{lendent on it. The office in such cases appears to lave been normally (apparently not in Edom, Gn 36"") hereditary.t
2. Side by side, however, with this there existed in each Semitic city the conception of a divine King who was supreme over tlie whole people, and from whom it had come into being. The frequency with which the gods of Semitic nations have an appellative of which MLK forms a part (e.g. Melkart of Tyre) or the whole (Rlilkom of Amnion), shows that this was one of their primary conceptions of Deity.
We may explain the fact of both God and ruler possessing the same title by supposing either that the root idea of MLK suited both alike, the term being given to the Deity as signifying Him who gives counsel (e.g. by oracle) ; or that the title was given to the human ruler in accordance with his claim to be descended from, or to represent, the Deity ; or (though this is very improbable) that the roots are dill'erent and the identity of the words as applied to God and to the president of a city is accidental. But, whatever the cause, the fact of the identity of titles tended to strengthen enormously the king's position.
3. Of the origin of tiie office (not the tit/e) of king in Israel itself we have comparatively full par- ticulars. We see the preparation for it and its inauguration. At the Exodus Moses supplied the place of a king, J centralizing in himself all the visible power. We know much less of Joshua, but the same appears to have been the case with him. I5ut after the first flush of \'ictory was over, when the tribes were divided by whole districts of unconquered Canaanites, and the sense even of religious unity was weakened by compliance with lociu religious customs, the inroads of various foes produced (at God's call) guerilla chiefs who re leased the parts where they lived from foreign attacks. One of these, Gideon, was invited by 'the men of Israel' to 'rule' over them,§ and though he verbally refused, sajring, ' The LORD shall rule over you,'|| he appears to have ruled over his city Ophiah, for on his death his son Abimelech kills all his brothers (except Jothani) and has himself made king in Shechem (Jg 9°).11 Abimelech acted as prince (v;! Jg 9^") ' over
•*Das K6nip:thiim ist in Arabien eine fremde Pflanze/ O. Jacob (/>a.s- Leben der vorulainuicfieii Beduinen, 18i*.^, p. li'4).
t Even Ebed-Tob (c. B.C. 14U0) of Urusaluu iuiplies that thii was the norm, when he contrasts his own case : ' It was not my father who installed me in this place nor my mother, but the ann of the mitrhty king has allowed me to enter into my ances- tral houiie' (llommel, AncifiU Heb. Trad. p. 160). Observe that in the MLK, being properly the ruler merely of a city, we have ijerhaps the explanation of the fact that the term was not used by the Assyrian monarchs of themselves. They may have already found this title belon^ng to rhe kings of the variouj cities that they had conquered, and therefore they called them- selves Sar (perhaps Is 10* has a satirical allusion to this nomen- clature).
X Dt 33B, however, 'and be was king in Jeshurun,' probably refers to God.
§ MCthot banu. From a comparison of Jg 9» with 98-l'>- 1* '« this seems to he here synonymous with AfLK.
II Jg 822- a. To say that such a contrast between an earthly and the heavenly king is an anachronism, and that, therefore, these verses belong to a later date (Moore), is with our present knowledge of the sources of Jg much too drastic a treatment. See, further, art. JtTDOEa (Book), p. 815».
^ We do not know the relation of Ophrah to Shechem. It il possible that they were the same place, the latter representing the Canaanite part of it, which rebelled against thf fsraelites.
KING
KING
841
Israel' (i.e. apparently Sliechem, and a few towns near), l.ut his death after three years prevented a prolongation of a kingship in Israel after the Canannite form. Jephthah had a kind of headship in Gilead (Jg ll*""), out no more was done in the direction of the formal kingdom till the time of Samuel. Samuel had indeed conquered the Philis- tines at Ebenezer, and ha*l recovered the district that had been formally taken over by the Philistines (1 S 7"-") ; but, as it seems, as he became older and less energetic, the Philistines became stron^'er, and by their superior weapons and organiziition were reducing the Israelites to a condition little better than that of serfs (1 S 13""). The danjjer of ex- tinction as a nation at tlie hands of the I'hili^tinea was imminent, and unity in feeling and action was absolutely essential if Israel was to be pre- served. It was the sense partly of this and partly of the declension of Samuel s sons from their father's upriglitness in the internal ailiiiini.stration of the district round him that led the elders of Israel to ask Samuel for a king.
The words attributed to Samuel in reply are very difficult. On tl)e one hand, if Dt 17'*"* (cf. 28*") is Mosaic, the principles that ou;:ht to guide the election of a kmg nmst, one woulil suppose, have been well known, and it is so far worthy of notice that iu at least three out of the four iioints (no stranger, not multiplying horses, not multiply- ing wives, the study of the Law) Saul sati.--iit,-d these principles. But with our present knowledge it seems impossible to reconcile Samuel's fears with a knowledge by him of the sanction given to the king in Dt. For Dt assumes that the kingdom need not be opjiosed to the theocratic government of the nation, but may rather become a form of it. On the other hand, Samuel's words are such as could hardly fail to suggest themselves to every tar-seeing religiously-minded patriot.*