A State Is Born
is indeed a lesson in political science. The story is that a young soldier who brought David the news of Saul's death—hoping that this would be pleasing to David, whose life Saul had been after—confessed that he had had a part in dispatching the king, and for his pains David had the soldier put to death. His reason for the execution was that the soldier had defiled the office of kingship; it was a crime for an individual citizen to lay hands on the anointed. It is the way of political power to acquire a suprapersonal quality and to become in itself, regardless of the person who wields it, a shrine for public worship. Even though the incumbent proves himself unworthy, divinity doth hedge his office; it is a form of animism, by which the wielder of power is relieved of responsibility for the consequences of his use of that power. In modern times we are quick to "throw the rascals out," but it never occurs to us that rascality is imbedded in the office or that the power invested in it can make a rascal of an honest man.
Though the people of Israel had asked for a king, the spirit of freedom did not depart from them immediately upon the granting of their wish, and Saul never really set the kingship on a solid basis. It takes time for the myth of authority to gain general acceptance. David, the second king, did better, for he had forty years in which to get the tribesmen in line with the new institution; a second generation had come to maturity during his reign, and to them the exploits of royalty were "modern," real and vibrant, while the freedom of their forefathers sank into the limbo of a fairy tale. Even so, something of the past hung on, and David had to contend with frequent insurrections and, at the end, with a war of succession. He did succeed, as we learn from the Second Book of Samuel, in setting up the necessary framework for the func-
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