At the end of the period of judges discussed previously, Israel asked Samuel to set a king over them.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” (1 Sa 8:4-5)

Both Samuel and God warned Israel about the consequences of monarchy,

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 Sa 8:19-22)

There are two things of note in this conversation. The first is that Israel wanted to be like all the other nations. This is probably the same impulse that led them repeatedly into worshiping the gods of the Canaanites and the surrounding nations. In some sense it is a desire to be “normal,” whatever that means. Since God had called Israel to be an example to the rest of the world, the last thing He wanted was for them to be normal. Having said that, once they had been warned and still wanted to go ahead, He did not stand in their way. To have done so would have both been out of character and destructive of His goals.

The second thing of note is the flight from responsibility. They wanted the king to “fight our battles.” Under the judges there were (theoretically) no taxes, no standing army and no compulsion to collective defense. Under a king that would all change.

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. 16 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.” (1 Sa 8:10-18)

With responsibility goes power. The transfer of responsibility inherently requires a transfer of power. It is not possible to ask another to accept responsibility without also giving him the power to act. In the case of ceding power to a king, the range of his responsibilities is limited only by his imagination and appetite for power. Since kings are human, that appetite is extensive and a cursory review of history finds that monarchies quickly become oppressive of liberty. Solomon, for example, quickly set up a rotating system of forced labor to staff his massive building program.

King Solomon drafted forced labor out of all Israel, and the draft numbered 30,000 men. And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in shifts. They would be a month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the draft. Solomon also had 70,000 burden-bearers and 80,000 stonecutters in the hill country, besides Solomon’s 3,300 chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work. (1 Ki 5:13-16)

Had you asked the Israelites if they wanted to return to slavery, they certainly would have said no. They probably reasoned that life under a king would not be all that different than it had been under the judges, just better organized. Variations on that rationale underly the creation of every government “program.” The sales pitch and the reality always wind up to be very different.

The flight from hardship and personal responsibility was quite evident during the wilderness years. There the standard refrain was, “things were better in Egypt, let’s go back.” It is this shrinking from personal responsibility that makes individual liberty so difficult and explains why liberty is the exception in the world.

God does not disapprove of hierarchy and a monarchy; it’s just that He wants to be the monarch. Since He already has unlimited power and no need of material wealth, monarchy’s usual threats to human liberty would not apply.

Recalling God’s response to the poor decision that the first couple made in the Garden, He accepted that decision but made provision for their future by providing them with protective clothing. Here, God also accepted Israel’s request for a human king and gave them the best chance of success by choosing Saul.

If one were to cast a movie with a heroic king, Saul would have been a logical choice. He was tall, good looking, athletic, modest and brave. He was not looking for the job and had to be located among the baggage when it came time to anoint him (1 Sam 10:21-22). He was successful in his first military excursion. Finally, he was from the buffer tribe of Benjamin. Looking at a map of the tribal allotments, Ephraim was on the north of Israel’s central ridge and Judah was on the south. These were the two largest tribes and each had a prophetic claim to leadership. The tribe of Benjamin was situated between them in a saddle on the ridge. That saddle provided the main east-west route between the coastal plane and the Jordan valley. The Saddle of Benjamin is strategically key terrain. To have either Judah or Ephraim control it would probably have led to civil war. So, “on paper” Saul was an excellent choice both personally and politically.

When Saul proved unfaithful in the Amalekite war (1 Sam 15), God replaced him with David – another excellent choice. Although David was from Judah, he was in all things faithful to God and was a much more adept politician than was Saul. David was, however, not a particularly good father to his sons. His family was torn with violence, murder and treason. The succession from David to Solomon was accompanied by intrigue and fratricide (1 Ki 2). David’s son, Solomon, was an excellent builder and administrator, but he allowed the proliferation of strange gods within his family and within the kingdom. Because of this, God split the kingdom (1 Ki 11).

Realistically, after the death of David, the track record of Israel under a monarchy was no better than it was under the judges. The ceding of liberty from the governance of elders and judges to that of a king brought a reduction in liberty with no long-term benefit.