The man who succumbs is no match for the man who overcomes.
And yet the loss of God’s kingdom paled in comparison to Saul’s greatest loss of all: God Himself (1 Samuel 16:14): “Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the LORD tormented him.” Whereas the Spirit formerly rushed upon this once promising new leader (1 Samuel 10:6, 10, 11:6), now, He rushed upon the great-hearted David, Saul’s soon-to-be successor to the throne (1 Samuel 16:13). Saul had rejected God repeatedly, and now God had rejected Saul completely.
Bereft of all hope, Saul died an ignoble death by suicide, powerless and overwhelmed by his enemies (1 Samuel 31:3, 4). As David lamented “O, how the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle!” (2 Samuel 1:25).
Thus were the life and times of the once mighty Saul of Gibeah, a man called, empowered, and victorious (1 Samuel 9–11), irresolute, disobedient, and powerless (1 Samuel 13, 15, 17), and, in the end, godless (1 Samuel 16).
This is how the mighty have fallen.
Unless we take heed and repent of our own effeminate weaknesses, we will all likewise perish (Luke 13:3; 1 Corinthians 10:12).
When kings go out to battle
In contrast to Saul, king David was a man of tremendous spiritual depth and moral restraint. He was tested as few others have been and, for the most part, shined.
Imagine having not one, but two golden opportunities to save your very life from unjust persecution, and yet refusing to step out of God’s will to do so (1 Samuel 24, 26). And that, after years of almost unrelenting anxiety and sleepless nights have taken their toll on your resolve. Now that takes some manly fortitude, to put it mildly.
Without question, David’s chest swelled with a red-blooded devotion to God (1 Samuel 13:14, 16:7). Let no one say otherwise.
Even so, when the kingdom was finally in hand (2 Samuel 5), the covenant confirmed (2 Samuel 6, 7), and the victories piled up beyond reckoning (2 Samuel 8, 10), David faced perhaps his greatest test of all: staying vigilant and battle ready when he was no longer needed on the front lines (2 Samuel 11:1):
“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.”
Although it may seem rather innocuous, that is the setting for the single most consequential failure of David’s life. Not the wilderness of testing and persecution, not the raging battlefields of the enemy, but the comfortable furnishings of the king’s quarters (2 Samuel 11:2):
“It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.”
Just a lazy late afternoon at home, bored and lonely on the couch, surveying the world around him for something stimulating to occupy his attention—what could possibly go wrong?
In retrospect, David was far safer in the cave of Adullam (1 Samuel 22:1–5) than he was in his own personal man cave. That this catches us off guard almost every time is precisely why these circumstances serve as such an vulnerable point of attack (2 Samuel 11:3–5):
“And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, ‘Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant.’”
Uh oh.
What began “innocently” enough as David the peeping Tom quickly devolved into David the adulterer and, before he knew it, David the murderer (2 Samuel 11:14, 15):
“In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, ‘Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.’”
No! Why?
Rewind this movie as many times as you’d like, but the outcome remains the same for our now fallen hero David. He had lost his godly edge. His time away from fighting the good fight (1 Timothy 6:12) with his valiant brothers in arms (2 Samuel 23:8–39) had made him soft, to the peril of his own soul.
Yes, like his fateful predecessor, David too had despised the commandments of the Lord (2 Samuel 12:9; cf. Exodus 20:13, 14). The temptation to reach out and take what was not rightly his now got the better of him. Instead of holding the line against evil under the heat of temptation, David, like Saul before him (1 Samuel 31:3, 4), retreated from the good and was struck down by a self-inflected wound (Proverbs 7). The tables had now fully turned: Whereas David was once hunted by his moral inferior (1 Samuel 24:17), David now hunted a man who, at least in this instance, acted far nobler than he (2 Samuel 11:6–13).
It would be some time until, with the help of Nathan the prophet, David would finally man up and confess his wrongdoings (2 Samuel 12:13). David had witnessed firsthand what became of Saul after God’s Spirit departed from him—indeed, it was he who assuaged his master’s torment (1 Samuel 16:23). Is it any wonder then that David’s prayer of confession for his sins included the petition “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11, emphasis mine)? That was not mere poetry.
