⁵ and said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now ^(A)make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”

Principles Governing Kings

¹⁴ “When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, ^(A)‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ ¹⁵ you shall surely set a king over you ^(B)whom the Lord your God chooses; one ^(C)from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.

^21 (A)And afterward they asked for a king; so God gave them ^(B)Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years.

¹⁹ Nevertheless the people ^(A)refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No, but we will have a king over us, ²⁰ that we also may be ^(B)like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

⁶ But the thing ^(A)displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” So Samuel ^(B)prayed to the Lord. ⁷ And the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for ^(C)they have not rejected you, but ^(D)they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. ⁸ According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also.

¹⁷ Is today not the ^(A)wheat harvest? ^(B)I will call to the Lord, and He will send thunder and ^(C)rain, that you may perceive and see that ^(D)your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking a king for yourselves.”