1 Samuel — Chapter 8

The elders of Israel: \"Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: make us a king to judge us, as all the nations have.\" Four causes of the petition: (1) Samuel's old age; (2) his sons' corruption; (3) desire for kingly splendour; (4) fear of the king of Ammon. Lapide: Israel sinned in this petition, because (1) they acted without consulting God; (2) they wanted to cast off God's immediate royal dominion over them (Josephus: God had instituted a Theocracy = Deocracy in Israel); (3) they insulted Samuel; (4) they wanted a Gentile-style tyrannical king.

They have not rejected thee, but me, that I should not reign over them. Lapide applies this to all contempt of ecclesiastical superiors, citing Ignatius to the Magnesians: \"Terrible it is to contradict such a one; for not man but God is deceived, as the Lord said to Samuel: they have not rejected thee, but me.\" And Cyprian: \"How can they escape God's punishment who contemn the priests?\" And Cyrillus Alexandrinus: \"The persecution of Apostles ascends to him who raised them to the apostolate; so too here.\"

Yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. God as a deterrent and warning, not a sanction, recounts the burdens of royal tyranny (Gregory): \"The rights of men are proposed to those who despise the rights of God; to those who rejected the mild and salutary counsels of divinity, the hard and intolerable burdens of human servitude are proclaimed.\"

This will be the right of the king who shall reign over you: He will take your sons... Lapide: this law of the king describes not the just rights of a Christian prince but the tyrannical exactions of Gentile kings (Persians, Chaldaeans, Turks). Augustine: \"Remove justice and what are kingdoms but great robberies?\" Xenophon's Socrates: \"A king is chosen not to care for himself softly but that through him those who chose him may live well and happily.\" Seneca: \"The commonwealth is not the prince's; the prince is the commonwealth's.\"

And the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said: Nay; but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all nations. Lapide: the Israelites themselves later admitted (12:19): \"We have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for a king.\" The desire to be like the nations was a rejection of their special dignity as God's peculiar people.