When you shall come to the land… and you shall dwell in it and you may say, ‘I will set a king over me, like the nations around me,’ you shall (may) appoint a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose from among you… You shall not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother… But he (the Jewish king) shall not keep many horses… or many wives….
Devarim 17:14–17
It is not easy to be the God of Israel.
God could not have taken a more difficult people for His chosen one.
The moment He made the choice, He never had another quiet moment. While this was—and still is—the greatest love affair in world history, it has never been a smooth relationship! There have been constant disappointments, failures, and upheavals. Above all, there is the tension when the Jews do not live up to their chosenness.
This all comes to a head in this week’s Torah reading.
A non-Jewish or Jewish King?
Why on earth would God need to tell the Israelites not to appoint a foreign—a non-Jewish king—over themselves? Who would ever think of doing such a thing? What would be the motivation for such an outlandish idea?
And even if the king were Jewish, what kind of message would that send to the Israelites? Why is there a need for a king at all?
Is God Himself not the King par excellence? Who needs anyone else? So why is there a commandment in the Torah to appoint a ruler—or at least to allow for one if the Israelites ask for it?
Should God not have refused the whole enterprise?
Why should He be relegated to second place, with His full consent? Is this not the end of any kind of Jewish theocracy?
And indeed, once kings came to be appointed, the institution repeatedly went wrong. Even Israel’s greatest kings stumbled badly: King Shaul was condemned for failing to destroy Amalek, King David for taking another man’s wife, King Solomon for multiplying horses and wives, with his wives ultimately turning his heart toward other gods. The biblical record is hardly a ringing endorsement for monarchy.[1]
Was this perhaps the reason that the Israelites might have preferred a non-Jewish king? Is this why God had to rule out that option? Was the idea of a non-Jewish king perhaps exactly what the Israelites were looking for?
A Difficult People for a Difficult Torah
In a most unusual passage, the Talmud asks: “Why was the Torah given to the Jewish people?”
And it answers: “Mipnei she-hem azin”—because they are obstinate, impetuous, difficult people.[2]
These are not exactly flattering characteristics! And yet, the Talmud suggests that the Torah was given precisely because of the Jewish people’s difficult nature. As the Divrei Chaim (Rabbi Chaim Halberstam, the Sanzer Rebbe, 1793–1876) explains:
By nature, Jews are obstinate, so the Torah was given to them to break their obstinacy with prohibitions and restrictions against arrogance, adultery, and robbery…
To our great surprise, the Rebbe adds the following words:
But the other nations of the world do not need these extra restrictions, because they are not pugnacious by nature, so that for them the seven Noachide laws are sufficient.[3]
This is a bold statement, coming from a man who was known for his great love and admiration for the Jewish people. It shows courage and independence of mind, but above all an adherence to truth.
It may well be that the Israelites would have preferred a king who was not himself bound by all the restrictions of the Torah, someone who would go easy on them when they did not observe all the commandments. Perhaps he would be willing to abolish some commandments if he concluded that he himself had no need of them, as the Rebbe of Sanz argued. Consequently, he might see no reason to require them of his subjects either.
So the appointment of a non-Jewish king would actually have been a risky business, and consequently God ruled it out. Going soft on the Jews was not what God had in mind!
He needed a difficult and obstinate people because in that way they would be able to rise to the challenge of becoming the chosen people.
It is not the naturally virtuous who are chosen for great things, but those who must work and struggle for it. Only those who know darkness can bring true light. Excellence is born of effort, not of ease.
It cannot be denied that there are many people who are well-behaved by nature. But paradoxically, natural virtue alone cannot serve as an example of righteousness, precisely because it comes so easily.
It is not the naturally virtuous who are chosen for great things, but those who must work and struggle for it. Only those who know darkness can bring true light.
Excellence is born of effort, not of ease.
A King Under the Torah
Still, why have even a Jewish king?
The answer is that such a king would, in one sense, be king in name only—enough to satisfy the Israelites. They could say, “See! We too have a king!” But the Torah set severe limits on the privileges normally associated with kingship and forced the ruler to remain a servant of a law higher than himself.
According to Jewish law, as outlined in our parsha and developed by Maimonides, the king’s power was real but bounded. He could tax, wage war, judge, punish rebels, and take exceptional measures for public order. But it was always with the permission of the Supreme Jewish Court, the Sanhedrin. He could not place himself above the Torah. He was forbidden to multiply horses, wives, and personal wealth, and he was commanded to remain humble.[4]
He also had to write a Torah scroll for himself and keep it with him, so that he would read from it throughout his life and learn not to lift his heart above his brothers.[5]
Even his posture in prayer dramatized this submission. In the Amidah, the Prayer of eighteen benedictions, once the king bowed at the beginning of the prayer, he was not to straighten until he had completed it.[6]
For Maimonides, the king’s task was to act for the sake of Heaven: to uphold true faith, fill the world with justice, defeat wickedness, and wage the wars of God.[7]
This was very different from monarchy as practiced in other countries. In aspiration, at least, it was a protest against absolute rule.
