1 Samuel 8:10

GOD'S DESCRIPTION OF THE KINGS THAT ISRAEL WOULD GET

"So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking a king from him. 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; 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. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 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."

"And Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people" (1 Samuel 8:10). L. P. Smith stated that, "This chapter contains the late account of the institution of the monarchy."[6] How did she justify such an error? She did so on the basis that Samuel's description of the monarchy could not possibly have been foreseen by him but was evidently written by one who had observed the monarchy for centuries! This is another example of Bible commentators who do not believe what the Bible says and whose purpose, therefore, in their writings is open to serious question.

Our text in this place ascribes this prophetic description of Israel's monarchy to THE LORD, not to Samuel.

Furthermore, there is overwhelmingly convincing evidence that this chapter is not "a late report" but a very early one. If it had been from a `late source,' as erroneously alleged, who could possibly have left out of the description of Israel's monarchy the fantastic abuse of the custom of concubinage? Concubinage was the very worst of all the abuses and tyrannies of Israel's kings. Who can forget that Solomon had hundreds of concubines? The omission of this shameful abuse in this catalogue describing the kind of kings Israel would get denies in tones of thunder that there is anything late about this chapter.

It was the monarchy that totally ruined Israel. As the Lord himself expressed it, long afterward when the monarchy had run its evil course:

I will destroy you, O Israel;

Who can help you?

Where now is your king to save you?

Where are all your princes to defend you? -

Those of whom you said, "Give me a king and princes."

I have given you kings in my anger, and

I have taken them away in my wrath.

- Hosea 13:10-11

The great Cambridge scholar, Henry McKeating, has the following comment on this passage from Hosea:

"Hosea is not only antagonistic to the northern kings but to the monarchy as such. The monarchy is powerless to save the nation. Israel was wrong to ask for a king. Her punishment was that she got what she asked."[7]

We are aware that it is popular among many able commentators today to make apologies for Israel's monarchy and to apply what the Scriptures plainly say about it to some specific monarch, Saul, for example, as did Dummelow, or to the kings of Northern Israel as did Hailey; but it is the conviction of this writer that Israel was totally and completely wrong in asking a king and that this rejection of God (that is what the text calls it) contained embryonically all of the later sorrows of the Chosen People. Throughout the whole history of Israel, there were very few monarchs who even tried to serve the Lord. Solomon was to be blamed for the division of the kingdom under his son, because the people simply rejected the excesses of Solomon; and yet, even after God took the monarchy away from them, the nation wanted nothing in heaven or on earth as much as they wanted the restoration of that scandalous Solomonic empire. It was this, more than anything else, that motivated their rejection of God Himself, finally and irrevocably, in their rejection of God's Son, Jesus Christ the Holy One.

Go down the list of Israel's kings, David, the very best of all of them, was an adulterer and a murderer; and he also corrupted the worship of God by two sinful things: (1) his initiating the events that led to the building of the temple (the den of thieves and robbers in Jesus' times); and (2) his introduction of instruments of music into the worship of God. We do not have the space here to outline all of the misdeeds of Israel's shameful monarchy, but it is clear enough that God's disapproval of the monarchy was no late thing, applicable only to the phantom kings of Ephraim's final years, but it rested upon the monarchy from the very beginning of it as outlined in this chapter. If God had ever approved of it, He would never have taken it away from them!

Nevertheless, God accommodated to the sinful conduct of His people and in many specific instances blessed the kings of Israel,

There is another word on this subject which we must include.

"They have set up kings, but not by me" (Hosea 8:4). James Luther Mays, writing in 1969, commented on this verse from Hosea, writing: "Hosea here says that God had no part in Israel's king-making. God had no responsibility for Israel's kings, and all that His people could receive from God through them was His anger."[8]