Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 40:2 (NA 1989)
Article: The Kingdom Of God In The Old Testament
Author: Martin J. Selman

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The Kingdom Of God In The Old Testament

Martin J. Selman

I. Introduction

While there seems little doubt that the kingdom of God is the central tenet of Jesus’ teaching,1 in the Old Testament the role of the kingdom is much more problematic. For many scholars it remains a marginal element in Old Testament thought,2 though others regard it as a major concept, found in a wide range of Old Testament authors and contexts. A further complication is that even those who are convinced of its importance are not agreed about its significance. It has been seen as a major sacramental experience of the Israelite cultus, or alternatively as a distinctive historical element of Israel’s faith whose origins can be traced to the ‘kingly covenant’ of Sinai.3

Understandably, it has had a large place in some Old Testament theologies, though mainly those of a former generation. Even for Eichrodt, the centrality he attached to the notion of covenant did not obscure the significance of the kingdom of God. Indeed, Old Testament covenant was for him almost the equivalent of the New Testament kingdom of God.4 The major failing of these larger enterprises, however, is that they are only loosely based on the actual occurrences of the terms, ‘king, kingdom, kingship’ in the Old Testament. Although John Bright, for example, rightly wished to avoid artificially transposing New Testament ideas of the kingdom of God into the Old Testament, his understanding of the term

TynBul 40:2 (1989) p. 162

still ‘involves the whole notion of the rule of God’.5 A more promising recent attempt to provide securer textual support for this approach, however, has concluded that references to Yahweh’s kingship ‘come from all segments of the canon and from all eras of Israel’s history’. The kingdom of God may therefore be regarded as a comprehensive Old Testament scheme, and the teaching of Jesus as a genuine and natural development of it.6

For all its attractiveness, however, this approach has not proved widely convincing. Several reasons may be advanced for this. First, the phrase ‘kingdom of Yahweh’ occurs in various forms only fifteen times, while ‘kingdom of God’ does not appear at all.7 Secondly, it is usually tacitly assumed that there is no real distinction between statements that Yahweh is King...