The very idea of a Jewish king was an act of audacity—it required the courage to be different. Instead of wanting to set a king over themselves “like all the nations” (Shoftim 17:14), the Israelites were to receive a ruler with the public stature of a king but governed by a radically different understanding of kingship. Ours is not a king defined by power and riches, but one charged with justice, moral responsibility, and religious guidance.
A more un-kingly kind of king could hardly be imagined.
When Obedience Becomes Idolatry
But there is an even deeper theme at play.
The reason the Torah commands, or at least allows for, the appointment of a king is related to the question of civil disobedience.
As is well known, one of the central legal and moral issues at the Nuremberg trials was whether the Nazis could excuse criminal acts by appealing to German law or to following orders from their superiors.
The tribunal rejected the principle that obedience to the state was itself an excuse. The Nuremberg Charter declared crimes against humanity punishable whether or not they violated civil law; the later Nuremberg Principles likewise held that civil legality and superior orders do not automatically remove individual responsibility.[8]
To put it differently: what is the last word—obedience to the state or obedience to the principles of justice?
This is precisely the question at stake in the appointment of a king over Israel.
Unqualified obedience to the state is, in the eyes of the Torah, a fundamentally pagan idea. Freedom of conscience and disobedience to unjust law are at the core of the Torah’s teachings. “Nobody is above the law” does not just mean above the law of a particular country, but above the demands of justice that bind ruler and subject alike.
In Yoram Hazony’s reading, Nuremberg represented the triumph, in Western political culture, of a biblical idea: the state is not morally supreme, and right can demand disobedience to law.[9]
This did not mean that the Israelite king had no power. On the contrary, Jewish law granted him substantial authority. But it denied him ultimate authority.
Maimonides states the principle with remarkable clarity: if a king orders a person to violate a mitzva, he is not obeyed, because “the words of the Master precede the words of the servant.”[10]
Paradoxically, the same commandment to appoint (or to allow) a Jewish king also undermined his power. It undid Kingship as practiced by past monarchies.
The fact that today, almost no monarch wields absolute power is in line with biblical political tradition, which offers a remarkably early model of rule constrained by a law higher than the ruler.
The reason that none of the Jewish kings succeeded was that they, each in their own way, misused their position and extended their power beyond what the Torah permitted, even if they usually never went to the same extremes as non-Jewish monarchs.
Maimonides and Abarbanel
This may help explain the sharp difference between Maimonides, who treats appointing a king as a positive commandment, and Don Yitzchak Abarbanel, who argues that the Torah does not require monarchy and regards it as a concession to the people’s desire.[11]
Maimonides could see the mitzva of kingship as the creation of a monarchy whose authority was limited by Torah, humility, and the priority of Divine command. In modern terms, this would serve as a warning to the world against absolute obedience to the state.
Abarbanel, shaped by life in the monarchies of Portugal and Spain, saw the dangers of concentrating power in one person. In his commentary to this very passage, he argues that a people can be better governed by multiple, temporary leaders whose power is limited and who can hold one another accountable.
Maimonides and Abarbanel were both right, each looking at a different side of the same coin. Yes, the Torah’s ideal of kingship can look strikingly like a constitutional monarchy: a ruler of great public stature, but one bound by law. Yet that is also exactly what Abarbanel feared: human beings cannot be relied upon to keep power within its proper limits.
The question is whether we are ready for this model of kingship even today.
Notes
[1] 1 Shmuel 15; 2 Shmuel 11–12; 1 Melachim 10:26–29; 11:1–10.
[2] Babylonian Talmud, Beitzah 25b.
[3] Divrei Chaim, Responsa Part 1, Yoreh Deah 30.
[4] Devarim 17:16–20; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim uMilchamoteihem 2:6; 3:1–10; 4:1–10.
[5] Devarim 17:18–20; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim uMilchamoteihem 3:1.
[6] Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 34b; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Tefillah uBirkat Kohanim 5:10.
[7] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim uMilchamoteihem 4:10.
[8] Charter of the International Military Tribunal, art. 6(c), August 8, 1945; International Law Commission, Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal (1950), Principles II and IV.
[9] Yoram Hazony, “The Jewish Origins of the Western Disobedience Tradition,” Azure 4 (Summer 1998): 17–74, esp. 17–22.
[10] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim uMilchamoteihem 3:9.
[11] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim uMilchamoteihem 1:1; Don Yitzchak Abarbanel, Commentary on Devarim 17:14–20.
