into the demand that Samuel “appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have” (1 Sam. 8:5). Though Samuel’s reaction to this request was unqualifiedly negative (8:6), its impropriety was not in the desire for a king per se but in the antitheocratic spirit in which it was made and in its prematurity. Kingship, far from being antithetical to the purposes of God for Israel, was fundamental to his salvific design.1 Man was created as the image of God in order to “rule over the fish of the