King of Kings

The OT background runs through two streams. First, the divine-superlative formula: Deuteronomy 10:17 — "the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible." Psalm 136:3 — "O give thanks to the Lord of lords." Henry, on Deut 10, reads the formula as a declaration of Israel's God against the polytheism of the surrounding nations — the title positions YHWH as superior to every claimed god. Second, the political-superlative usage: Ezra 7:12 addresses Artaxerxes as "king of kings" — a formal Persian imperial title — and Daniel 2:37 has Daniel use the same language of Nebuchadnezzar: "thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory." Daniel 4:37, after Nebuchadnezzar's restoration, has the king himself confess that the Most High is sovereign over every king. Henry treats the Daniel usage as deliberate setup for the NT transfer — the OT permits the title for earthly kings only by derivation from a higher King who alone deserves it absolutely.

The NT places the title on Christ in three escalating moments. 1 Timothy 6:15 — "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords" — Paul's doxological burst in his charge to Timothy. Calvin, on 1 Tim 6, takes the title as a settled apostolic confession — the only Potentate clause makes the absolutism explicit. Revelation 17:14 — "These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings" — placed in the context of the ten kings who hand their power to the beast and are then defeated by the Lamb. Seiss, in The Apocalypse, reads this as the climactic political-theological moment: every earthly throne is subordinated, and the subordination is enacted by the slain Lamb. Revelation 19:16 — "And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS" — Henry, on Rev 19, takes the placement of the inscription on the thigh (the place where the rider's sword touches the leg) as a deliberate sign that the title is enforceable, not honorary.

The title settles the political-theological question definitively in Henry's reading: every earthly authority is held within the conferring will of the King of kings, and to confess Jesus as King of kings is to deny absolute claim to any human throne. Seiss develops the eschatological register: the title closes the Bible's long argument about kingship, beginning with Israel's request for a king in 1 Samuel 8 and ending with the Lamb on the throne in Revelation. The PD tradition diverges on the interpretation of Rev 19's specific scenes: Henry's amillennial reading takes the warrior-Christ as a figure of all redemptive judgment running through the present age; Seiss's premillennial reading takes the same scene as future and literal. Both readings honor the title's theological weight, and the PD tradition has long held the difference without flattening either side. Calvin's brief comments on 1 Tim 6 settle the doctrinal point that links them both: the only Potentate is the church's confession, and every claim to ultimate political authority that does not bend at this name is, in the apostolic register, idolatry.