Aug 26/06 - Parashat Shoftim

Commentary by Rabbi Alan Green

“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and take possession of it, settle in it, and say, “I will set over myself a king, like all the nations round about me,” you may indeed set a king over yourself, whom the Lord your God will select.

“Be sure to designate as king over you someone from the midst of your own people. You must not designate a foreigner over you, someone who is not your kinsman.

“Furthermore, he shall not keep too many horses, or take people back to Egypt to increase the number of his horses, since God has said to you: ‘You must not go back that way again.’ And he shall not have too many wives, lest his heart go astray. Nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.” (Deuteronomy 17:14-17)

Here is a wonderful example of the elasticity of Divine law. The key words here are: “like all the nations.” In Biblical code, this is a severe criticism. Is the nation of Israel in any way similar to the other nations of the world? Therefore, we need to realize that God (through Moses) is saying in so many words, “In my Divine dream of creation, I had hoped to be your one and only true King. But I know how great will be the temptation to imitate the nations that surround you. Therefore, reluctantly, I give you permission to have a human king of your own. Just don’t allow him to behave too much like a typical human king!”

It is part of God’s infinite wisdom to know when to make concessions to human weakness and when not to do so. For example, in God’s original schematic of the universe, human beings and, indeed, all other creatures were to be vegetarian. But just as any creation—a novel, a painting, a building, or some other work of art—takes on a life of its own once it leaves the hand of its creator, so the universe—God’s creation—took on a life of its own and went its own way once it left God’s hands and assumed an identity of its own.

And so it was that after the Flood, only ten generations after Adam and Eve left Paradise behind, God conceded that human beings must indeed eat meat—at least for this round of history—and He gave them permission to do so.

This permission was extended to the Jewish people as well. However, once the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai, meat eating became severely restricted by the laws of Kashrut. In a development parallel to the laws of kings that we read above, God says in so many words: “I know that once you stop eating the Manna, you’re going to want to eat meat. Just don’t think you can get away with eating any old animal, killed in any old way, and still remain My people!”

It’s illuminating to read about the moment in Jewish history when, centuries after the Israelites first entered the Promised Land, the critical moment of Kingship in Israel finally arrives. We read (I Samuel 8) about the final phase of the career of the Prophet Samuel, last of the Judges—the charismatic leaders of Israel in the pre-Monarchic period.

Verse 4 tells us, “All the elders of Israel assembled and came to Samuel at Ramah, and they said to him: ‘You have grown old, and your sons have not followed your ways. Therefore, appoint a king for us, to govern us like all other nations.’

“Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord replied, ‘Heed the demand of the people in everything they say to you. For it is not you that they have rejected; it is Me that they have rejected as their King. Like everything else they have done, ever since I brought them out of Egypt, to this day—forsaking Me, and worshipping other gods—so they are doing to you. Heed their demand; but warn them solemnly, and tell them about the practices of any king who will rule over them.’”

This stark analogy between preferring the rule of a human king to that of God, and preferring idol worship to the worship of God, indicates what a dramatic detour from the ideal this is. Clearly, in the Biblical schema, a human king is another step away from Paradise. But given the conditions that prevailed in ancient Israel—constant warfare and threats of invasion from its more technologically advanced neighbours—choosing a human king was as inevitable as Adam and Eve’s choice to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Nevertheless, Israelite kingship proceeds down the path that God warns against in this week’s Parashah. King Saul succumbs to the power of his position, and dooms himself by breaking with the authority of Samuel. Jewish tradition elevated Saul’s successor, King David, to be the ideal ruler of Israel and founder of the Messianic line. But King David’s reign was marred by the worst kinds of palace intrigue and two unsuccessful military coups led by his sons.

Even “Solomon the Wise,” builder of the First Temple, amassed a huge fortune in gold, silver, and horses, along with a harem of 600 wives. King Solomon’s style of imperial oppression sowed the seeds of the never-to-be-healed split between the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah, which gave rise in its turn to centuries of internecine strife.

It was Winston Churchill who famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” The question is, what kind of government most accurately reflects the will of God in its day-to-day functioning? According to this week’s Parashah, a government of God alone can function in that ideal fashion. It’s something to think about the next time we need to decide for whom we should vote in our superb, but necessarily flawed system of government.

Shabbat Shalom.