By Dominic Odipo
One of the eternally intriguing questions about the nature of leadership is whether it springs mainly from a person’s past accomplishments or from his or her inner character.
Do one’s accomplishments qualify him to lead more than the inner character of another whose personality may be more in tune with the times?
biblical tales
The Bible contains numerous stories on leadership especially on the way it passed from one man to another or from generation to generation. But one of the more fascinating of these Biblical tales appears in first kings commonly referred to us the Third book o f the kings.
Briefly this tale is the story of King David during his last days his sons Adonijah and Solomon and the manner in which the throne passed from King David while he was still alive to Solomon .
It is a story of arrogance and presumptuousness juxtaposed upon humility and obedience. It is a story of insensitive sycophancy completely blind to the political realities of the day, including the real power of the man who sat on the throne of the Israelites at the time.
To students of the leadership of men by their fellow men, it is indeed an eternal story.
“Now king David was old and stricken in years and they covered him with clothes but he got no heat.”
That is how the story begins in the first verse of the chapter.
At the fifth verse the tale continuous along these lines: Adonijah the brother of Absalom and one of David’s older children, decided to make himself the king while his father was still ailing but without even consulting him.
“The Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, “I will be king, and prepared chariots and horsemen and fifty men to run before him. And he conferred with Job the son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest; and the following Adonijah helped him.
