By Rabbi Philip Graubart
LA JOLLA, California — Why is Donald Trump so popular with evangelicals? This is the puzzling mystery at the heart of American politics. It is, after all, beyond dispute that he’s the most documented sinner of any presidential candidate in history. It’s not unfair or a misreading to point out that he’s disobeyed, and, in some cases continues to disobey many of the ten commandments, including “do not commit adultery,” “do not covet,” “do not bear false witness,” “do not steal,” and “do not take God’s name in vain.”
Trump’s violations of these commandments are in the public record, and not hard to find or verify. He’s even boasted about many of them. Yet evangelicals embrace him with a rare fervor. Some claim that the support is merely transactional, that the overwhelming majority of evangelicals support Trump because he gave them anti-abortion judges or a more favorable understanding of church-state issues, or simply a stronger Christian, biblical culture.
But a transactional relationship doesn’t explain the genuine affection evangelicals feel for Trump. Since he announced in 2015 until now, nine years later, they’ve been his first and most enthusiastic supporters. His presentations at church conventions and prayer breakfasts are greeted with wild applause, standing ovations, and rapt listeners. Most of Trump’s serious political opponents – Ron DeSantis, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden – are genuine, believing, church-going Christians. But the happily sinning Trump overwhelmingly defeats them among the most openly Christian voters in the United States.
Many pastors and evangelical public figures – Jerry Falwell Jr., Russel Graham, Rick Perry, Lance Walnau and many others – have noticed the cognitive dissonance of the sinning Trump’s support among the faithful. So, they’ve suggested a biblical reason. Trump, they say, is equivalent to a biblical king. And biblical kings, they claim, were often “imperfect vessels,” who nevertheless performed God’s will on Earth.
There are (minimally) two problems with comparing Trump to the biblical monarchs. One, Trump is already an authoritarian figure, impatient with the constitutional and institutional checks on his power. To place him in the role of a biblical king – really, to superimpose biblical time onto our own – moves us perilously far from liberal democracy. More significantly, for those, like myself, who take the bible’s wisdom with great seriousness, supporting Trump as a biblical king is a gross misreading of the Hebrew Bible. A fair, close reading shows that the Hebrew Bible not only disapproves of the kings Trump is most compared with, but also disapproves of the monarchy itself, depicting it as a disastrously corrupt institution.
Pastors and evangelical pundits compare several kings to Trump, but the most common and most well-known are Cyrus and King David. Cyrus, the emperor of Persia, who defeated Babylonia, is an interesting place to start. Cyrus is only in the Hebrew Bible for one reason: he allowed Persian/Babylonian Jews to return to the Land of Israel and encouraged them to re-build the Temple. The bible tells us nothing more about him. Apart from his proclamation, he has no lines of dialogue, no individual charisma, no distinct personality.
Isaiah offers the image of God “grasping his [Cyrus’] hand,” using him as a tool. He repeats several times that Cyrus does not “know God,” and that he merely “fulfills all my [God’s] purpose.” The impression is of a king with no agency – a kind of benign counterpart to Nebuchadnezzar, relevant in the grand biblical narrative only as God’s instrument. It’s safe to say that Trump’s evangelical supporters don’t consider Trump a cypher, devoid of personality. So much for the Trump-Cyrus resemblance.
The more common, more credible comparison is to King David. David, after all, is filled with charisma. He succeeds in battle, conquers and builds Jerusalem, unites the two kingdoms. God calls him, in II Samuel, a “man after my own heart.” Not to put too fine a point on it, he also stumbles into his share of sex scandals. He’s a sinner who performs God’s will – exactly how some evangelicals characterize Trump. But a fair, close reading of the David saga leads to a surprising, but clear conclusion. The Hebrew Bible disapproves of David, considers him both a moral and a governing failure.
He displays his moral failures most famously in the Batsheva/Uriah episode, where he seduces the married Batsheva, impregnates her, then murders her husband Uriah. This sin is so egregious and so powerfully narrated that readers often think of it as David’s only significant moral failure. But David’s career is filled with moral outrages. He either murders all of his many political opponents, or allows them to be killed, or, conveniently, they somehow end up dead. He’s so bloodthirsty, God doesn’t allow him to build the Temple. He doesn’t punish one son for raping his daughter, or another for killing his brother, or another for usurping the throne. On his deathbed he orders the murder of several more opponents. For the second half of II Samuel, he’s a weak, pathetic, vengeful figure, with no control over his family or his kingdom.
