in Jerusalem, was still a sign of the presence of God -- as it had always been -- but this presence was now exemplified by the sacred person and life of the king, who led the ark in sacred processions. The sacral king became in effect a mediator of the blessings of God upon the nation: Security, life, and fertility for the land and the people. As a result of King David's reign of forty years, the term "messiah" --  anointed -- became a powerful archtypal symbol of renewal. After the Babylonian captivity and the Diaspora, the title became associated with hopes for national restoration. Initially this was interpreted in a short- term, literal sense, that one of King David's lineal heirs would re-establish the empire of David from the sacred city of Jerusalem; but eventually the ideal of the messiah came to embrace a transcendant vision of the salvation of the nations, and the restoration of the Earth to a state of peace and prosperity the ancients called "Paradise."

When King David died he was succeeded by his son Solomon, who built the Temple. Solomon became the proto-type of the wise philosopher-priest-king, and he embodied the hereditary promise of the House of David to provide the nation with the soundest judgment. When King Solomon passed away the union between the two kingdoms dissolved, but the House of David ruled as the kings of Jerusalem for four centuries. King David's primary tool for binding the various tribal communities together into a nation involved his taking of wives from each tribal community, who collectively formed his harem. This has been a given of Desert royalty, and was deployed as recently as this century, when Ibn Saud used the tactic to create the modern state of Saudi Arabia. It also created a large pool of descendants. Records from the year 1000 B.C. are not available to confirm any family's descent from the Davidic house; Haile Selassie, the late Emperor of Ethiopia claimed to be a descendant of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon.

The forty years in the Desert of the Great King is a beacon that transcends time, carrying forward the legacy of his life through his living heirs to the modern world. Generation after generation the knowledge was kept alive, passed from father to son, of the identity of the royal House of David, under the threat of persecution that sought the extinction of a living line of personages. When power is shielded by lies, truth is preserved in secret, where it must retire until the Spring, when it, like all life, is renewed.

All things natural have their season, and the season of

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