Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
The King and the Copy
Deuteronomy 17:14-20
14 When you have come to the land which Yahweh your God gives you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” · WEB
A monarchy is permitted in advance on four conditions, and the fourth is that the king copies out the law by hand and reads it daily.
The request is quoted before it is made, and the motive in it is the problem. I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me Deuteronomy 17:14.
Generations later the elders come to Samuel and ask in almost these words, wanting a king like all the nations 1 Samuel 8:5. The law had anticipated the sentence, including the reason.
It is permitted rather than commanded, and the permission carries restrictions that would have astonished any neighboring court.
He must be chosen by God and from among your brothers Deuteronomy 17:15 — no foreign dynasty imported by marriage or conquest.
He shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to get them Deuteronomy 17:16. Horses in that world meant chariots, and chariots meant a standing professional army and the trade relationship with Egypt that supplied them. The prohibition is against the military-industrial arrangement, not against transport.
He shall not multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away Deuteronomy 17:17. Royal marriage was diplomacy — each wife a treaty, and each treaty a foreign shrine in the capital. The reason given is the heart.
And he shall not greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. Every one of the three is a limit on the accumulation that made kingship worth having.
Each of the three was broken by the same king within a few generations 1 Kings 10:26–28 1 Kings 11:1–4, and the consequence was exactly the one this verse names.
The positive requirement is stranger than the prohibitions. He shall write himself a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the Levitical priests Deuteronomy 17:18.
He writes it himself, by hand, copying from the authorized text held by the priests. He does not commission it, and he does not receive it as a gift. And then: it shall be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life Deuteronomy 17:19.
The purpose is stated in a single clause, and it names the specific disease of kings: that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers Deuteronomy 17:20.
So the one man in the nation with no earthly superior is put under a document, made to produce it with his own hand, and required to read it daily — and the stated aim is not competence in government but that he should keep thinking of his subjects as relatives.
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