1 Samuel 8:1-9 – Give Us A King

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 27 Sept 2020

Introduction

• If I were to die next week, what would happen to this church?

  • Leadership continuity is an important question for any organization. I’ve watched from the inside as more than one non-profit organization had to end its ministry because it could not survive a change in leadership.

  • If a non-profits folds, that’s one thing, but what if it’s a civil government? The citizens of New York City, Seattle, and Portland are currently seeing what a tragedy can result from failures in leadership.

  • Our national constitution provides for continuity of executive government through an election every four years. When election day rolls around, who will be elected President, and will the transfer of power be peaceful?

• Our Scripture passage opens with the statement that Samuel is getting old and that he’s facing the question of continuity of leadership in his nation after he passes away. Some time has passed since the events of chapter 7, and now Samuel is estimated to be in his 60’s¹.

• In chapter 8, three plans for continuity are presented, each by a different party:

1. Samuel’s plan, which involves appointing his sons as judges,

2. The plan of the elders of Israel to appoint a king over the entire country,

3. And God’s plan, which is not so much about monarchy as it is about whether or not Israel will relate to Him as their God and how He will show lovingkindness to them in their sin.

• Please follow along in your Bible as I read from the beginning of 1 Samuel chapter 8:1 Now, when Samuel became old, he then instated his sons to be judges for Israel: 2 the name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second-born was Abijah, and they began presiding as judges in Beersheba. 3 But his sons did not conduct themselves in the way he [did], for they went off-course after profit; they would even take a bribe and thus take justice off-course. 4 So all the elders of Israel assembled themselves together and went to Samuel at Ramah, 5 and said to him, “Look, you have gotten old, and your sons have not conducted themselves in the way you [have], so instate for us a king now to preside as judge over us like all the nations [do].” 6 But this proposal was bad in Samuel’s eyes, particularly when they said, “Give us a king to preside as judge over us,” so Samuel prayed to Yahweh. 7 Then Yahweh said to Samuel, “Give heed to the voice of the people, concerning all that they say to you, for it is not you that they have rejected, rather it is me that they have rejected from being king over them. 8 Therefore, they are doing also to you like all the doings which they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even until this day when they have forsaken me and have served other gods. 9 So now, give heed to their voice but see to it nevertheless that you solemnly testify to them and explain to them the justice-system of the king who will reign over them.” 10 So Samuel told all the words of Yahweh to the people who had asked for a king from him… (NAW)

• Let’s look at those three plans for continuity starting with...

1. Samuel’s Plan for Continuity: Hereditary Judgeship (vs. 1-3)

• Samuel named his sons “Joel” (which means, “Yahweh is God”) and “Abijah” (which means “Yahweh is my father”). Great names!

• But Samuel did not instill great character in his sons.

  • Growing up from his earliest years under the care of Eli, who was a negligent father, Samuel seems to have followed Eli’s example of poor fatherhood.

  • This is Samuel’s book, but he didn’t even write in his book the name of his wife or how many kids they had. From that we can infer that Samuel didn’t prioritize his family and its vital connection with the next generation, so the corruption of his sons might not come as a surprise.

• At any rate, when his sons grew up, Samuel set them up in relationship with the town of Beersheba, far away to the South, as judges. Now, there are two schools of thought as to their relationship with that town of Beersheba.

1. One is that his sons set up a courthouse in Beersheba.

• That would make them regional judges in the south with Samuel still presiding as judge in central Israel.

• The writer of the Jewish Soncino commentary on 1 Samuel summed up this position saying, “They were appointed, not to replace him, but to assist him. This is clear from the fact that they held their court in Beer-sheba, far in the south, and not in the cities in which Samuel had held his assizes. The sons were given the southern district, while Samuel retained the northern circuit for himself.”²

1. The other position is that Beer-sheba was not the center, but rather the southern boundary of Joel and Abijah’s circuit as judges³.

• In other words, Eli set them up to judge everywhere, even as far away as Beer-sheba, which would indicate that Samuel was expanding his regional base into a nation-wide judicatory system, something no judge had ever done before.

• Although this second position is a little bit of a stretch linguistically, it is practically supported by the fact that elders representing all of Israel came to Samuel to institute a king for the entire nation, revealing that he was seen as an authority throughout the whole country, not just in one region.

• Now, Samuel’s plan for continuity of leadership in Israel had at least two problems:

1. Samuel’s decision to appoint these two sons as judges seems to have been his own idea, not something God had told him to do.

