Everybody else had a king. Everybody. Except for poor, deprived Israel. They were a Theocracy, ruled by God under the direction of a judge. That meant that when all the nations got together for dinner, Israel alone was without a king. And they were embarrassed about it.
They came to Samuel, the current judge and high priest and told him how his sons were unacceptable to them as judges. They said: Give us a king to judge us like all the other nations have (1 Samuel 8). Samuel went to God and told God that they had rejected him as judge. God said no, they had not rejected Samuel, but had rejected God himself.
God knew that they would want one. Moses had even told them how they were to treat him and how he was to act back in the book of Deuteronomy. But the Lord also told Samuel to warn them what a king would do. He will take your sons and draft them into his army. They will be serfs and servants to the king. He will take your daughters as servants. He will tax you beyond what you will be able to bear. He will not be fair.
But they wanted one. And they got one. Saul was his name, a modest, unassuming, tall young man who didn’t want the job. They pressured him into it and he became their king.
But what a king. He was cruel, manipulative and disobedient to God. He was just about everything Samuel had told the Israelites he would be.
His only real redeeming trait was his son, Jonathan. The Israelites loved Jonathan. And he would have been a good king except for the fact that Saul was so disobedient and arrogant towards God that God turned his back on Saul’s line. Saul became a single king, not the beginning of a line. He was bad enough that God cut him off immediately.
He started off well. He led his people into victory barely a month after his coronation. The Israelites were so happy about it that they were ready to kill anyone who didn’t think he was good. But Saul stopped them, showing mercy.
But Samuel was about to die. He was an old man. Saul knew that sooner or later, he would have to live without Samuel’s oversight. He began to flex his leadership muscles. A short time later, he was ready to go into battle. He had waited for seven days for Samuel to show up to give the sacrifice for the battle. When he didn’t show up, Saul decided to do it himself. When Samuel found out, he told Saul that God would take the Israelite kingdom away from him for his disobedience.
Saul disobeys one more time in a major way and Samuel turns from him, never to see him again. Instead, Samuel goes and finds David and makes him king, then he dies.
To make it worse, the people love David. He has become a mighty warrior himself.
Depressed and full of anger and jealousy, Saul tries to kill David so that God will let him keep his kingdom and give it to Jonathan, his son and David’s best friend.
But Saul dies, as Samuel said. And he loses his kingdom to David.
The people of Israel got a king. But with that king, they got strife, dissension, civil war and a king who not only abused them, but abused their relationship to God.
Sometimes, you get what you ask for. However, it is not always in the form you think.
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