Three is a very significant number.  It symbolizes completion in the Godhead trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Three also signifies progression, as can be seen in Israel's first three kings and the completion of building of the temple.  Israel's first three kings--Saul, David, and Solomon--demonstrate a progressive regeneration and a reflection of the ultimate king--Jesus Christ.  Saul, the first king is a man of great strength and beauty and remarkable humility, but his disobedience to God results in his rejection by God, his involvement in witchcraft, and his tragic death.  Saul gets as far as thinking about building the temple of God.  David, however, a man after Godís own heart (1 Sam. 13:14, 16:7), moves closer to depicting Christ and Christ's role.  David is full of faith, destroying Goliath and the enemies of Israel, and he seeks God's guidance consistently.  However, his major blunders include adultery with Bathsheba, murder of Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, and the expression of pride in the numbering of Israel.  David's desire to build a temple for God, therefore, is rejected by God, who, nevertheless, permits him to accumulate the building materials and document the detailed blueprint, but not to build the temple because he is a man of blood.  Solomon is given the privilege of building the temple.  He seeks wisdom from God, rather than long life, for his leadership role.  God compensates Solomon with wisdom, wealth, and fame.  Despite his adultery and idolatry, Solomon has emerged as one of Israelís greatest kings--completing the temple for God.

Like the Jews, any oppressed people needs wise and selfless leadership to guide them out of bondage and into freedom.  They need their Moses, Deborahs, Esthers, Douglasses, Gandhis, Kings, and Mandellas to wisely and strategically confront the forces of oppression, for "where there is no vision the people perish" (Prov. 29:18).  Leadership becomes more critical because poverty, discrimination, marginalization, oppression, exploitation, and injustice have a way of networking for the purpose of moral and spiritual blindness that purposeless revenge and violence can replace one form of prison and death with another.  The disconnected, displaced, and dislocated--the wretched of the earth, the untouchable, the children of sisyphus cannot survive the onslaughts of the above listed forces without penetrative and prophetic vision--leadership.