Samuel and the Desire for a King

1 Samuel 7-8

            After the sad incident with ark, we read a summary of Samuel’s work. As a prophet, he calls the people to repentance and they put away (for a time, at least) their idols. Now, don’t quote me on this, but watch for it as you read: it seems to me like during the reigns of Saul and David, idolatry does not trouble Israel. Samuel’s leadership keeps them on the straight and narrow for about 100 years. We notice, too, that Samuel is said to judge Israel for many years. He is almost as effective as a judge as he is as a prophet and the Philistines were subdued for a long time. (They became a bigger problem again at the end of Samuel’s life, and Saul and David fights against them regularly.)

            Things go well under Samuel, but Samuel’s sons don’t follow his ways, and the people see the writing on the wall. They ask for a king. Now, I don’t understand them. They’re worried that Samuel’s sons aren’t going to provide good leadership, but they think that magically even if their king is good his sons will be good leaders too? It’s like they’re saying, “We can’t trust your sons, Samuel, but a king’s sons—we know we’ll be able to trust them.”

            Samuel gets the dig, and he takes offense. But the Lord reminds Samuel: “It’s me they’re rejecting.” That’s the real problem, and it’s wrapped up in Israel’s statement that they want to be like the other nations. That’s a rejection of the special status they have had since Sinai, when the Lord named them His treasured possession out of all the nations (Ex. 19). They don’t want to be uniquely the Lord’s anymore. Samuel warns them: a king will conscript their children into his army; he will conscript them into forced labor; he will tax them. But, no, Israel wants a king.

            Two things: first, I get it; it is hard to be unique. Peer pressure is a real thing among adults as much as among youth. I remember after my dad died, my mom tried to date again, and she regularly found herself out of step with culture she was in. To her credit, she didn’t compromise her beliefs and start sleeping around. But the pressure was real. Another example: we live in a highly politicized age; the sheer amount of time we spend thinking about the government is astonishing. Even small-government Republicans seem to think that the government is key to solving the nation’s problems—in their case it’s getting rid of an overreaching government. I just cannot see how the government is the Church’s concern, but here we are… I understand Israel’s weariness with trying to be the Lord’s unique people against the pressure of a world whose ways have always made the world seem stronger.

            Second, the idea that they want a king who can lead them into battle is just reflective of Israel’s constant desire for a god they can see. All the way back to the golden calf, the idea of an invisible god has bothered them. It’s less of a problem for us in our day, because the world around us has become accustomed to the idea of an invisible god. But for Israel, as for the earliest Christians, it was a very counter-cultural way of thinking. For us, we may be accustomed to an invisible god, but we often would like visible results from that god. It’s kind of the same thing. So, for us, as for Israel,  2 Corinthians 5:7 bears reflection, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”