King - 1st Samuel 8

Samuel has judged Israel as a whole for several decades and he’s getting old and he was hoping to pass on his position to his sons, I think like most fathers want. Unfortunately for Samuel, like Eli, his sons were not righteous, nor were the people. Specifically, his sons “walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgement.” TB says that the translation of the word “lucre” specifically indicates that they made money through illegitimate and ill-gotten methods. The elders of Israel met together and decided that they didn’t want Samuel’s sons to become their judges and that they wanted a king “like all the nations.” The IM says that the fact that Samuel’s sons were not righteous was just an excuse used by the elders to advocate for a king over the theocratic system that they were currently living under.

I tried to think about why they would do this, why would they want a king instead of a righteous judge, and some of the thoughts that I had was that the entire population of Israel probably wasn’t polled on what form of government they wanted, and even if they had been, on the whole they were not a righteous people so their opinions would have been skewed. God’s goals for Israel was for them to be righteous and live according to His commandments to love and care for each other, the city of Enoch being the end goal, in the city of Enoch, no one was poor but everyone was the same level of rich, everyone was taken care of and people lived together in love. Israel, and certainly not these elders, didn’t want that life for themselves. Israel’s goals for themselves was to be rich and prosperous financially like all their neighbors, doing what they wanted and having fun, having power. And I think it’s important to note that the elders were the ones who came and rejected Samuel and asked for a king. They wanted Israel to be powerful and fierce and mighty like the Philistines, but that’s not what God wanted for them.

The rejection of the theocratic way of government was devastating to Samuel, but he prayed about their request anyway. God’s answer probably surprised Samuel because he said “hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.” This indicates to me that Samuel has his feelings hurt a little bit here because it feels like personal rejection, which is fair. He’s probably thinking “after everything I’ve done for all these ungrateful mother…” But God comforts him that it wasn’t a rejection of Samuel, it was a rejection of God and to be fair it was probably a rejection of both, but I like that God was kind of like “we’re in this together” to Samuel, it feels encouraging.

God allows Samuel to give them a king, but he says to “protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.” TB notes that it’s not just a simple cluck-cluck warning, but instead Samuel’s statement about what the kings will do to the people is to “legally declare. The idea is that God has told Samuel to tell these Israelite leaders that when Israel gets this human king a legal relationship between them and that king is being established that is different from the legal relationship that they have had with God up to now.” These leaders probably thought that the they could influence the person who was chosen to be king and then could have been benefited in some way by this new governmental arrangement.

The warning about what will happen with a king is three fold, the IM says, “excessive taxation, conscription of the labor force, and seizure of private lands.” The warning notes that there will be “favorites” with the new king that wasn’t there with God and the problem with that is that everyone seems to think that they are going to be part of the favorites so they think it’s a great idea, while the reality is that almost no one is always part of the favorite group all the time. The people will be taxed heavily to support this king’s lifestyle, and that of all his friends, the young men will be conscripted into the military and the young women will be forced to work serving the king, and the king will “take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your assess, and put them to his work. And God ultimately tells them, “and ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen young; and the lord will not hear you in that day.” He’s telling them that it will be bad, and they don’t care, they want a king “nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said Nay; but we will have a king over us.” I had an experience like this once, where I knew what I was doing was wrong and God told me how much I would regret making that choice, and I did not care, and oh did I pay for my disobedience. But these guys, they want to be rich and powerful like their neighbors, and they didn't care what happened to anyone else, so they ruined it for everyone else. Sounds familiar.