Canter Bridge

Centralization of power is easier to achieve than to undo.

The biblical narrative, child of an historical era in which kings were routinely elevated to the stature of demigods, displays countercultural and powerfully mixed feelings about the magnetic pull of power to the political center.

The prophet Samuel attempts in vain to persuade Israel’s tribal confederacy that the apparent gains of monarchy are not worth the cost.

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’ (1 Samuel 8:10–18 ESV)

Alas, kingship had for these Israelites an obvious logic and an attraction too strong to resist. Besides, all the other nations have kings and it’s hard to be different.

Why swim against the tide?

Why, indeed, when we can be comfortably cared for, told what to think and when, provided for in our infirmity? Where’s the harm?

Then one day, we see our sons—their faces too young for such a hard, weary look—running and stumbling before his chariot. ‘Hail to your king!’, their lips move in unison.

Easy to do, impossible to undo.