The justification of the Israelite transition to monarchy : an ethical perspective

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the justification given for the Israelite transition from judgeship to monarchy, which was a consequential political event. This monarchy was requested by the people who premised their request on morality in one aspect and military concerns in another aspect. This dissertation is interested in the morality aspect. As it happens, ethics, the philosophy branch that deals with morality, lends us a further branch, meta-ethics, to aid us in the exposition of moral judgements undergirding the said request. To many, this political event’s consequential nature simply centres on sin, that the people, alongside their human king, later suffered the consequences of going against the divine in requesting for a human king and whose “ways” they were warned about. But this sin is a curious one given that it was possession of lucre, acceptance of bribes that the people sought to terminate – it was justice, something that is godly, that the people overtly sought to preserve. When we take the military aspect, it was their ethno-cultural enclave & polity that the people sought to protect. It amazes, however, that although scholars have committed much ink to paper on this subject matter, concluding that the people were simply sinful, no one seems to care much about what the people’s assumptions and beliefs about the divine were when they requested for a human king. This dissertation, therefore, takes seriously the people’s assumptions and beliefs about the divine to understand ancient Israel’s religion better. As such, this will help us see that the divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, benevolence, eternality, impassibility, etc.) we think were understood as we do by the people of ancient Israel may not have been. One need not be surprised to find in our exposition that the Lord himself acted in line with the people’s assumptions about divine properties. Furthermore, this will tell us much about how such assumptions made it possible for the people to think that they were justified in going to Ramah for a human king.