⁵ and said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.”^(A)

Limitations of Royal Authority

¹⁴ “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’^{(A) 15} you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.^(B)

Israel’s Request for a King Granted

¹⁹ But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! We are determined to have a king over us, ²⁰ so that we also may be like other nations and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”^(A)

⁶ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord,^{(A) 7} and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.^{(B) 8} Just as they have done to me^[a] from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you.

²¹ Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years.^(A)

¹⁷ Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call upon the Lord, that he may send thunder and rain, and you shall know and see that the wickedness that you have done in the sight of the Lord is great in demanding a king for yourselves.”^(A)