INTERPRETATION OF ROMANS 13:5–7 (CONTINUED)
Let us now look at the authority of the king. As it is, the early Jews had no king with pagan sovereignty until the days of Samuel the prophet. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Ramah and there they said to him,
Consider, you have become old, and your sons do not follow in your footsteps. Now set up for us a king to judge us like all the nations.[512]
But the thing was evil in the sight of Samuel when they said, “Give us a king.”
Nevertheless, Samuel prayed earnestly unto the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people according to all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Like all the deeds which they have done to me from the day I brought them up from Egypt even to this day, inasmuch as they have forsaken me and served other gods, so they are also doing to you; now therefore, listen to their utterance, except that you shall certainly warn them, and show them the procedure of the king who shall reign over them.”
Then Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking of him a king, and he said, “This will be the procedure of the king who shall rule over you: he will take your sons and appoint them for himself for his chariots and for his horsemen, and they shall run before his chariots, and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, and some to do his plowing, to reap his harvests, and to make his implements of war and the equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters for perfumers, for cooks, and for bakers. He will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive orchards, and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain crops and of your vineyards and give it to his eunuchs and to his servants. Then you will cry out on that day because of your king whom you will have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you on that day!”
But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and said, “No! Let there be a king over us that we also may be like all the pagan nations!”[513]
The Scripture tells in detail how the king introduced his authority over the Jewish people, and how his successors oppressed the Israelites. Even though God said to the Jews that they were getting what they were asking for, in his love he rebuked the wicked kings through the prophet, saying,
