PARSHAT SHOFTIM 5785- HAVE A KING · Sukkat Shalom B'nei Noach

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Parashat Shoftim

This week’s Torah reading includes the commandment to appoint a king. However, we find that when the Jewish people asked the prophet Shmuel for a king, he got angry. Why?

Shofetim: The Commandment of a King

This week’s reading is called Shofetim, which means “judges.” In between all the commandments that appear in this parasha, there is one specific commandment about a king. The Torah says in Hebrew: you should put on top of you a king. The Torah then explains what a king should do, what kind of person he has to be, and what kind of life he has to live—not too many horses, not too many wives, and so on.

So, that’s about a king. The Torah gives a commandment to have a king. But when the Jewish people actually entered the land of Israel, they didn’t have a king—they just had judges. There’s a whole book of Judges, full of stories of these leaders.

The last judge, so to speak, was Shmuel. The people came to him and asked for a king. “We want a king just like everybody else,” they said. Shmuel got very angry about this. He didn’t like it at all, and he spent the whole night praying to G-d. What are these people doing? Why do they need a king?

G-d basically told him: Don’t worry. They’re not rejecting you. They’re rejecting Me. So get over it. Put for them a king. G-d told Shmuel—who was not only a judge but also a prophet—who was going to be king. His name was Shaul, the first king. Then other kings followed. And we also learn from this that a king has to be appointed by a prophet. Once appointed, kingship is passed from father to son—unless it is interrupted, like in the case of Shaul, after which David became king.

But there is a question here. If it is actually a commandment in our Torah reading, Shofetim, to have a king, why did Shmuel get so angry when the people asked for one? And why did G-d say, They are rejecting Me?

One explanation is that there are two aspects of a king.

There is the aspect of a king as a ruler: he has power, he knows tactics, he knows how to run a country. But the Jewish people didn’t really need that.
There is another aspect of a king: the image of G-d in the world. A king like this knows Torah, lives on a high spiritual level, and his soul is bound up with the soul of the people. Just as the Torah says in many places, the leader of the Jewish people is like the Jewish people, and he is their head.

In fact, the Hebrew word Rebbe is written with three letters: rosh bnei yisrael—the head of the Jewish people. That is what a true leader is, just like the head takes care of the whole body and every single cell. The same applies to a Rebbe. And this is not only for Jews; it applies to non-Jews as well. Our Rebbe used to take care of non-Jews too.

So, two aspects: one is military, technical, political; the other is spiritual—bringing down godliness into the world, being an image of godliness.

When the Jewish people asked Shmuel for a king, they said, We want a king just like everybody else. That is what made him so angry. Why ask for a king like this, when you could have a much higher kind of king? A king who brings G-d into the world. Other kings—of other nations—do not do this. They live for their passions and their own stupidity. Like Eglon, king of Moav, who was very fat because he just ate and ate, indulging himself in mundane pleasures.

That is why Shmuel was upset, and that is why G-d said: They are not rejecting you. They are rejecting Me. They don’t want to bring Me down into the world.

Applying the Story

How can we apply this to our own lives?

There are two ways in which we can put G-d over us as King.

One way is to see Him as a ruler: do what He says because otherwise He will punish you. This is fear-based and external.
The other way is to see Him as the true King: to serve Him with love and awe, to want to reveal Him in the world—the reason He created the world in the first place, to have a dwelling place here on earth.

So, each of us has to ask: What type of relationship do I have with G-d? Is it like with a ruler, out of fear of punishment? Or is it like with a father in heaven, out of love and the desire to bring godliness into this world?

Talk from Rabbi Tuvia Serber

The above is a representation of the spoken text converted to written text.

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