02_Walton_179_200_179_200 10/07/15 11:58 Pagina 183 183 A KING LIKE THE NATIONS: 1 SAMUEL 8 IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT 183 Too many texts speak neutrally or positively of kingship to war- rant writing off the entire institution. The most blatant institutional criticism the Deuteronomist has to offer — “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg 17,6; 18,1; 19,1; 21,25) — actually offers monarchy as the antidote 17. But even the books of Samuel themselves speak positively of monarchy. Firth elaborates: “It seems clear from the finished book that Yahweh did not absolutely oppose that kingship, and would later enter into a covenant relationship with David cen- tered on kingship […]. 2,10 and 2,34-35 indicate that Yahweh was moving towards monarchy. We have to reckon with the narrator’s intention in the finished text” 18. Firth departs from other commen- tators by seeing the ideal rejected by the elders as also a monarchy, but a monarchy initiated by God rather than the people: “Samuel’s speech about the justice of the king is not therefore a description of what monarchy was meant to be in Israel, but rather what it would be if the elders achieved their intention” 19. Klein concurs: “Kingship was Yahweh’s gift to a highly undeserving Israel; it pro- vided additional evidence of his covenant fidelity” 20. Likewise Evans: “[kingship] was a gift from God, a model and a channel through which God’s relationship with Israel could be illustrated and strengthened” 21. Some commentators try to further classify the passage’s seemingly negative tone as a case of presentation rather than affirmation. Polzin suggests that the distaste for the institution comes from Samuel, not the narrator, who in fact is using the account to criticize the actions of a petulant judge: “Samuel is depicted by the narrator […] as [at- tempting] to delay, if not also to subvert, the Lord’s decision […]. His rhetoric is an attempt to block the institution itself” 22. This opin- ion is echoed by Eslinger 23, but it is difficult to reconcile with v. 10’s 17 See also BALDWIN, Samuel, 83. 18 D.G. FIRTH, 1 & 2 Samuel (Downers Grove, IL 2009) 111. 19 FIRTH, 1 & 2 Samuel, 116. See also D. LAUNDERVILLE, Piety and Poli- tics. The Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (Grand Rapids, MI 2003) 315. 20 KLEIN, Samuel, 79. 21 M. EVANS, 1 and 2 Samuel (NIBC; Peabody, MA 2000) 42. 22 POLZIN, Samuel, 86. 23 ESLINGER, Kingship, 216.