KINGLY APPOINTMENTS
INTRODUCTION
TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA
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In
memory of Yakov Yehuda ben Pinchas Wallach
and Miriam Wallach bat Tzvi
Donner
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PARASHAT
SHOFTIM
KINGLY
APPOINTMENTS
By
Rabbi Yaakov Beasley
In
this week’s parasha, the Torah outlines the various forms and structures of
leadership the Jewish people will require upon settling the Land of Israel. There are judges and policemen, priests
and other religious functionaries.
Together, they provide both religious and judicial functions for the
people. Each tribe and city choose
their leaders. When the people require Divine
communication, Hashem will send them prophets. However, when discussing what we
instinctively would sense as the most crucial part of government necessary for
the people to function, the one level of government that unites the entire
people, the Torah almost hesitates.
No one would imagine any discussion of the Israeli political system that
includes how mayors and regional heads and district courts function, without any
mention of the Knesset, the Prime Minister, or the Cabinet. Most societies center around documents
that clearly delineate the relationship between the leader and his subjects,
either real or ideal (i.e. - Plato’s The Republic, the Magna Carta, the
Federalist Papers). Yet, the Torah almost bypasses the discussion of ancient
Israel’s central authority, the king, concentrating almost solely instead on the
personal qualities and spiritual level of the individual who wears the crown and
not the framework of the king’s responsibilities.
"If,
after you have entered the land that the Lord your God has assigned to you, and
taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, 'I will set a king over me
as do all the nations about me:' You shall be free to set a king over yourself,
one chosen by the Lord your God. Be
sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a
foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman: Moreover, he shall not keep
many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord
has warned you, 'You must not go back that way again:' And he shall not have
many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to
excess: When he is seated on his
royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll
by the Levitical priests. Let it
remain with him and let him read in it all of his life, so that he may learn to
revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as
well as these laws: Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate
from the Instruction to the right or to the left, to the end that he and his
descendants may reign long in the midst of Israel." (Devarim
17:14-20)
Only
later in the Bible, when the prophet Shmuel attempts to discourage the people
from appointing a king (Shemuel II 8:11-18), do we even come across a
discussion of the king’s rights and prerogatives. Here, all we have are the king’s
religious responsibilities: limits
on wealth, property and wives, and a requirement to write a Sefer Torah and
study it constantly. Clearly,
the Torah intentionally approaches this subject with at best ambivalence, an
ambivalence reflected in the opening verses:
(17:14) "KI you come to the land which Hashem your God
has given you and you possess it and dwell in it, and you say, 'Let us appoint a
king for ourselves like all the nations around us,'
(17:15) You shall surely appoint a king over yourselves, whom Hashem
your God will choose, one of your brethren shall you appoint as king over you.
You may not appoint a stranger over you who is not your
brother."
The
first word of verse 14, "KI" can be interpreted in two ways – if
or when. Assuming that "If" is the
intended meaning, then the whole verse becomes a conditional clause: "If, after
you have settled the land, you ask for a king...." This, it follows, colors the meaning of
the following verse "Som tasim alekha melekh..." as permission to appoint
a king ("you shall be free to..."), with the qualifications as elaborated below
(not too many wives, not too many horses, etc.). Therefore, the appointment of a king is
not required or even desired.
Instead, the Torah is allowing the Jewish people to be as the other
nations. However, should we
interpret the word "KI" as 'when,' as opposed to 'if,' the meaning
of these verses changes significantly.
Instead of responding to the people’s demand, the Torah is outlining the
mandate under which a monarchy is required. undergoes a significant change. The Torah is not responding to a
hypothetical demand on the part of the people for a king but laying out the
preconditions under which setting up a monarchy is mandated. Though the Torah will limit the king’s
powers, the need for a monarch remains.
The Ohr haHayyim phrases the textual difficulty as
follows:
"When
the text says, 'When you come to the land... AND YOU SAY...,' it means that it
is not God's command to you that a king should reign; rather, if the nation
speaks so, then they are permitted [to appoint him]. But later it says, 'You
shall surely appoint' – the language here shows that God is commanding that they
appoint a king!"
These
two interpretations of the pesukim are reflected in the different
positions quoted in the Tosefta (Sanhedrin 4c):
R.
Yehuda says: The Jewish people were commanded to fulfill three commandments upon
entering the land: To appoint a king, to build the Temple and to destroy the
descendants of Amalek... R. Nehorai
says: This passage (parashat ha-melekh) was only in response to their
(the people's) complaint, as it says "I will set a king over
me..."
R.