• Samuel may or may not have been trying to make the judgeship hereditary to his family.

• None of the previous judges of Israel had done that; in fact Gideon had openly repudiated the idea, saying in Judges 8:23 “...my son is not going to rule among y’all; it’s Yahweh who’s going to rule among y’all!” (NAW)

• At any rate, “This ‘[little dynastic] experiment’ of Samuel’s was certainly a breach of the old practice of waiting for the divine appointment of a new judge [from God].” ~Tsumura (quoting Gordon)

1. The second problem is that Samuel’s sons did not have the character to be good judges.

• Joel and Abijah were not content to live off of the tithes and offerings which God’s people gave to the Levites; they found that they could double their income by saying that when people came to court to argue their cases, they would, as judges, decide in favor of whoever paid them the most money!

• This was in direct violation of God’s law back in Exodus 23:2 “Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice. You shall not show partiality...” (NKJV)

• Nevertheless, Samuel felt that his sons would be good enough. At least, with his sons in place, there would be continuity of leadership for Israel, and the nation would not descend into anarchy. However, all those people who got cheated in their court cases under Joel and Abijah’s judgeship did not agree. They got to talking with their elders in each town, and they started a grass-roots movement to get rid of Joel and Abijah’s corrupt government.

• It is scary to see that Samuel’s unfaithfulness as a father, in part, spawned this rebellion. How much of the future rides on our faithfulness as parents? Nevertheless, God, in His mercy, still blesses some men like Samuel who have not governed their family well. I guess God can look at it like any other sin and decide not to add to the grief of an imperfect man who is nevertheless cultivating a close relationship personally with Him. All the same, such a man will reap trouble from his unruly family. If you have not had godly fathership modeled to you, get mentoring from godly fathers; the next generation will thank you for it!

• Now, from Samuel’s plan we move on to the...

2. Elder’s Plan for Continuity: Appointed Kings (vs. 4-6)

• v.4 “...all the elders of Israel assembled themselves together and went to Samuel at Ramah, 5 and said... ‘instate for us a king now to preside as judge over us like all the nations [do].’”

• This is startlingly reminiscent of Exodus 32, “[W]hen the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, ‘Come, make us gods that shall go before us...’" (Ex. 32:1, NKJV) Now, out of their discontent, they come to Samuel, asking, “Make us a king to go before us!” (Henry)

• This request for a king, however, had some biblical basis. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 "When you come to the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,' you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses; one from among your brethren... Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law... and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God and... that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left..." (NKJV)

• 19^th century German Bible commentators Keil & Delitzsch noted that in Deuteronomy 17, “God had not only appointed no particular time for the establishment of the monarchy; but in the introduction to the law for the king, ‘When thou shalt say, I will set a king over me,’ He had ceded the right to the representatives of the nation to deliberate upon the matter… Externally regarded, the elders of Israel had a perfect right to present the request; the wrong was in their hearts… They wanted a king, because they imagined that Jehovah their God-king was not able to secure their constant prosperity. Instead of seeking for the cause of the misfortunes which had hitherto befallen them in their own sin and want of fidelity towards Jehovah, they searched for it in the faulty constitution of the nation itself.” (It can’t be my fault that the courts are corrupt; it’s the system that’s at fault; let’s call another constitutional convention and re-design the government! That’ll make it all better!)

• Now, Samuel could have naturally considered the elders’ proposal a bad plan because it was different from his own plan for his sons to succeed him. And as a Bible scholar, he may have also been able to come up with lots of reasons why they shouldn’t ape what the Canaanite nations were doing in their politics. But instead of blowing his top right away, Samuel does the right thing. He prays! Whenever you encounter problems, go to the Lord in prayer first! And God answers in verse 7 by deconstructing the request of the elders of the nation and explaining what’s wrong with it and what to do about it.

• The main problem with the elders’ plan was that, in their hearts, they were rejecting God as king. As God explained it to Samuel, “It’s not you they are rejecting, it’s me.”

  • At one level, God is nudging Samuel to drop the idea of making an issue over them not liking his sons and instead focus on the issue of the nation’s relationship with God.

