Inviting Despotism: Daily Thoughts from 1 Samuel (1 Samuel 8:10-22)

The greatest fear the leaders of the newly successful American revolution was that their country would be susceptible to a kingship of its own. They took great pains to establish a government with a relatively weak executive branch, a strong legislative branch, and a watchdog judicial branch. But even when the venerable George Washington took the role of first president the common fear was that he would become a dictator.

We may feel our system of government is the best there is, but there is a problem with even the best laid plans of human government…humans.

So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for 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 male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, 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.”

But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey their voice and make them a king.” Samuel then said to the men of Israel, “Go every man to his city.” (1 Samuel 8:10-22, ESV)

Why do we want to enslave ourselves to leaders? Leaders are needed. God has always appointed leaders for His people. But we feel there is safety and security in an absolute leader, one with terrible power. Why we believe he will not abuse that power is beyond me. It gets into the heads of the best of men and women whose every whim is obeyed and fear of whom causes everyone to bow and flatter them. They begin to feel they are above all others. People are grist for their mill, necessary cogs to make their machine work. People become expendable.

Israel wanted a king despite Samuel’s rehearsal of all the ways he would make their lives miserable. They believed their lives more miserable than a king could possibly make it. So Yahweh gave them what they wanted. It would fall to a man to fight Israel’s battles, to put on his shoulders the weight of all the nation, something no human can or should try to do. There is only one king who can justly rule and make slaves into friends, and that is Jesus, the king of kings. He only may have absolute authority over our lives. But like Israel, we don’t really trust Him.

And there is a certain laziness to having our trust invested in a human ruler of any level of leadership. We can give that work of leading to someone else. He can fight our battles. We’ll pay him exorbitantly to take that work off our hands. We don’t want to be like the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures to see if what Paul was teaching was correct (Acts 17:11). Give us a pope, a prophet, an apostle who will just tell us what to think and do. None of that hard work of being responsible. We invite despotism.