Warning Concerning a King, a Biblical Perspective
4/15/07 Neoperspectives.com
I ran across this recently and it is quite a powerful tribute to Libertarianism in the Old
Testament. This story starts with Samuel, a godly man, as King, but he grows old and his sons begin
to run the country and are corrupt. The people then come to him and demand a King to rule over
them:
Warning concerning a King
10 So
Samuel spoke all the words of the LORD to the people who had asked of him a
king. 11 He said, “This
will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them
for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. 12 “He
will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing
and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 “He
will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 “He
will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to
his servants. 15 “He
will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. 16 “He
will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys
and use them for his work. 17 “He
will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. 18 “Then
you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD
will not answer you in that day.”
19 Nevertheless,
the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, “No, but there shall be a king
over us, 20 that we also
may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our
battles.” 21 Now after
Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the LORD’S
hearing. 22 The LORD
said to Samuel, “Listen to their voice and appoint them a king.”
The story continues with Saul being appointed King, yet eventually he succumbs to the lust of power and politics, issuing tyrannical orders and warmongering. Eventually he confesses:
“I have sinned; I have indeed transgressed the command of the LORD and your words, because I feared the people and listened to their voice. 25 “
I think these excerpts are interesting because it accurately, in my opinion, describes the corruption of power and danger of centralized expansive government. Both Samuel and Saul are 'good people', yet they both are not able to effectively govern because by definition no human is capable of governing another effectively. The powers are too vast, the responsibilities too great, and the authorities too pervasive to prevent the corruption of power and stem clouded emotional judgment from seeping into even the best of people. Interestingly, the Lord appears to place much onus on the people for demanding someone rule over them. In effect, they bring upon their own suffering by not accepting the Lord Himself as their King, by believing another man is capable of running their lives, by not accepting personal responsibility for themselves and their communities, and by placing faith in a runaway democracy.
This belief that there are hero men that we should surrender and submit to, who can run our lives better than we can, who can spend our own money better than us, is a pervasive one, touched upon in the article posted on President's Day which concluded:
American liberty will never be reestablished so long as elites and masses alike look to the president to perform supernatural feats and therefore tolerate his virtually unlimited exercise of power. Until we can restore limited, constitutional government in this country, God save us from great presidents
Of course, the bible is subject to interpretation and there are other verses used respectively by various ideologies. While it is not necessary to ground oneself in the bible to arrive at a conclusion of liberty, it is still interesting such concepts existed thousands of years ago.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
- James Madison
See also 'The Founding of the United States'.