Although God did not abandon David, but instead graciously pardoned his death-penalty offenses (2 Samuel 12:13; cf. Leviticus 20:10, 24:17), nevertheless, the judgments that proceeded as a direct consequence of these sins—the untimely death of his child, violent betrayal and political treason within his own family, untold public disgrace and humiliation, just to name a few (2 Samuel 12:10–15)—shook an entire nation to its core and reverberated for generations.
David’s fall from such rarefied heights of attainment in God show us that effeminate backslidings and their fallouts do not have to be slow and torturous, like Saul’s—they can also be sudden and precipitous.
Effeminacy, though passive in principle, can be forcefully efficient in practice.
The man of excess
When David’s successor Solomon, son of Bathsheba, took the helm of the kingdom, Israel transitioned from a man of conflict and bloodshed (1 Chronicles 28:3) to a man of unparalleled peace and prosperity (1 Kings 4:20–28). The man of war had been replaced by the man of excess.
And that is no understatement, for king Solomon’s excesses were, if nothing else, excessive. The man’s harem included no less than seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3), if for no other reason than to bring his total number lovers to a nice round one thousand. It was his superabundance of wealth and foreign brides that led to his downfall (1 Kings 10:14–29, 11:1–8).4 Because of Solomon’s lustful idolatries, spurred on by the pagan partners he could not refuse, God would not only embolden Solomon’s foreign adversaries against him, but would ultimately remove the bulk of his kingdom from him, giving it to one of his unassuming servants (1 Kings 11:9–43, 12:1–24).
Is all of this sounding familiar? As Mark Twain once quipped, “History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
Moreover, Solomon’s introduction of false worship at the so-called “high places” (1 Kings 3:1–3, 11:1–8) became a perennial snare (e.g., 1 Kings 22:43, 2 Kings 12:3, etc.) that few of his successors would overcome (e.g., 2 Kings 18:4). It was this very idolatry, and its myriad attendant evils, that eventually led to widespread death and judgment for the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem (2 Kings 21:1–16, 24:3, 4).
It was not as if God hadn’t warned Solomon of this outcome. In fact, not only had God personally admonished Solomon against these sorts of compromises on two separate occasions (1 Kings 3:14, 9:6, 7, 11:9, 10), He had warned all of Israel of these pitfalls through Moses long before Israel had even established a monarchy (Deuteronomy 17:14–17):5
“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,’ you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. […] 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.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.”
You just can’t make this stuff up. Could God have forewarned them any more clearly? Rather than indulging in utter decadence, God instructed Israel’s future kings to devote themselves to understanding and obeying every jot and tittle of the law (Deuteronomy 17:18–20; cf. Matthew 5:18):
“And when he [i.e., the king] 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. 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, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.”
Instead of wisely heeding these instructions, Solomon disregarded them entirely, running smack dab into the double brick wall of the hedonic paradox and the law of diminishing returns (Ecclesiastes 2:9–11):
“So I [i.e., Solomon] became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
Solomon’s wisdom and luxurious splendor were certainly things to behold, as the queen of Sheba attested (1 Kings 10:4–9). And yet, for all his brilliance and building, sagacity and splurging (2 Chronicles 8:1–11; Ecclesiastes 2:1–8), even the humblest of flowers is clothed with greater glory, though they neither toil nor spin (Matthew 6:28, 29). For all his abundance, Solomon was lacking. But what?
As Jesus reminds us, men who dress in soft, delicate, literally “effeminate” (“μαλακὰ,” “malaka”)6 clothing live in king’s palaces (Matthew 11:8). In spite of this, or, more accurately, because of this, they tend to lack the toughness and resilience required to advance God’s causes in a hostile world. Whereas the tough get going when the going gets tough, the soft merely go along to get along. That’s effeminate. That was Solomon.
