{"id":57290,"date":"2019-06-12T22:34:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T19:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=57290"},"modified":"2023-01-03T11:35:10","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T09:35:10","slug":"the-king-and-us-eternal-ambivalence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-king-and-us-eternal-ambivalence\/","title":{"rendered":"The King And Us: Eternal Ambivalence"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[366,444,835,423,627],"acf":{"old_id":"57290","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36277,"related_cahpter":"240","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"A fascinating look at the debate down through the ages","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today\u2019s chapter (I Samuel 8) recounts probably the most fateful episode in all of Jewish political history \u2013 the decision to have a king.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The people, anxious about who or what will follow Samuel\u2019s leadership after he dies come to the aging prophet and demand, \u201cAppoint a king for us to govern us like all the other nations\u201d \u00a0(v. 5). Samuel is displeased by this request and delivers a hair-raising tirade, warning about the rapacious and tyrannical habits of kings, and how they seize your sons and daughters to serve as his soldiers and cooks, farmers and weaponsmiths. The people are unmoved. With God\u2019s assent, Samuel agrees to appoint a king \u2013 and the rest is history. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Samuel\u2019s extreme reluctance was an early moment in Judaism\u2019s eternal ambivalence about monarchy. The argument is crystallized in the Talmudic discussion in Sanhedrin 20a, about whether it is a <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mitzvah<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a commandment, to have a king. Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yehudah said that it is. They read the verse in Deuteronomy 17:14, \u201cwhen you come to the land\u2026and you say, \u201cI will set a king over me, like all the nations\u201d\u2026then you shall set up a king over yourself,\u201d as a positive commandment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conversely, Rabbi Nehorai argued that this is no mitzvah. Rather the verse foresaw the situation in our chapter, where the people would clamor for a king, with the invidious motivation of being like all other nations. Samuel\u2019s urgent, but ineffective efforts to discourage this request strengthen Rabbi Nehorai\u2019s view.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This argument has ramified throughout Jewish history. Maimonides led the medieval supporters of Jewish kingship (Hilchot Melachim, 1:1), who held that monarchy was the most stable and effective form of government and that the kingship of the House of David was part of God\u2019s ultimate, messianic purpose. The most vehement of medieval Jewish opponents of monarchy, Abarbanel, who knew a number of kings personally (including Ferdinand of Spain who expelled the Jews in 1492) argued that kingship was usually tyrannical and that Jewish monarchy was a concession to the people\u2019s weakness. Abarbanel thought that the 15<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> century proto-democratic Italian republics where he ended his life embodied a more juster, efficient governmental system.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where does God line up in this debate? According to today\u2019s chapter, God is not pleased by the demand to have a king, telling Samuel, \u201cit is not you that they have rejected; it is me that they have rejected as their king\u201d (v. 7). Fascinatingly God goes on to cite the request for a monarch as the latest in a long line of the people\u2019s betrayals, \u201cforsaking Me and worshipping other Gods\u201d (v. 8).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Israeli scholar Israel Knohl shows how in biblical times the models of monarchy provided by neighboring nations were indeed idolatrous, with the king claiming divine origins and powers.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">God identifies the impulse behind the demand for a king as a wish for a powerful human leader with quasi-divine attributes, and deplores it as the rejection of a direct, close relationship with 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