Lux Lucet

Adonijah’s Attempted Coup D’état

1 Kings chapter one opens with King David old and in ill health.  Upon seeing this, Adonijah, probably David’s eldest surviving son, claims the throne for himself. 

We read, “Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, ‘I will be king’; and he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him. (And his father had not rebuked him at any time by saying, ‘Why have you done so?’”

Here we have an example of what we saw in the John Robbins quote above.  David, perhaps due in part to his ill health, perhaps due in part to being overly indulgent toward the brother of Absalom (Haggith was the mother of both Absalom and Adonijah) was slow to recognize danger in both cases.  In the former case, David’s indulgence produced a full blow coup.  As we shall see, with the prompting of Bathsheba and Nathan, ultimately David took decisive action in this second case to nip the revolt in the bud. 

“Then he [Adonijah] conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they followed and helped Adonijah.  But Zadok the priest, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei, Rei, and the mighty men who belonged to David were not with Adonijah.”

One lesson we can draw from this is that treachery can begin with those closest to you.  Joab was David’s nephew and his most successful general.  Abiathar was one of the early defectors to David (1 Sam. 22:20-23), and David gave him protection against Saul’s purge of the priests who he believed were disloyal to him.  But by throwing in his lot with Adonijah, he showed himself a backstabber. 

In like fashion, we see those who should be on Donald Trump’s side remaining silent or even coming out against him.  Very few Republicans of national stature have made their voices heard.  Fox news, the supposed conservative American news outlet, has seemed to go out of its way to declare a Biden victory.  Remarkable, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come out and publicly congratulated Joe Biden on his victory, and this in spite of Trump’s [foolish in the view of this author] lavishing of diplomatic, military and financial favors on Israel. 

“So Nathan spoke to Bathsheba the mother of Solomon, saying, ‘Have you not heard that Adonijah the son of Haggith has become king, and David our lord does not know it?”

In contrast to Joab and Abiathar, Nathan was a godly man, a patriot and a true friend of David.  It was Nathan who delivered the withering condemnation to David for his adultery and murder.  And here we see Nathan as the first one to take effective action to stop Adonijah’s coup.

Nathan told Bathsheba, “Go immediately to King David and say to him, ‘Did you not, my lord, O king, swear to your maidservant, saying, ‘Assuredly your son Solomon shall reign after me, and he shall sit on my throne’?”

Note well Nathan’s use of the word “immediately.” As John Robbins noted above, Christians are often slow to recognize error and slower to take effective action to stop it.  In like fashion, many times Christians are slow to recognize danger in other areas of life.  Perhaps this is due in part to their assuming that others have honorable motives like themselves.  But it is not necessary for Christians to be ignorant of evil.  Writing to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul said that, “we are not ignorant of his [Satan’s] devices.”  Christians have the whole counsel of God in the 66 books of the Bible.  As soldiers for Christ, it is our job to prayerfully study the Word of God to both understand it and learn how to apply it to the circumstances in our lives.

Nathan was quick to recognize the threat posed by Adonijah and had the courage to take effective action himself and counsel others to do so as well.

Taking Nathan’s advice, Bathsheba quickly went and appealed to King David.  When she appeared before David, she reminded him of his promise to name Solomon as his successor.  She closed her statement to David by saying, “Otherwise it will happen, when my lord the king rests with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon will be counted as offenders.”

Notice that Bathsheba’s appeal was not one of threats and violent revolution if she did not get what she asked for.  Rather, she appealed to what David had already promised her and Solomon.  She closed by stating, doubtless correctly, that her life and the life of her son would be in danger were David not to name his successor.

This is the situation Christians face today if the Democrats succeed in their coup attempt.  A number of prominent Democrats has talked about making lists of political enemies whom they intend to target for reprisals once in office.  In some cases, the lists include fellow Democrats who demonstrated insufficient enthusiasm for the revolution.  In other cases, they are targeting Trump supporters.  Prominent Democrat Robert B. Reich – he’s an economics professor at Berkeley and served in the Clinton administration as Secretary of Labor – has proposed a “truth and reconciliation commission” to “erase Trump’s lies” and to expose those who “enabled” them.  This is dangerous, totalitarian and Bolshevik inspired language.    

There is, in my opinion, a lesson here for American Christians as we face what may be the most serious threat to our republic at least since the Civil War.  Now is not the time to be making boastful threats about what we will do if those Dems get their way.  Now is not the time to panic or remain silent in fear.  Now is the time to model what Nathan and Bathsheba did:  to calmly appeal to the rule of law, to the evidence of Democratic election fraud, which in this author’s opinion is massive, and to go after the coup plotters legally. 

After Bathsheba and Nathan spoke, David took decisive action.  He called his chief men, Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet and Benaiah, the captain of the king’s bodyguard, together and had Solomon anointed king.  After Solomon’s anointing, we read, “And all the people went up after him; and the people played the flutes and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth seemed to split with their sound.”

David’s decisive action to quickly anoint Solomon in his stead led to a powerful public reaction in Solomon’s favor.  If we were to put this in today’s parlance, we could say that it was “good optics.”  David’s decision to do the right thing and to do it decisively helped to energize the nation behind his decision and immediately put Adonijah and his helpers on the defensive.         

The lesson for Christians here is that we are to trust in God and act decisively and boldly in doing what is right. 

Not only did David’s boldness inspire confidence in his supports, it terrified the coup plotters. We read that, “Now Adonijah and all the guests who were with him heard it [the celebratory noise of the people] as they finished eating.” After some in Adonijah’s party asked about the meaning of the noise, Abiathar’s son Jonathan burst, it would seem in something of a panic, to announce that David had just named Solomon his successor. 

We then read, “So all the guests who were with Adonijah were afraid, and arose, and each one went his way.”

In Proverbs we read, “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” The boldness of David and his supporters terrified the conscience of Adonijah’s supporters, and they quickly dispersed without so much as a fight. 

Adonijah himself fled the scene and laid hold of the horns of the altar and begged Solomon for mercy, which Solomon granted him. 

It’s remarkable how quickly the coup plot fell apart once David, prompted by Nathan and Bathsheba, took decisive action.  As American Christians who are faced with losing our republic – it is not an exaggeration by this author to say that our republic hangs in the balance; it is that serious – we can take encouragement that God will reward bold action taken in faith.

Does this mean that we will get the immediate result that we want? No, it does not.

We could act decisively and swiftly in faith and Biden could still get in the White House.  And even if Donald Trump is inaugurated in January, we as a nation still will face massive problems such as the crisis in our corrupt financial system which seems to be melting down by the day, exploding debts and deficits, “woke” culture which has taken over all of our institutions – governments, schools and businesses – and putatively Bible believing Christian churches which struggle even to preach a clear Gospel message, let alone the whole counsel of God.  In other words, with or without Donald Trump in the While House, we face major problems as a nation.

But with that said, it is the opinion of this author that we as a nation will be much better served with a duly elected president in the While House than a Deep State usurper such as Joe Biden or the Monstrous Regiment of Kamala Harris.           

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