02_Walton_179_200_179_200 10/07/15 11:58 Pagina 181 181 A KING LIKE THE NATIONS: 1 SAMUEL 8 IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT 181 The reference to “the nations” necessitates a comparative study. I do not propose that the redactor (or any of his/their sources, for that matter) had any particular documents in mind; rather, they are drawing on what Walton has called the “cognitive environment” 6. Ideas about the nature of kingship are relatively consistent through- out the ancient Near East; the neo-Assyrian documents referenced in this article are intended to stand as examples of the kind of think- ing that permeated the culture at the time of the redaction of the Deuteronomistic History. II. Kings versus Judges Options need to be compared with alternatives. We know the elders want a king, and we know (superficially) why. We have to guess what they want a king instead of. This in turn will reveal their true motives and the source of YHWH’s ire. The desire for monarchy is usually contrasted with an imagined ideal and seen as a decision to make their lives worse: the king’s despotism (vv. 11-18) is pre- ferred over the unstated beneficence of a hypothetical, alternative power structure. Occasionally the ideal is imagined to exist in the minds of the elders, as suggested by Auld 7 (the elders are seeking an escape from the cycle of foreign oppression that judgeship has consistently failed to provide), but more often the ideal is fabricated by the interpreter, sometimes on the basis of something “implicit in the Torah” 8 and sometimes on the basis of anachronistic Western political ideology, with emphasis on things like freedom and liberty and disdain for monarchy as an institution 9. The idea of YHWH re- 6 J.H. WALTON, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI 2006) 21. 7 A.G. AULD, 1 & 2 Samuel (OTL; Louisville, KY 2011) 93. See also ESLINGER, Kingship, 255. 8 BERGEN, Samuel, 113. This assertion is based on the assumption that divine and human monarchies are mutually exclusive. See “Kings versus Deity” below. 9 For example: “Each family had been autonomous, under the leadership of its elders. It had been beholden to no one, whereas under a king military and agricultural conscription would restrict Israel’s liberty […]. Taxation, which had been unknown, would become increasingly oppressive, until the people were virtually slaves, and cried out for liberation. But having made a