Yehuda understands the verses as commanding the appointment of the king, while
R. Nehorai views them as a concession to the people. Among the medieval commentators, most
followed the Rambam (Hilkhot Melakhim 1:1) who ruled in accordance with
R. Yehuda's opinion, and holds that there is a positive commandment to appoint a
king. However, the Abarbanel (see
commentary to Shemuel Aleph chap. 8) defends R. Nehorai's position as
follows:
"When
the Torah says, 'When you come to the land... and you say: Let us appoint a king
for ourselves like all the nations around us,' this does not constitute a mitzva
at all. God did not command that they say this and request a king (as the Ramban
had explained). Rather, this is foretelling the future. It means, after your
settlement in the chosen land, the conquest and all the wars, and after the
division [of the land] ... I know that you will be ungrateful and say of your
own volition, 'I will set a king over me,' not out of necessity to fight the
nations and occupy the land, for it will have already come under your
occupation, but rather to render yourselves equivalent to the nations that crown
kings over themselves. He mentioned that when this occurs, they should not crown
that king based on their own will, but rather [they must crown] the one who God
chooses from among their brethren... According to this, then, the issue of the
king is a positive commandment that depends upon a voluntary situation, as if to
say, when you want to do so, notwithstanding its impropriety, do so only in this
manner."
Despite
the near unanimous opinion among the medieval commentators that Jewish law rules
in accordance with R. Yehuda’s viewpoint, the textual ambivalence at the
beginning of the verse remains. The
Torah could have easily phrased the command in a manner that left no room for
doubt as to its intentions (for example, forgoing the second half if not all of
verse 14 entirely). Why the need
for the ambiguity? The Netziv
(19th century) attempts to explain it by suggesting that unlike other
commandments, with regard to leadership, coercion is not an
option:
"'And you say: Let us appoint a king for ourselves' - This is does
not imply 'saying' in the typical sense, that is, verbally (as the Ramban
explained), but rather [it denotes the people's desire]... Indeed, from this
expression it appears that this does not signify an outright obligation to
appoint a king, but it is rather voluntary… However, it is well known in the
words of Chazal [R. Yehuda] that there does exist a mitzva to appoint a king. If
so, then why is [the commandment written in an equivocal fashion]? It seems that
[this is] because national leadership changes [with regard to] whether it is
controlled by the will of the monarchy or by the desire of the population and
their elected officials. Some countries cannot tolerate royal authority, and
other countries are like a ship without a captain when they do not have a king.
This matter (determining the form of government) cannot be done according to a
mandatory positive mitzva. For with regard to matters relevant to leadership
over the nation at large, this involves issues of life-and-death that override a
positive commandment.
Therefore, it was impossible to command in absolute terms the
appointment of a king UNTIL IT WAS AGREED UPON BY THE NATION to tolerate the
royal yoke based on their observation that the surrounding nations managed
better [under a monarchy]. Only then is it a positive mitzva for the Sanhedrin
to appoint a king. … This is why throughout the three hundred years that the
Mishkan was chosen to stand in Shilo there was no king - because there was no
consensus among the people."
According
to R. Avraham Yitzchak haCohen Kook, the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of
"Since
the laws of monarchy pertain to the general situation of the people, these legal
rights revert [in the absence of a king] to the people as a whole. Specifically
it would seem that any leader [shofet] who arises in Israel has the
status of a king [din melekh yesh lo] in many respects, especially when
it concerns the conduct of the people . . . Whoever leads the people may rule in
accordance with the laws of kingship, since these encompass the needs of the
people at that time and in that situation." (Responsa Mishpat Cohen,
no. 143-4, pp. 336-337)
However,
the careful reader should still be suspicious – are not the modern commentators
reading their modern philosophical Weltanschauung into the text? Are there indeed the stirrings of
democratic thought within these verses?
Let us go back to the opening verses – once the decision has been made to
appoint a king – who chooses who shall rule? According to the Ibn Ezra, who like the
Abrabanel agrees with R. Nehorai to the optional nature of the appointment, the
actual choosing remains in Divine hands:
"'You shall appoint' - this is
optional;
"'Whom G-d will choose' - through a prophet or the decision of
the Urim Ve-tumim; meaning - not someone whom you yourself will
choose."
If,
however, only Hashem can choose the king, how does one explain the verse’s
closing: Be
sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a
foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman. Surely
Hashem would not place a stranger on the throne in violation of his own
Torah? Therefore, the Ibn Ezra
interprets the second half of the verse as “be-derekh ha-emet” – surely
Hashem would not choose a foreigner to lead. The Ramban, however, views the second
half of the verse as normative. The
responsibility of choosing falls upon the people, and the limitations placed on
their choices are real. How then
should we explain the verse’s first half, which implies that Hashem is to choose
the leader. He brings two
possibilities. The first suggestion
is that if you have the capabilities to have Hashem appoint a leader for you
(through prophecy etc.), that is the ideal situation for the people; otherwise,
they are to search for the leader themselves under the guidelines delineated in
the second half. However, the
Ramban brings a second approach that he views as the “peshat.” The choice
of leader remains with the people.
They are to pick a leader that is acceptable to Hashem, one of His
beloved people. Most importantly,
however, is that they recognize that, whomever they choose, that leader’s
appearance was ultimately ordained from Above, for Hashem chooses all
leaders. In an age where the
democratization of government leads some to believe that just as they build up
their leaders, they should engage in tearing them down as well. According to the Ramban’s understanding,
the Torah means not only to limit the leader’s tendencies for
self-aggrandizement, but the people’s as well. Only with a healthy relationship between
all three parties, the leader, the Jewish people, and Hashem, will the promises
and blessings so meticulously outlined in Sefer Devarim come to
pass.