Appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have. (1 Samuel 8:5)Israel was unlike other nations. They had a direct relationship with God. But Israel didn't want that. Rememer Judges 21:25? In those days Israel had no king. They wanted to be like everyone else, and be led by a king. They wanted someone they could see, hear and touch.
The truth is Israel had a king since the days on the Plains of Moab, waiting to cross the Jordan. They had made a covenant acknowledging God as their king. The Deuteronomic covenant was a covenant between a king and his vassal (subject nation). God was the king and Israel was the subject nation. In verse 7, God speaks to Samuel: They have rejected me as their king.
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Did Israel have any idea what it was giving up, and what it was getting itself into?
I don't think they had a clue - not really. If anything, they thought they were *finally* keeping up with the Joneses in getting a nice, shiny human King. On the other hand, the whole era of the judges had a lot of men 'doing what was right in their own eyes' so in the sense of it providing more structure to the society it could have been seen as positive.
ReplyDeleteThe other bit that caught my notice was the loud thundering the Lord made to frighten the Philistines away. Anyone else think of Aslan?