God always knows best, far better than even the worldly-wise Solomon (1 Kings 4:29–34). He has given us commandments to follow, for our own good (Deuteronomy 10:12, 13), and offers us wisdom from above (1 Corinthians 1:30; James 1:5, 3:17). We don’t have to go down the same path Solomon went down to realize what he finally concluded: “When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
Will we steel ourselves to listen to God and obey Him, even when our material plenty and social connections seem to render Him obsolete (Matthew 6:19–21; 1 Timothy 6:17–19)? Will we depend on God and His riches for our every need (Philippians 4:19), or will we simply buckle under and ally ourselves with the world and its ways and wealth when push comes to shove?
Obedience may be hard—especially for those who have it easy—but disobedience is always, in the end, harder.
Effemme fatale
We stated at the outset of this newsletter that lessons from the lives of men like Saul, David, and Solomon can provide a wealth of insight into ourselves, God, and how we are to offer acceptable worship to Him (Romans 12:1, 2; Hebrews 12:29). Let’s flesh this principle out more fully by way of application to the modern Church.
The stories of these three kings show us how effeminacy in God’s leaders can lead to utter catastrophe, not only in their own lives, but in the lives of those they lead. The damage induced by such suicidal softness is comprehensive, encompassing, among other things, spiritual shipwreck (1 Timothy 1:19), physical calamity (John 5:14, 1 Corinthians 11:29, etc.), 30), and institutional collapse (Revelation 2:5).
When effeminate Church leaders fail to stand firmly for righteousness and against sin, yielding to the internal and external pressures exerted by their own flesh (Galatians 5:17), unspiritual church members (1 Corinthians 3:3), worldly trends (1 John 2:15–17), and the devil (1 Peter 5:8), they create a culture of permissive rebellion that in time leads to a complete casting off of any and all Biblical restraints (Proverbs 29:18), with the end result being, as always, death (Proverbs 14:12; James 1:13–15).
Like the high priest Aaron who fecklessly caved to the peoples’ insistence that he fashion gods for them to worship, modern day Church leaders who give the people what their flesh craves, rather than what their spirits need, subject the Son of God to public disgrace (Hebrews 6:6) and expose the Church to every imaginable and unimaginable form of evil (Exodus 32:21–25):7
“He [i.e., Moses] said to Aaron, ‘What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?’ ‘Do not be angry, my lord,’ Aaron answered. ‘You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!’ Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies.”
Cowardly, craven, and contemptible, such shoddy shepherds would gladly save their own skin by throwing their sheep to the slaughter (John 10:11–13). Weak men do not ward off wolves, but instead invite death. They will aid and abet even the most pernicious of practices in order to remain in the peoples’ good graces, “for they loved praise from men more than praise from God” (John 12:43).
To paraphrase Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees, woe to them, blind guides, snakes, hypocrites (Matthew 23:13–39)! Both they and their followers will unwittingly stumble into the pit of hell (Matthew 15:14, 23:15, 33).
If you are currently being softened by godless “groomers” masquerading as empathetic Church leaders to embrace all manner of sin and worldly compromise in the name of God’s supposed grace and compassion (Jude 1:4), then know for certain that you have fallen into the velvet-gloved clutches of the effemme fatale, the deadly, effeminate spirit of the age. Such teachers are false teachers who preach a false gospel and worship a false god (Titus 2:11–14):
“For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good.”
Christians are called to be a nation of kingly priests who will one day rule and reign with Christ Himself (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 5:10). However, not all professing Christians will receive this honor, but only those who endure to the end in obedient faith (2 Timothy 2:11–13):
“The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with Him [i.e., Christ Jesus], we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful—for He cannot deny Himself.”
God the eternal King is faithful, never wavering on His commitment to do us good, if we would have it. But if we shrink back in effeminacy and unbelief, treating His word with scornful contempt, then we will have our just reward. Shakespeare wrote that “A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.”8 This saying is true, for there is indeed a second death (Revelation 21:8):
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Repent of your effeminate failings (Acts 17:30). Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31). Be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38, 3:19). Then, persevere in obedience to Christ’s commands out of love for all the days of your life (Matthew 24:13; John 14:15), whether in good times or in bad, for “If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength!” (Proverbs 24:10). But praise be to God almighty, for He is able to transform us poor, timid souls into mighty men of valor (Judges 6:12, 34).
