02_Walton_179_200_179_200 10/07/15 11:58 Pagina 189 189 A KING LIKE THE NATIONS: 1 SAMUEL 8 IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT 189 IV. Basis of Israelite Identity A third, more culturally-aware interpretation suggests that the emphasis falls on “like the nations”. In this view Israel just wants to be like everyone else, whatever that entails. Once again the monarch is incidental; if the nations had been constitutional re- publics the elders would have asked for that. As Tsumura explains: “The people wanted to become like all the other nations, but God had called them uniquely to be his people […]. What they hoped to do was exactly to throw away their special status as the chosen people of God in order to identify themselves with the nations of the world” 50. Eslinger says much the same: “The elders express a desire to depart from the special political status of a nation chosen and ruled by God in order to become simply one among many or- dinary nations” 51. Bergen agrees: “Israel was to be fundamentally different from the other nations; the Lord was to be their king, with the nation set apart for service to the divine monarch” 52. Finally, Hertzberg minces no words in identifying the “heathen element” in the request 53. This interpretation has fundamentally the same problem as the first one, in that it requires monarchy to be unqualifiedly bad, on a theological level rather than a sociopolitical level, but bad nonethe- less. As discussed above, this is virtually impossible to reconcile with later developments, particularly the Davidic covenant. Sec- ondly, it locates Israel’s “unique identity” partially if not entirely in its political structure. It is worth noting, however, that nowhere in the Pentateuch, the document wherein Israel’s covenant identity is established, is there any mention of YHWH being their king (melek) 54, or a command not to have a king. Instead we see instruc- tions for how the king should be chosen and how he should behave (Deut 17,14-20) and inclusion of the king in the covenant curses 50 TSUMURA, Samuel, 249 51 ESLINGER, Kingship, 257; see also HERTZBERG, Samuel, 72. 52 BERGEN, Samuel, 113. 53 HERTZBERG, Samuel, 72. 54 That some Israelites may have in fact considered YHWH to be their king is evidenced in a small number of personal names — Abimelech in Judg 8,31, Ahimelech in 1 Sam 21,2, Malkishua in 1 Sam 14,49, and Malkiel in Num 26,45 — but this hardly qualifies as establishment of a core national identity. See TSEVAT, “Monarchy,” 81.