  • This appears to be an allusion to Leviticus 26, where God uses the same word for “rejecting” Him: “I am Yahweh, y'all's God who delivered y'all out of the land of Egypt from being slaves to them – yes, I shattered the bondages of y'all's yoke; I caused y'all to rise up and walk. But if y'all don't give heed to me and y'all don't do all of these commands, and if you despise my statutes, and if your souls disdain my judgments, failing to do any of my commands such that y'all break my covenant, indeed, I myself will do the following to y'all: I will visit dismay upon y'all...” (Lev. 26:13-16, NAW)

  • You see, God was supposed to fulfill the role of king over the nation, and national rulers were to consider themselves under His authority and bound to obey His laws.

  • Although it isn’t often stated explicitly in Scripture, Samuel explains what is implied in the Biblical philosophy of government in chapter 12 v.12 when he said, “...you said to me, 'No, but a king shall reign over us,' when the LORD your God was your king.”

  • David and the Prophet Isaiah⁴ also laid it out in as many words:

    • Psalm 5 "Give ear to my words, Yahweh… my King and my God...,"

    • Psalm 44:4 "You are the same one who is my King, O God...,"

    • Psalm 47:7 "God is the King of all the earth..." (cf. 74:12),

    • Isaiah 33:22 "For Yahweh is our judge; Yahweh is our legislator; Yahweh is our king; He Himself will save us." (NAW)

  • “Though it would not entirely subvert their theocratic government, the appointment of a visible monarch would necessarily tend to throw out-of-view their unseen King and Head.” ~Jameison, Faussett, & Brown commentary

  • In our country today, the political ideal of being a secular, religiously-pluralistic country (that rejects God as king), and the democratic ideal of being ruled by the “voice of the people” are celebrated as good things, but in 1 Samuel 8, God did not present either pluralism or democracy as being a good thing for Israel. I want to explore the ramifications of that more in my next sermon.

  • But for now, suffice it to say that any form of government can be brought under God’s authority and moral law, so the issue is not so much which form of government a nation has, but who is the ultimate authority in that government – and what their relationship to “God, the ultimate lawgiver and judge” (Jas. 4:12) is. Will it be a nation “under God” or will it be another “city of man”?

• A second problem with the elders’ proposal flows out of the rejection of God’s sovereignty, and that is where they are getting their ideas from, if not from God.

  • It would have been one thing if they had come up to Samuel and said, “Sir, we’ve been read­ing in Elah HaDevrim (that’s the Hebrew name of the book we call Deuteronomy), and it says something about setting up a king once we’ve settled in to the Promised Land. Could you check with God and see if it’s about time for that?” But that’s not where they say they got their idea of a king. They say, “Give us a king now, like all the nations.” They are looking to “the nations” for norms to follow in Israel. Something’s wrong with this picture!

  • Who are these nations that they’re getting ideas from? Well, when “kings” are mentioned in the early historical books of the Bible, they’re almost all Canaanites, the very people whose “evil” God considered “complete” (Gen. 15:16). God told Israel to destroy these people and everything in their wicked civilization (Dt. 7:2, 20:17)! These are not the sort of people that should be followed as an example!

  • “The people [of Israel] wanted to become like all the other nations, but God had called them uniquely to be his people, under his especial care. But they are exchanging their true glory for status in the eyes of the world. Just as the Israelites were the people of a God who is unique and incomparable with any other god… so they were supposedly incomparable with any other nation: that is, ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exod. 19:6)… set apart for service to their divine monarch... So what they hoped to do was exactly to throw away their special status as the chosen people of God in order to identify themselves with the nations of this world.” ~Tsumura (NICOT)

  • “It [is our] greatest honour and glory, as well as happiness, not to be like other nations.” ~Gill

  • God knows that we tend to become like the things we look at. We will inevitably choose the hairstyles, clothing, vocabulary words, speech patterns, posture, cultural ideals, attitudes, and goals of whoever we put before our eyes and ears the most.

  • Let me ask, what are the examples you are holding before your eyes? If most of them are on movie screens or secular news channels, I suggest you are doing the same thing that the elders of Israel were doing.

  • Don’t look to the world for your ideas. Instead, put the Bible before your eyes (and your household’s eyes!) every day so that the words, patterns, attitudes, goals, and ideals of God are what become your influences. Hebrews 12 says, “Fix... eyes on Jesus,” and Colossians 3 says, “Set your mind on heavenly things... where Christ is.”

• Not only did the elders’ plan have the problems of a broken relationship with God and undue influence from pagans, we might also infer that it was wrongly motivated by vain pride.

