כִּי תָבֹא אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ וִירִשְׁתָּהּ וְיָשַׁבְתָּה בָּהּ וְאָמַרְתָּ אָשִׂימָה עָלַי מֶלֶךְ כְּכָל הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר סְבִיבֹתָי.שׂוֹם תָּשִׂים עָלֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בּוֹ מִקֶּרֶב אַחֶיךָ תָּשִׂים עָלֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ לֹא תוּכַל לָתֵת עָלֶיךָ אִישׁ נָכְרִי אֲשֶׁר לֹא אָחִיךָ הוּא.רַק לֹא יַרְבֶּה לּוֹ סוּסִים וְלֹא יָשִׁיב אֶת הָעָם מִצְרַיְמָה לְמַעַן הַרְבּוֹת סוּס וַיהוָה אָמַר לָכֶם לֹא תֹסִפוּן לָשׁוּב בַּדֶּרֶךְ הַזֶּה עוֹד. וְלֹא יַרְבֶּה לּוֹ נָשִׁים וְלֹא יָסוּר לְבָבוֹ וְכֶסֶף וְזָהָב לֹא יַרְבֶּה לּוֹ מְאֹד.וְהָיָה כְשִׁבְתּוֹ עַל כִּסֵּא מַמְלַכְתּוֹ וְכָתַב לוֹ אֶת מִשְׁנֵה הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת עַל סֵפֶר מִלִּפְנֵי הַכֹּהֲנִים הַלְוִיִּם.
14 If, after you have entered the land that the Lord your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, "I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me," 15 you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Lord your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman. 16 Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord has warned you, "You must not go back that way again." 17 And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.
18 When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll by the levitical priests.
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah. And they said unto him: ‘Behold, you are old, and your sons walk not in your ways; now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said: ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel: ‘Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not be king over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, in that they have forsaken Me, and served other gods, so do they also unto you. Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit you shall earnestly forewarn them, and shalt declare unto them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.’
And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king. And he said: ‘This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks; and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king whom ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not answer you in that day.’ But the people refused to hearken unto the voice of Samuel; and they said: ‘Nay; 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.’
Rav Yehudah said, citing Shmu'el: All items mentioned in the section about the king are the king's prerogatives. Rav said: The section about the king was only pronounced in order to scare them.
This [dispute] corresponds to a tannaitic dispute [i.e., a debate among certain ‘tannaim’, rabbis of the Mishna:
Rabbi Yose says: All items mentioned in the section about the king are the king's prerogatives. Rabbi Yehudah says: The section was only pronounced in order to scare them.
Rabbi Yehudah also used to say: There were three commandments that Israel were obligated to fulfill once they had entered the land: appointing a king, exterminating the offspring of Amalek, and building the temple.
Rabbi Nehorai says: The section was only pronounced in response to their complaints, as written, ‘And you shall say, I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me’ (Deut. 17:14).
Rabbi Eleazar b. Tzadok says: The wise men of that generation made a proper request, as written: ‘[All the elders of Israel assembled and came to Samuel … and they said to him,] … “Appoint a king for us, to govern us”’ (1 Sam. 8:4–5). But the common people amongst them spoke wrongly, as written, ‘that we may be like all the other nations’ (1 Sam. 8:19–20).
When you will come unto the land … The Rabbis say: God said to Israel: ‘I planned that you should be free from kings.’ How do we know this? As it is said, A wild ass used to the wilderness (Jer. 2:24): just as the wild ass grows up in the wilderness and has no fear of man, so too I planned that you should have no fear of kings; but you did not desire so: ‘snuffing the wind in her desire’ (Jer. 2:24), and ‘wind’ is nothing but kingship. How do we know this? As it is said, And, behold, the four winds of the heaven broke forth upon the great sea (Dan. 7:2) [referring to Daniel's vision of the four world kingdoms]. God said: ‘Should you assert that I do not know that in the end you will forsake me, already long ago I have forewarned [you] through Moses, and said to him: “Seeing that in the end they will ask for a mortal king, let them appoint one of their own as a king, not a foreigner.”’
