I
Samuel 8:4-20 (11:14-15)
4 Then all the elders
of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5 and said
to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for
us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." 6 But the
thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to govern
us." Samuel prayed to the Lord, 7 and the Lord said to Samuel,
"Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they
have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8
Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to
this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9
Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show
them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." 10 So
Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for
a king. 11 He said, "These will be the ways of the king who
will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots
and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he
will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and
some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of
war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your
daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the
best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his
courtiers. 15 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your
vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16 He will
take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and
put them to his work. 17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and
you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because
of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer
you in that day." 19 But the people refused to listen to the
voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are determined to have a king over
us, 20 so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king
may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."
11:14 Samuel said to
the people, "Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingship."
15 So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king
before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed offerings of well-being before
the Lord, and there Saul and all the Israelites rejoiced greatly.
We find the
request for a king in I Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15, is an account of the rise of
sacral kingship in Israel, arising out of the failure of the charismatic leadership
of the tribal federation and the companion failure of the hereditary
priesthood.
This
important passage represents a transition from the Tribal Federation and into
the period of kingship. The Tribal Federation ideal was that Yahweh was king.
The apparent failure of the Tribal federation resulted from the military
strength of the Philistines, requiring an on-going military presence
represented by the king. The people no longer view the Tribal Federation system
as sufficient to care for new challenges. Of course, the desire to be like
other nations is precisely the opposite of the vision of the Mosaic covenant,
in which they are to be different or distinctive from among the nations.
4 Then all the elders of
Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5 and said to
him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for
us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." What is wrong with God's people wanting to be like
other nations? Must God's people always
be so different? We want to be like
everybody else. Yet, maybe part of the
point is that the people of God are not to every feel fully at home in this
world.
Further, even many
Americans, with a history of throwing off the monarchy of England, feel some
fascination with the monarchy. Of course, the English monarchy has evolved in
different direction than we find in the history of monarchy.
The request of the
Israelite elders for a king is preceded by an extended account of Israel's
decline during the closing years of the period of the judges (roughly 1200 –
1000 B.C.). That account (Judges 19-21) includes the story of the internecine
warfare that nearly obliterated the tribe of Benjamin, concluding with the grim
verdict of Judges 21:25, "In those days there was no king in Israel; all
the people did what was right in their own eyes." That summary judgment
echoes Judges 17:6 and similar statements about the lack of leadership being
the result of Israel having no king (e.g., Judges 18:1; 19:1). The negative assessment of the decentralized institution of
judgeship will merge into an equally critical view of the decentralized
priesthood in I Samuel 2:12-26 and 2 Samuel 8:1-3, the notices of the corrupt
sons of Eli and Samuel. The parallel with the sons of Eli shows the
lesson that godly authority is not something one can pass down from father to
son. The danger of hereditary succession finds embodiment in the priest Eli and
in the judge and prophet Samuel. The fact that the sons of Samuel are not
qualified to continue his leadership is anticipation of the general failure of
kingship, which normally passes political power through heredity. Much of the
Old Testament has its inspiration out of failure. In this case, the failure is
the form of leadership that arose with Moses and continued during the tribal
federation period. It persisted for a long time, demonstrating its general
success. However, history has moved on toward stronger neighbors that will call
forth a new response from these tribes. They will need stronger organization
than needed before. The rise of Saul and David will be the beginning of sacral
kingship, an important period of the history of Israel.
During the tribal
federation period, a brand of charismatic leadership was in tension with a
position like that of king and court. This move from the sporadic outbursts of
power in both religion and politics and toward settled political and religious
institutions appear as a lack of trust in Yahweh. As a matter of experience,
the monarchy strove to make itself hereditary, and to secure an inalienable
authority quite independent of the qualities of the person filling it. Was it
right to hand over to such an office the ascendancy over the free working of
the spirit? The more people saw Yahweh working in the form of unexpected
interventions in the course of events, of explosive acts of power shattering in
their force, the less they were inclined to acknowledge as the principal
champion of the Yahweh religion a man who held office quite without reference
to these divine operations. In these circumstances, the old conflict between
enthusiasm and official status was bound to break out. They feared the abuse of
royal power. Part of this fear was the prospect of the despotic use of national
resources. Behind this, those who had hitherto been the nation's religious
leaders saw another danger. One might use religion as a means to an end, as
just one more horse harnessed to the chariot of dynastic and nationalist
designs. The purity of the religious motto, Yahweh alone, seemed imperiled by
the monarchy.[1]
In the past, Moses
and Joshua had performed the role of mediator between God and people. The king
will step into that representative role as head of the people. True, the people
demand a king to be like other nations. However, Samuel and the prophets after
him are quite clear that the king rules legitimately only if he rules under the
covenant that Yahweh had established with this people. The Passover, the
Shechemite Covenant, the Ten Commandments, and the Book of the Book of the Covenant
were already firmly part of that covenant. Both the Deuteronomic History and
the massive J document will focus our attention on the ways in which Israel
broke its covenant with Yahweh. This recognition helps us to see the
theological orientation of their respective works.