  • “[W]hat they were desirous of was to have a king appearing in pomp and splendour, wearing a crown of gold, clothed in royal apparel, with a sceptre in his hand, dwelling in a stately palace, keeping a splendid court, and attended with a grand retinue, as the rest of the nations about them had had for a long time.” ~John Gill, 1766

  • “A poor prophet in a mantle, though conversant in the visions of the Almighty, looked mean in the eyes of those who judged by outward appearance; but a king in a purple robe, with his guards and officers of state, would look great: and such a one they must have... They do not say, ‘Give us a king that is wise and good, and will judge better than thy sons do,’ but, ‘Give us a king,’ any body that will but make a figure. [And we’ll see that’s exactly what they get in King Saul.] Thus foolishly did they forsake their own mercies, and, under pretence of advancing the dignity of their nation to that of their neighbours, did really thrust themselves down from their own excellency...” ~Matthew Henry, 1714

• So we’ve see Samuel’s plan and its problems; we’ve seen the elders’ plan and its problems, now let’s look at...

3. God’s Plan: Chastisement and Mercy (vs. 7-9)

• 7 Then Yahweh said to Samuel, “Give heed to the voice of the people...”

  • This course of action of instituting a monarchy comes from the vox populi, the voice of the people.

  • Mind you, the word “people” in the Hebrew here refers to the Jewish people, it is not the plural of the word for “person,” but, all the same, the source of this idea is human rather than being from God.

  • This is essentially a move to secularize the civil government and remove God from authority over the nation, but God is going to let it happen, and if we don’t repent as a nation, God will let us keep democratizing and secularizing our government too.

• It’s interesting that sometimes God lets us have what we want, not because we’re making the best choice, but because He will use the foolishness of our choices to discipline us and bring us to a more mature relationship with Him.

  • Hosea 13:11 “I gave you a king in My anger...”

  • “So you want a king besides me, do you? Well, a king is what you’re gonna get, and you’re gonna get it good!”

  • “They had to learn in the painful school of experience.” ~Goldman

• And yet while chastening them with the very thing they thought they wanted, God also remains merciful. Just as in the garden of Eden, when God had a plan for redemption ready to launch before His revealed will had been broken (Eph. 1:4), so here in Samuel’s time, God knew ahead-of-time that the people of Israel would take off in a political direction that was not His will – or His timing, and He had a plan to redeem them and bring good out of the mess they made.

  • Notice how exasperated God’s tone sounds in verse 8 - “They’ve been doing these shenanigans ever since the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt!” (cf. Jer. 22:21) They’ve crossed a line relationally by acting unfaithfully toward Him, and, at the moment, God seems to be expressing that with boundary language, not calling them “my people” but “the people… they… them” - as opposed to “me.” Yet He still extends grace.

  • One evidence of God’s grace is His merciful custom of providing warnings. He doesn’t punish without first giving at least one warning – often more than one (2 Ki. 17:13). God gives second chances to repent and obey, so even here, after the minds of the people are made up, God, through Samuel’s warning, will give them an opportunity to take their proposal back.

    • God tells Samuel, before a king is instated, to be sure to explain to them what the “mish­pot/manner/procedure/ways/custom” of a king is going to look like - “what he will do.” v.9 “So now, give heed to their voice but still see to it that you sol­emnly testify to them and explain to them the mishpot of the king who will reign over them.”

    • This word mishpot in v.9 is the same word back used in v.3 to describe Samuel’s sons who “accepted bribes and perverted mishpot/justice.” In effect, God is saying, “You think you’re going to get any different outcome from a king than you did with judges? The potential for injustice is even greater with a king! How about cool down on your eagerness for a king and let me just be your king.⁵”

    • And if you consider “customary behaviour of an oriental despot” and what were “the actual constitutional rights of a king in those days” (Goldman) it should make any sober person cringe.⁶ I plan to get into the details of that in my next sermon.

    • But for now, I want to bring out the fact that it is God’s patient kindness which gives us warnings and opportunities to repent.

• Another of God’s mercies becomes evident if we zoom out to the bigger picture. Just as God provided a descendant of Adam and Eve to fix the problem of their rebellion against God in Jesus Christ, so also God provided descendants of the king-system set up by Israel in defiance of God’s will, who would lead Israelites – and Gentiles too – back into following after God’s heart in David – and ultimately in Jesus, the great shepherd-king who “came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10), “having made peace through the blood of His cross. [So that] you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight— if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard...” (Col. 1:21-23, NASB)

1 Samuel 8 – Side-by-side comparison of versions^A