The pope who is buried today in Rome is a reminder of how far we’ve come from the once powerful position that the Shepherd of Rome once held, for better or worse, commanding political and religious authority over much of the world, in the name of God.
The notion that a ruler is elected by the Divine and represents the Highest Authority was the norm in the ancient world, which is why today’s chapter in the Book of Samuel is a revolution and a game changer in the power play of politics.
Tired of being terrorized by their more powerful and hostile Philistine neighbors, and envious of more established nations in the region, the people of Israel demand monarchy. That’s not big news - but what is unique in this story is that the royal house is not thrust upon the people from above by the powers of wealth and control as was/is often the case. Even with democracies. This story is told - whether it happened this way or not -- as a grassroots movement, from the bottom up.
After decades of charismatic judges - leaders who come and go- Israel is ready for its next phase.
The elders approach Samuel, who’s quite old by now as well, and rebuke him over the fact that his two sons, appointed judges, have been accused of bribery and injustice. This dynastic model won’t work here, they say, just like Eli’s dynasty, now discontinued due to its own misconduct. We want a new dynastic model - not a judge, but a chosen king.
And although such rumbles were heard towards the end of the Book of Judges, and an actual command to secure a king in the future is dictated by YHWH to Moses back in the Sinai desert (although likely inserted later by the pro-monarchy editors) -- this chapter is new territory: This is the official move towards what will become Israel’s millenia-long monarchy, and it’s coming from the people.
YHWH doesn’t like the request one bit. It seems to be a competitive rejection of His Ultimate rule and he seems a little bitter about it. It’s in this narration of the response that we catch a glimpse of just how radical this demand really is:
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־שְׁמוּאֵ֔ל שְׁמַע֙ בְּק֣וֹל הָעָ֔ם לְכֹ֥ל אֲשֶׁר־יֹאמְר֖וּ אֵלֶ֑יךָ כִּ֣י לֹ֤א אֹֽתְךָ֙ מָאָ֔סוּ כִּי־אֹתִ֥י מָאֲס֖וּ מִמְּלֹ֥ךְ עֲלֵיהֶֽם׃
YHWH replied to Samuel, “Heed the demand of the people in everything they say to you. For it is not you that they have rejected; it is Me they have rejected as their king.
Even with the discomfort, YHWH consents. Throughout the following chapters we will notice competing narratives that echo the divine ambivalence - pro and con monarchy.
The Talmud in Tractate Sanhedrin that explores notions of power and authority wonders about the conflicting voices throughout the book and tries to understand what’s at the root of God and Samuel’s hesitance to approve the move. “Rabbi Eliezer taught - the elders spoke well, and wanted a leader who will lead with justice. But the common people spoiled it because they only wanted what the other nations had.”
These multi-vocal approaches to the question of ideal form of government are at the heart of the compelling book The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Book of Samuel, by scholars Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holme. They make a case for what makes this narrative stand out in historical context - and what it’s relevant purpose today:
‘The Book of Samuel does not display a one-sided allegiance to any of the political factions that competed for power at the time. Its author didn’t write a political book, therefore, but rather a book about politics...What makes the book so alive to the touch even today are not its normative teachings, if any, but rather its analysis of political power, an analysis that we believe to apply not only here and now but whenever and wherever structures of power exist.
..Such a rich and subtle grasp of politics finds few antecedents in the literature of the ancient Near East or in biblical literature prior to the Book of Samuel.
In the political theology typical of the great land powers surrounding ancient Israel, the king was either a God, an incarnation of a God, or a semi-mythic human king who was elected by the gods to serve as a necessary mediator between the divine order and the human world. Though there was certainly a spectrum of monarchic ideologies in the ancient Near East, kingship was not generally perceived as a historical institution that was consciously chosen at a certain critical moment in time out of the imperatives of communal life and in full recognition of the onerous burdens of taxation and conscription that would inevitably be imposed by a human sovereign as the price of organizing collective defense.Elsewhere, for the most part, monarchy was understood as part of the permanent furniture of the cosmos itself. The legitimacy of monarchy, in such cases, depended more on the mythic order than on events unfolding in historical time.’
So now we begin to comprehend what’s below the surface. As the Talmud suggests - the problem was not so much the demand for a central authority in the form of monarchy - but rather how that would impact the spiritual well being of the nation and its unique character, different than from some of the other local nations where the local lord was also seen as a god.
We are in a unique position of reading these narratives in the 21st century, as popes and kings offer little but pomp where once they held power, while fascinating for all things royal continues strong; where religious authority and adherence is in decline, and as democracies prove to be more fragile than we thought.
Here comes the crown.
Image: Miniature of Charlemagne crowned emperor by Pope Leo III, from Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, vol. 1; France, second quarter of 14th century.
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