“For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power, and of love, and of self-control.” —2 Timothy 1:7
The United States of Effeminacy
We have begun to see the damage wrought by effeminacy among Israel’s leaders and those in the Church, but how has this tendency gotten such a foothold in American Christianity? In the next installment of the League of Believers we will explore how our country, like Israel and Sodom and Gomorrah before it, has turned a potentially good thing, prosperity, into too good of a thing, decadence. We will summarize the main causes of our societal descent into effeminate excess, as well as the Church’s leading role in it. Finally, we will provide solutions to our condition that we as Christians must avail ourselves of if our nation is to avoid a fire and brimstone finale of its own.
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Please note that the phrase “primary cause” is used in a technical sense here to denote a first order, fundamental cause, rather than merely a major, or significant one. In other words, to say that effeminism is a primary cause of sin’s infiltration into the Church while feminism is only a secondary cause is not to deny the feminism is a major issue, which it clearly is. Rather it is to say that effeminism is the logical antecedent for feminism’s flourishing, and thus serves as a primary cause both for it, as well as a host of other sinful conditions. For more on this, see “The testing of Adam” in “The (Ef)feminization of the Church (Part I).”
Israel’s monarchy is divided into two stages: 1) the united monarchy under Saul, David, and Solomon, and 2) the divided monarchy that began with the reigns of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, and Jeroboam, son of Nebat.
Because Rehoboam continued, and even threatened to worsen, his father’s oppressive labor policies, ten of the twelve tribes of Israel split off from his kingdom under the leadership of Jeroboam to form what became known as the northern kingdom of Israel. This left only Judah and Benjamin to comprise what would be called the southern kingdom of Judah (1 Kings 12). This national divorce occurred in fulfillment of Ahijah’s prophecy to Jeroboam regarding God’s judgment on Solomon’s dynasty, which was brought about by his rampant idolatry (1 Kings 11:26–40, 12:15).
In Israel, each of the kings that succeeded Jeroboam followed his evil, idolatrous precedent (1 Kings 12:25-33), whereas less than half of Judah’s kings followed David’s predominantly righteous, faithful precedent (1 Kings 15:5, 2 Kings 22:2, etc.).
Sadly, this is not far from the truth, for in spite of earlier ridding Israel of occultists (1 Samuel 28:9), Saul would later hold a personal séance with the witch of En-dor on the eve of his demise (1 Samuel 28).
Aside from his natural affection for them (1 Kings 11:1, 2), Solomon’s penchant for foreign women was obviously motivated by regional politics, as marrying the princess of a rival king was a common means of brokering peace alliances between neighboring kingdoms at the time (1 Kings 3:1). Ironically in Solomon’s case, this plan backfired spectacularly (1 Kings 11).
Though God’s advanced warnings clearly anticipated Israel’s eventual request for a king, this does not mean that the Israelites’ desire for one arose from noble motives—quite the opposite. In demanding a king, the people had not so much rejected their final judge, Samuel, as they had rejected God Himself, who reigned as Israel’s king from the outset (1 Samuel 8:7, 12:12). That God gave the people over to the abuses of power that they were unwittingly asking for in requesting a king (1 Samuel 8:9–20), and ultimately intended this turn of events for His glory through king Jesus (2 Samuel 7, Psalm 110:1, Matthew 22:41–45, etc.), in no way equate to His approving of these sinful sentiments and actions. As always, this saying of Joseph is true: “As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good […]” (Genesis 50:20a).
This word shares the same root, “μαλακός,” “malakos” (Strong’s 3120), as the word “μαλακοὶ,” “malakoi,” which is translated as “effeminate” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. See “Going soft” in “The (Ef)feminization of the Church (Part II).”
Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 2.