I Samuel 8:6-20
are the voice of the Deuteronomist, offering a negative evaluation of the
monarchy. We can see that evaluation in Deuteronomy 17:14-17.
6 However, the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to
govern us." Samuel prayed to the Lord, 7 and the Lord said to
Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you;
for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over
them. 8 Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up
out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are
doing to you. 9 Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall
solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over
them." 10 Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the
people who were asking him for a king. The Deuteronomist now offers the
most extensive criticism of monarchy in the Old Testament.[2] 11 He said, "These will be the ways of the king who
will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots
and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he
will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and
some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of
war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your
daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the
best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his
courtiers. 15 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your
vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16 He will
take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and
put them to his work. 17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and
you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because
of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer
you in that day." In short, Samuel is
warning the Israelites that by requesting a king, they will be exchanging
having been Pharaoh's slaves for self-imposed slavery under their own ruler. Samuel
lists what the Israelites will sacrifice to have a king with no mention of
kingship's benefits (which included, among other accomplishments, the creation
of a court culture that very likely produced the Yahwistic and Elohistic
strands of the Pentateuch, the earliest layers of the Jewish and Christian
Bibles). Whether legend or not, the saying is worth repeating. Napoleon
Bonaparte, reflecting back on his life, supposedly made this capstone statement
on his career in government: "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded
empires; but on what foundation did we rest the creatures of our genius? Upon
force. But Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour, millions
of persons would die for Him."[3]
In our modern culture, our dilemma may well be that human beings do not know by
instinct what they must do. Modern culture has elevated the present ideology to
a position over the wisdom of tradition. We are so busy and anxious that we
find it difficult to know what we really want. In this situation, two common
behavioral reactions to this crisis of values are conformity and submission to
totalitarianism.[4]
19 Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice
of Samuel; they said, "No! We have decided to have a king over us, 20
so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and
go out before us and fight our battles." The opinion of the
Deuteronomist is that just as Adam and Eve wanted to be like gods, so Israel
wants to be like other nations. They exceed their divinely appointed
boundaries; they are not supposed to be like other nations! The Deuteronomist
thinks the establishment of human monarchy by the people of Israel was an
offense against the sole lordship of God over the people, referring to 8:7.[5] Chapters 7 & 8 will provide the case for the theocratic ideal of the kingship of the
Lord. The point is that theologically, kingship is rebellion, but it was also
an historical reality.
For Barth, in a
discussion of the elect and the rejected, what we find is that from I Samuel
onward the decisive concern of the Old Testament history is with the kings of
Israel. Even if the text continues to discuss the twelve tribes, the focus is
the kings. Even with people like Moses and Joshua acting as mediators, the
partnership between the Lord and Israel was between God and the people of
Israel. Now, the king steps into the foreground as the representative and head
of the people. I Samuel 8 is critical in his understanding. The creation of a
human monarchy must not mislead us into thinking it was contrary to the will of
God. History did not force this moment upon a foolish Israel and God
reluctantly concedes. For him, the tradition takes its stand on the insight that
everything decisive happens between God and king. This new order originates in
the revelation of the hitherto concealed will of God. For him the means of this
revelation is at first the folly of the nation, which wants a king of the same
kind as all other nations, who will lead them into battles. In doing so, the
people have rejected not only Samuel, but also God. I Samuel 9-10 is clear that
the choice of God falls on Saul. David will recognize Saul as the anointed of
the Lord throughout the history of the rise of David. For Barth, what makes the
people so wrong in their demand is that they demand a king different from the
one God wills them to have. They desired a human kingship in distinction from
the kingship of God, opposing and in a sense complementing it. They wanted a
hero and leader from amongst themselves, an exponent of their national power, a
symbol of their nation unity, a personal guarantor of their national security
and hope, and a man of their own choice. Yet, Samuel anoints Saul, making him the
anointed of the Lord, a prophet, who seeks to meet God and seek the word of
God. Yet, one cannot deny that the figure of Saul stands in the shadow of
David. He is not yet the true king of Israel.[6]
I Samuel 11:14-15 is part of a larger section, 10:28-11:16, describing
the battle with the Ammonites in 1050 BC. In Gilgal, the people renew their
commitment to Saul as their king. 11:14 Samuel said to the people, "Come, let us go to Gilgal
and there renew the kingship." 15 So all the people went to
Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they
sacrificed offerings of well-being before the Lord, and there Saul and all the
Israelites rejoiced greatly. The story shows how close we still are
to the period judges.
[1] in the Anchor Bible
(1984)
[2] Walter Bruggeman
noted this.
[3] Cited by Ravi
Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message
(W Publishing Group, 2002), 149.
[4] Irvin D. Yalom, Existential
Psychotherapy, 1980, referring to Viktor Frankl.
[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 50-51.
[6] Barth (Church Dogmatics, II.2 [35.2] 366-369)
No comments:
Post a Comment