A State Is Born
reform is worth noting. The nomads had by this time settled down in the hills surrounding Canaan; sheepherding was giving way to agriculture; land tenure had achieved an importance it did not have during the migrations; trading, capital accumulations, and financial transactions had entered their way of life. Their economy had changed. Their new outlook on life was colored by the vision of great wealth in the valleys; there the pomp and circumstance of Baal worship in glittering temples compared favorably in their eyes with the austerity that Yahweh imposed on them, and there all manner of private and public problems were settled out of hand by omniscient and omnipotent royal establishments, relieving the populace of rigorous self-discipline. It looked good.
The immediate occasion for the revolutionary demand was what we would today call an emergency. In fact, there were two emergencies. In foreign affairs things were going badly for Israel; the Philistines had not only beaten them roundly in battle but had also made off with the sacred ark of the covenant. On the domestic front, they had lost faith in their leadership; the two sons of Samuel, whom he had appointed as assistants, did not live up to the high standards of their office; they had "turned aside after lucre, and took bribes and perverted judgment."
Samuel seems to have been a political scientist of the first water, all the more remarkable in that he had no books to go by but was guided only by his observation of kingship in operation. So that, when the elders said "make us a king to judge us like all the nations," he was displeased. The story says that he took the matter up with Yahweh, who assured him that nothing could be done about saving the Israelites from themselves, since they had given up on first principles.
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