A Curious Case of Coronation

and they said to him, “Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.” 1 Samuel 8:5 NASB

Appoint – First, a bit of technical stuff. The Hebrew text is the word sima(h)-la’nu, from the verb sym (Sin-Yod-Mem).   But you might have a hard time finding this word in a lexicon, because it is also spelled Sin-Vav-Mem (sum) where the Vav acts as a vowel. Furthermore, there is also an Aramaic equivalent. The TWOT number is 2243, Strong’s 7762. Once you actually find it, then you see that the verb is a primitive root used over 500 times in the Tanakh. In general, the verb means to put something somewhere.

One of the six different categories of usage is “to appoint people to positions.” It describes many occasions when someone like a king appoints another person to a position of authority. That is the intention here, but if we think about it, the request seems a bit strange. Basically, the people ask Samuel, not God, to make a king, that is, to appoint someone to rule over them. Perhaps the request itself already indicates how far they have strayed from God’s theocracy. Furthermore, they do not ask Samuel to make this appointment because they desire a dynastic tradition or the glory of a king. They ask because “you have grown old and your sons do not walk in your ways.” In other words, they want a replacement for Samuel’s guidance. They recognize that his sons are not adequate. They have already witnessed bribery and mismanagement by the two boys. But instead of asking for a new prophet to direct them, they chose another alternative, one that is obvious in other cultures. “Give us a king.” Why? Because if I am about to lose the only trustworthy prophet, I will need someone who is considered to be the voice of God to replace him and that person in the surrounding cultures is the king. I cannot wait for God to raise another prophet. That would involve overturning the dynasty of the existing prophetic line. No, let’s start fresh. Give me a new way, a new leader.

Of course, this assumes that God is not capable of raising a new prophet. In essence, this request removes God’s supervision and turns it over to the will of the people. They decide. Yes, they ask Samuel to choose for them, but since his choice is determined by their request and not by God’s, they have effectively replaced God’s sovereignty. Both Samuel and God recognize this. The decision spells disaster. The politics of the people is incompatible with the political God.

Notice what the people expect. “A king to judge us.” The Hebrew uses shapat, the verb for the process of government. TWOT adds some important considerations:

Since, however, the ancients did not always divide the functions of government, as most modern governments do, between legislative, executive, and judicial functions (and departments) the common translation, “to judge,” misleads us. For, the word, judge, as šāpaṭ is usually translated, in modern English, means to exercise only the judicial function of government. Unless one wishes in a context of government—civil, religious, or otherwise—consistently to translate as “to govern or rule,” the interpreter must seek more specialized words to translate a word of such broad meaning in the modern world scene. For the participle NIV uses “leader.”

The meaning of šāpaṭ is further complicated by the fact that although the ancients knew full well what law—whether civil, religious, domestic or otherwise—was, they did not think of themselves as ruled by laws rather than by men as modern people like to suppose themselves to be. The centering of law, rulership, government in a man was deeply ingrained. ^[1]

The people are not asking for a leader. They are asking for a final authority in matters of civil and religious practices. In other words, they want a “god” they can see, like the other cultures around them. When we actually consider this, it’s not so unusual. Who can imagine a government without a visible authority? Only Israel has ever been a nation whose final authority is an invisible, incorporeal deity. And for most of us, it’s just too risky, too unsettling, to trust in an invisible head-of-state. In fact, even in our ordinary lives today we still have enormous problems trusting in Someone we cannot see.

The curious case of coronation isn’t so inexplicable now, is it?

Topical Index: sym, appoint, shapat, judge, government, king, 1 Samuel 8:5

^[1] Culver, R. D. (1999). 2443 שָׁפַט. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 947). Chicago: Moody Press.

CORRECTION:  Yesterday’s TW misspelled Rosemary Ruether’s name.  I have corrected it.  At least I was consistently wrong in all the places where her name appeared.