If one were ever to take the time to understand anything about the person of Jesus Christ, and by this I mean understand the historical context within which all of his lessons can only be properly understood, they would have to understand the nature of the very "covenant" that had not only been broken by David, but that Jesus was said to have come to restore. And perhaps one of the most relevant to today's world, of which no one but the poorest and most destitute would ever bother to pay attention, is that the original Twelve Tribes were never, ever, supposed to be "like other nations."
Not being like other nations was very much at the heart of the "covenant" that Israel had formed with their God. And by not being like other nations, Israel understood that they were not to have an earthly "king," especially since "kings" in those days were seen as gods, possessing the divine prerogative to determine right from wrong. It also meant not putting their God inside of a temple or having a professional priestly class that wielded power over the people, which was exactly what the Pharaohs and all the other pagan religions had done. And this was because the greater number of places there were for people to come together in the name of God, the greater power God was believed to have among his people.
King David, and then Solomon, both endeavored to abolish all of the other sites of worship by the Tribes, in places like Bethel and Shiloh, forcing them all to come to the capital that David had moved to Jerusalem, which was a city named after the Jebusite pagan God Salim, which made it a blasphemous place to move the capital of the Israelites, let alone build a pagan temple there.
But above all of this, and so much more, was that the 12 Tribes were not founded on bloodlines or on land claims. Today, of course, Jerusalem is as contested today for both reasons, as it was in the days of David, but this is because the Tribes were never supposed to be "like other nations," which had all staked their claims to blood and land. The Twelve Tribes, however, were based on a covenant with their God, and while he had promised them a "promised land," this was never intended to mean that they should rush in with swords drawn, and usurp it from those who lived there.
The Old Testament, filled with countless acts of genocide, was written as a polemic agaisnt the Israelite nation that had broken its covenant with God by it's lust to become like other nations, and in the process, conquer and control lands no less than the Philistines and the Romans. This point is illustrated quite clearly, after all, not only in the idea that Jesus was born in a stable, since all of the inns were full (i.e., nations), but that Mary and Joseph were constantly running about from place to place, foreshadowing the nomadic life of Jesus that would mirror so perfectly the nomadic lives of the Tribes themselves.
Ironically, the story of Jesus being born in a stable is metaphorically captured in the Voyage of the Damned, a true story of a ship carrying German-Jewish refugees
which was sent to Havana in 1939 by the Nazis but which was denied permission
to land anywhere, including America. The ship was eventually obliged to return to Germany,
where certain death awaited its passengers. Jesus necessarily striving everywhere to only ever be "the least of my brothers," (that is, the life of Jesus exemplified what it meant to be seen by all of humanity as "the least of my brothers"), was to illustrate just how often the world would repeatedly turn their back on "the least of it's brothers," as much as it had when he could find no inn in which to be born, and when even his friends and disciples had all abandoned him at the hour of his death.
And yet today, no less than Kind David, kings and queens have warred for land no less than the Catholic Church, and all in direct contrast to the very lesson exemplified by their "Christ." Instead, the greatest land owners in the world, which include the U.K. Russia, Saudia Arabia and America, have all acted with the rapacity of Genghis Khan and David himself, in carving up the seamless garment of the earth, like soldiers throwing dice at the foot of the cross of all those they had crucified to obtain it.
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