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Does the Torah really want us to have a monarchy? After all, the text is ambivalent:
If, after you have entered the land that the LORD your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, “I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,” you shall be free to set a king over yourself.
It is hardly a strong endorsement. Or as Samuel warned the people much later:
“This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots . . . He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants . . . and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (Samuel 8)
Isn’t wanting a king actually a weakness? After all, the Torah warns us that kings are tempted to maximize their power. So the Torah limits the king: restricting the number of horses, wives, or wealth that the king (or government) can acquire, and the king must remind himself every day of the limits of his power, of the fact that every person is equally endowed with the divine spirit (the way Adam was created).
He is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and . . . not consider himself better than his brothers, or turn from the law to the right or to the left. (Det. 17:18-20)
Is the Torah telling us that wanting a king is actually a weakness? That in an ideal world, the Torah is telling us that we have no sovereign but G-d, and ideally no coercive civil authority besides courts of law and our own consciences?
Discussion (2)
CHARTER MEMBER
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Samuel 8 is one of my favorites. I take it as a chastisement for desiring a king of this world, an echo of the serpent in the garden, the prince of this world, trading our heavenly king for a fallen one. If He was on the ballot this election, how many would choose Him?
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I keep thinking about why the people wanted a king: to be like other nations. They'd rather follow their neighbors than follow G-d.