How do we know this? From what we have read in the section, and shalt say: I will set a king over me, etc. (Deut. 17:14). … the Rabbis say: When kings arose over Israel and began to enslave them, God exclaimed: ‘Did you not forsake me and seek kings for yourselves?’ Hence the force of, I will set a king over me. This bears out what Scripture says, Put not your trust in princes (Ps. 146:3). R. Simon said in the name of R. Joshua b. Levi: Whosoever puts his trust in the Holy One, blessed be He, is privileged to become like unto Him. Whence this? As it is said, Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose trust the Lord is (Jer. 17:7). But whosoever puts his trust in idolatry [] condemns himself to become like [the idols]. Whence this? As it is written, They that make them shall be like unto them (Ps. 115:8). The Rabbis say: Whosoever puts his trust in flesh and blood passes away and his dignity [ prob. from the Greek προστασα] also passes away, as it is said, Nor in the son of man in whom there is no help (Ps. 146:3). What follows on this verse? His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his dust. God said: ‘Although they know that man is nought, yet they forsake my Glory and say: “Set a king over us”. Why do they ask for a king? By your life, in the end you will learn to your cost what you will have to suffer from your king.’ Whence this? As it is written, All their kings are fallen, there is none among them that calleth unto Me (Hos. 7:7) …
John Milton Defensio 1651:
God indeed gives evidence throughout of his great displeasure at their [the Israelites'] request for a king – thus in [1 Sam. 8] verse 7: ‘They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them, according to all the works which they have done wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods.’ The meaning clearly is that it is a form of idolatry to ask for a king, who demands that he be worshipped and granted honors like those of a god. Indeed he who sets an earthly master over him and above all the laws is near to establishing a strange god for himself, one seldom reasonable, usually a brute beast who has scattered reason to the winds. Thus in 1 Samuel 10:19 we read: ‘And ye have this day rejected your God, who himself saved you out of all your adversities and your tribulation, and ye have said unto him, Nay, but set a king over us’ … just as if he had been teaching them that it was not for any man, but for God alone, to rule over men.
Bahya Ben Asher (13th Century): ‘It was not the will of God the Master of the Universe that there should be any king in Israel apart from himself. For he is truly the highest king, who walks in the midst of their camp and carefully attends to all of their particular needs. Nor did they need any other king. For what would an elect nation whose king is the Lord of the Universe do with a king who is mere flesh and blood? … As it is written (Hos. 13.11), “I give you a king in my anger. (cited in an early modern work by Wilhelm Schickard, a German Lutheran who became professor of Hebrew at the University of Tübingen in 1619)
James Harrington, the stumbling-block of disobedience and rebellion, 1658:
[Hosea says] ‘O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help; I will be thy king (which foretells the restitution of the commonwealth, for) where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities? and thy judges of whom thou saidst, give me a king and princes? I gave thee a king in mine anger (that is in Saul) and I took him away in my wrath.’ That is in the captivity, so at least saith Rabbi Bechai[Bahya], with whom agree Nahmoni [Midrash], Gerschom, and others. Kimchi, it is true, and Maimonides are of opinion that the people, making a king, displeased God not in the matter but in the form only, as if the root of a tree, the balance of a government, were form only and not matter: nor do our divines yet, who are divided into like parties, see more than the rabbis. Both the royalists and the commonwealthsmen of each sort, that is whether divines or Talmudists, appeal unto the letter of the law, which the royalists (as the translators of our Bible) render thus: ‘When thou shalt say’, the commonwealthsmen thus us: ‘If thou come to say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are about me, thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose.’ The one party will have the law to be positive, the other contingent and with a mark of detestation upon it; for so, where God speaketh of his people's doing anything like ‘the nations that were about them’, it is everywhere else understood...They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them.’ The government of the senate and the people is that only which is or can be the government of laws and not of men, and the government of laws and not of men is the government of God and not of men. ‘He that is for the government of laws is for the government of God, and he that is for the government of a man is for the government of a beast]
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776:
Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. … Near three thousand years passed away from the Mosaic account of the creation, till the Jews under a national delusion requested a king. Till then their form of government (except in extraordinary cases, where the Almighty interposed) was a kind of republic administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes. Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that title but the Lord of Hosts. And when a man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of Kings, he need not wonder, that the Almighty, ever jealous of his honor, should disapprove of a form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven,