In addition to these earthly powers, the king of Israel liad a more awfid claim to respect and obedience. He was the vicegerent of Jehovah (1 Sam. x, 1 ; xvi, 13), and, as it were. His son, if just and holy (2 Sam. vii, l-l ; Psa. Ixxxix, 26, 27; ii, 6, 7). He had been set apart as a consecrated ruler. Upon his head had been poured the holy anointing oil, composed of olive-oil, mj-rrh, cin- namon, sweet calamus, and cassia, v.diich had hitherto been reserved exclusively for the priests of Jehovah, especially the high-priest, or had been solely used to anoint the Tabernacle of the Congregation, the Ark of the Testimony, and the vessels of the Tabernacle (Exod. XXX, 23-33; "xl, 9; Lev. xxi, 10; 1 Kings i, 39). He had become, in fact, emphaticallj' " the Lord's anointed." At the coronation of sovereigns in modern Europe, holy oil has frequently been used as a symbol of divine right ; but this has been mainly regarded as a mere form, and the use of it was undoubtedly introduced in imitation
of the Hebrew custom. But, from the beginning to the end of the Hebrew monarchy, a living real significance was attached to consecration by this holy anointing oU. From well-known anecdotes related of David — and, per- haps, from words in his lamentation over Saul and Jon- athan (2 Sam. i, 21) — it results that a certain sacredness invested the person of Said, t\vi first king, as the Lord's anointed ; and that, on this account, it was deemed sac- rilegious to kill liim, even at his o^v^^ request (1 Sam. xxiv, 6, 10 ; xxvi, 9, 16 ; 2 Sam. i, 14). After the de- struction of the first Temple, in the Book of Lamenta- tions over the calamities of the Hebrew people, it is by the name of " the Lord's Anointed" that Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, is bewailed (Lam. iv, 20). Again, more than 600 years after the capture of Zedekiah, the name of the Anointed, though never so used in the Old Testament — j'et suggested, probably, by Psa. ii, 2 ; Dan. ix, 26 — had become appropriated to the expected king, who was to restore the kingdom of David, and inaugu- rate a jjeriod when Edom, Moab, the Ammonites, and the Philistines would again be incorporated with the Hebrew monarchy, which would extend from the Eu- phrates to the INIediterranean Sea and to the ends of the earth (Acts i, 6; John i, 41 ; iv, 25; Isa. xi, 12-14; Psa. Ixxii, 8). Thus the identical Hebrew -word which sig- nifies anointed, through its Aramaic form adopted into Greek and Latin, is still preserved to us in the English word Messiah. (See Gesenius's Thesaurus, p. 825.) Sec § 4, below.
4. Appointment and Tnauyttration. — The law of suc- cession to the throne is somewhat obscure, but it seems most probable that the kuig during his lifetime named his successor. This was certainly the case with David, who passed over his elder son Adonijah, the son of Hag- gith, in favor of Solomon, the son of Bathsheba (1 Kings i, 30 ; ii, 22) ; and with Eehoboam, of whom it is said that he loved Jlaachah, the daughter of Absalom, above all his wives and concubines, and that he made Abijah her son to be ruler among his brethren, to make him king (2 Chron. xi, 21, 22). The succession of the first- born has been inferred from a passage in 2 Chron. xxi, 3, 4, in which Jehoshaphat is said to have given the kingdom to Jehorara " because he was the first»born." But this verj'- passage tends to show that Jehoshaphat had the power of naming his successor ; and it is wor- thy of note that Jehoram, on his coming to the throne, put to death all his brothers, which he woidd scarcely, perhaps, have done if the succession of the first-born had been the law of the land. From the conciseness of the narratives in the books of Kings no inference either v/ay can i)e drawn from the ordinary formula in which the death of the fivther and succession of his son is recorded (1 Kings XV, 8). At the same time, if no partiality for a favorite wife or son intervened, there would always be a natural bias of affection in favor of the eldest son. There appears to have been some prominence given to the mother of the king (2 Kings xxiv, 12, 15; 1 Kings ii, 19), and it is possible that the mother may have been regent diu-ing the minority of a son. Indeed, some such custom best explains the possibility of the audacious usurpation of Athaliah on the death of her son Ahaziah : a usurpation which lasted six years after the destruc- tion of all the seed-royal except the young Jehoash (2 Kings xi, 1-3). The people, too, and even foreign pow- ers, at a later period interrupted the regular transmis- sion of royal authority (2 Kings xxi, 24 ; xxiii, 24, 30 ; xxiv, 17). See Heir.
It is supposed both by Jahn (Bib. A rchceol. § 222) and Bauer (in his lleh.Alterthumer, § 20) that a king was only anointed when a new family came to the throne, or when the right to the crown was disputed. It is usual- ly on such occasions only tliat the anointing is speci- fied, as in 1 Sam. x, 1 ; 2 Sam. ii, 4 ; 1 Kings i, 39 ; 2 Kings ix, 3 ; xi, 12 ; but this is not invariably the case (see 2 Kings xxiii, 30), and there docs not apjMar suf- ficient reason to doubt that each individual king was anointed. There can be little doubt, likewise, that the