02_Walton_179_200_179_200 10/07/15 11:58 Pagina 185 185 A KING LIKE THE NATIONS: 1 SAMUEL 8 IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT 185 This interpretation might be possible, except that the request has a specific context: the elders want a king like the nations. While “secular” government is normative in the modern world, it is un- known to ancient Israel and her neighbors; all of the “nations” are fully theocratic: “These ancient cultures did not locate the source of sovereignty in the earthly sphere (e.g., in the will of the people, in the state, or any other abstract entity) but rather the heavenly one” 30. This is also true in Assyria: “The notion is that of the king as the steward of the gods, especially of the principal national god and eponym of the state […]. Aššur remains the real and ultimate king” 31. Several Assyrian coronation rituals explicitly announce that “Aššur is king” 32. Kings do not usurp the power of the gods and replace them or even reign with them as equals; they receive power from the gods and serve them as vassals. “In the ancient world the king stood between the divine and human realms medi- ating the power of the deity in his city and beyond. […] The con- cept of divine sponsorship is the most important element in the ideology of kingship” 33. None of the surrounding nations would ever want to do away with their gods, and neither does Israel. A slightly different reading to the same effect emphasizes YHWH’s reference to “forsaking me and serving other gods” in v. 8 and concludes that the sin of the elders must be idolatry 34. Since idolatry in general means replacing YHWH with [object], usually another god, this case of idolatry means replacing YHWH with [ob- ject] which is a king 35. This interpretation is better, especially when read together with the admonitions against idolatry in 1 Sam 7,3 and 12,21, but it still does not properly accord with the ideology of the “nations”. While kings are in some sense seen as divine, they are still “not so fully a god as the other members of the pantheon were” 36. They were venerated by their subjects, but they in turn 30 LAUNDERVILLE, Piety, 56. 31 P. MACHINIST, “Kingship and Divinity in Imperial Assyria”, Text, Arti- fact, and Image (eds. G.M. BECKMAN - T.J. LEWIS) (BJS 346; Providence, RI 2006) 157. 32 MACHINIST, “Kingship and Divinity”, 158-159. 33 WALTON, Thought, 278-282. 34 See KLEIN, Samuel, 79. 35 See ESLINGER, Kingship, 266. 36 MACHINIST, “Kingship and Divinity”, 186.