02_Walton_179_200_179_200 10/07/15 11:58 Pagina 191 191 A KING LIKE THE NATIONS: 1 SAMUEL 8 IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT 191 they do with Abimelek (Judg 9,1-6) or Absalom (2 Sam 15,10-12), with no official sanction required. If a new God is what they want, they can simply start worshipping one, which they spend most of their history doing anyway. Further, when it is clear that what they want is to opt out of the Covenant, as in Numbers 14, they do not ask Moses to appoint for them a new leader; instead they decide to kill Moses and Aaron (v. 10) and choose a leader themselves (v. 4). Despite Es- linger’s theory to the contrary 58, the respect the elders demonstrate toward the system is a clear indicator that they wish for the system, along with their covenant identity, to remain more or less intact. V. Conclusions from Review of the Literature None of these proposed interpretations is sufficient to explain what exactly is wrong with the elders’ request. The monarchy as an institution is too well regarded elsewhere in the Deuteronomistic History, including the books of Samuel, to allow the reader of the final redacted form to see it as inherently evil, either sociopolitically or theologically. The desire to imitate the nations cannot indicate a break from theocracy since the nations are also theocratic, and it cannot indicate a desire to break from the covenant and its institu- tions since they seek legitimacy in accordance with those institu- tions, i.e. they ask Samuel. We must therefore examine other factors to determine the manner in which a request for a monarch consti- tutes rejection of YHWH. VI. To Fight Our Battles We will begin our investigation by examining what the elders want the king to do. Most commentators focus on vv. 5 and 20 (“judge us”) or v. 9 (“rule over them”) 59, and from this they conclude that the king is supposed to replace the judge or the deity (who cur- rently rules) or both; as we have seen, these arguments are not ten- able. Samuel’s emphasis on “judge us” in v. 6 sheds no light on the issue either, as commentators are divided as to whether the narrator 58 ESLINGER, Kingship, 255. 59 See TSUMURA, Samuel, 249.