The best evidence of the Bible’s judgement of David comes in the last story of David’s active rule. Out of nowhere he decides to disobey a clear commandment in the Hebrew Bible and conduct a census. His general Joab understands that David’s only motivation here is greed and ego, so he tries to talk him out of it. But David persists. God punishes him and thousands of Israelites die in a plague. Ordering the corrupt, deadly census is David’s final act, and serves as the bible’s final judgement on his reign. He’s a morally corrupt disaster who causes thousands of innocent deaths.
Of course, David in the bible is a finely drawn character. His grief and contrition over Uriah’s murder is genuinely moving. Later religious traditions attribute most of the Book of Psalms to him. But Judaism and Christianity’s later elevation of David shouldn’t obscure the obvious biblical message. David was a sinful tyrant, a killer, a failure as a father and, ultimately, an incompetent, narcissistic ruler. Certainly not a role model for any contemporary politician.
It’s not particularly surprising that the bible disapproves of David because the bible clearly disapproves of the monarchy itself as a governing institution. From the beginning, the Hebrew Bible warns that kings will inevitably become corrupt. In Deuteronomy, God cautions that kings will covet horses, women, and silver and gold. When the people ask Samuel to anoint a king, he repeats God’s warning, and adds that kings will enslave their subjects. I and II Kings offers moral evaluations of all Israelite monarchs. It characterizes 100% of northern kings – kings from Samaria which broke away the House of David – either as “wicked,” or as having “not done what God commanded.” That’s 250 consecutive years of moral failure that concludes with destruction and disaster. Not a subtle message.
The great majority of southern kings – descendants of David – are also characterized as wicked. And the exceptions are equally disastrous. Solomon is not a “wicked” king, but he clearly lapses into corruption, greedily acquiring precisely those things forbidden by Deuteronomy – horses, wives, riches. He also enslaves the northerners, planting the seeds for the destruction of the united monarchy. Hezekiah does “what was right in God’s eyes,” but he makes the disastrous decision to rebel against Assyria, turning the southern kingdom into a vassal state. He is followed by his son Manasseh, who becomes, according to II Kings, the worst Israelite monarch, and who Jeremiah blames for the destruction of the Temple. Josiah, the last “righteous king,” dies young in battle, a result of his equally disastrous decision to confront Egypt.
To summarize: the Hebrew Bible condemns every northern king, most southern kings, and depicts the few righteous kings as corrupt or failures or corrupt failures, who ultimately lead their people to disaster.
Ultimately, this chain of failure is not about any particular monarch. It’s the institution. The bible warns against corrupt, incompetent kings, and then shows them greedily, corruptly leading their people into exile, servitude and death.
The final scene in II Kings artfully confirms the disastrous failure of the Israelite monarchy. The Babylonians break through Jerusalem’s defenses. They burn the Temple, place King Zedekiah in chains, murder his sons in front of him, and then put out his eyes. One heir survives – King Jehoiachin. The Babylonians imprison him. But, in what some interpret as a hopeful ending, the Babylonian King Evil-merodach releases Jehoiachin from jail and sets him up to “eat before him,” – that is to dine at Evil-merodach’s table – for the rest of his life. A slight grace note to conclude that tragic story.
But hopeful? An imprisoned, powerless king, who disappears from history? Maybe – if the incident didn’t so clearly recall a previous defeated, imprisoned king who also ended up dining with his captor. When King David finally defeated Saul’s army, he slaughtered most of Saul’s descendants – possible competitors for the throne (a good example of David’s corrupt ruthlessness). But he keeps one alive – the lame Mephibosheth. Rather than kill him or keep him in chains, David imprisons him in the palace and, by assigning him to the king’s table, makes sure that he’s never out of sight. No one reading this story would characterize it as “hopeful” for Mephibosheth, or see Mephibosheth as anything but an impotent, defeated, powerless prisoner.
The same is true for Jehoiachin. His imprisonment in Babylonia is the end of his story. He’ll never leave. It’s also a final judgement on the monarchy. The story of Israel’s kings ends with the last descendant of David powerless, imprisoned, and then gone, disappeared into history.
For many Christians, Jews, and Muslims, arguing the failure of the biblical monarchy can be a difficult case to make. All three religious traditions end up romanticizing David. Later interpretations depict him as God’s sweet singer, or the direct ancestor of a redeemer. All biblical religions, in different ways, yearn for their particular versions of a Davidic restoration. I suppose that’s what draws some evangelicals to Donald Trump. Living biblically, they see his leadership as a kind of Davidic moment. But we shouldn’t allow these later interpretations to obscure the plane meaning of the stories of the Bible’s kings.
Kings, without exception, become corrupt. That’s the bible’s teaching. They murder. They oppress. They fail. Their policies lead to disaster. Beware any politician that seeks to follow in their footsteps.
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Rabbi Philip Graubart is a former spiritual leader of Congregation Beth El in La Jolla