If you already have a leader chosen by God, what more do you need?
This week’s Torah portion is Korach (Numbers 16:1-18:32), in which Korach and 250 other Levites demand equal power with the high priest, Aaron, on the grounds that they are just as holy. Meanwhile Datan and Aviram, chieftains of the tribe of Reuben, argue that they would be better leaders than Moses. Never mind that God picked Moses and Aaron. The rebels see the responsibilities of their two leaders as privileges, and they want the same privileges. (See my post Korach: Quelling Rebellion, Part 1.) Since God is not on board with this, they all die.
The accompanying haftarah reading is a passage from the first book of Samuel (1 Samuel 11:14-12:22) in which the Israelites get their own king. For years Samuel has served as a prophet and the chief judge for the scattered Israelites communities, and God has sent an ad-hoc general in times of war. (See my post Haftarat Korach—1 Samuel: Ultimate Power.) But when Samuel gets old, and his sons turn out to be bad judges who accept bribes, the Israelites no longer accept this arrangement. They want a king, like every other country.1
But the people refused to listen to Samuel’s voice, and they said: “No! Because if a king is over us, then we, too, we be like all the nations. And our king, shefatanu and go out before us and fight our wars.” (1 Samuel 8:19-20)
shefatanu (שְׁפָטָנוּ) = he will make decisions for us, he will judge us, he will arbitrate for us, he will determine the law for us. (From the same root as shofeit, שֺׁפֵט = judge.)
The Israelites have mixed motives for their request for a king. On one hand, they want Samuel’s successor as the chief judge to be someone better than Samuel’s corrupt sons. On the other hand, they view the institution of kingship as a privilege that other nations have, and they lack. Although they do not mention it, the Israelites might also be afraid that the next time there is a war and they need an ad-hoc general, God might not provide one. With a human king, they would have a permanent chief judge and commander-in-chief.
Samuel checks with God, then inaugurates the first king of Israel: a young Benjaminite named Saul whose only outstanding quality is his height. In this week’s haftarah, Samuel expresses his unhappiness about the new arrangement. Until now, he has been the only one “walking in front of” the Israelites, i.e. their only leader.
Then Samuel said to all Israel: “Hey, I have heeded your voices in everything you said to me, and I have set a king over you. And now, hey! The king will be walking in front of you. And I have grown old … And I have been walking in front of you from my youth until this day.” (1 Samuel 12:1-2)
Samuel reminds the Israelites that God is their true king. Then he cannot resist calling for a miracle before he steps aside as a judge. (He remains a prophet, with power over King Saul, until he dies many years later.) Samuel announces:
“Now station yourselves and see this great thing that God will do before your eyes. Is it not the wheat harvest? I will call to God, and [God] will send thunder and rain. Then you will realize and see that what you did was very wicked in the eyes of God, asking for a king for yourselves.” (1 Samuel 12:16-17)
The time of the wheat harvest is early summer, when it almost never rains. Furthermore, although winter and spring rains are essential, when the wheat is ripe a heavy rain would impede and reduce the harvest.
Then Samuel called to God, and God sent thunder and rain on that day, and all the people were very frightened of God and Samuel. And all the people said to Samuel: “Pray for your servants to God, your God, so we will not die! For we have added to all our offenses the wickedness of asking for a king.” (1 Samuel 12:18-19)
Confronted with divine power, the Israelites panic. This is the effect Samuel wanted, according to the 15th-century rabbi Isaac Arama:
“The people had to be disabused of the idea … that their troubles were due to their not having a king to lead them, rather than to the fact that they had been disobedient to God. Samuel spelled out to them that a king’s success would be contingent on their being obedient to God’s laws. He added that in the event of disobedience to God by either the king or the nation, they would not only have to suffer the yoke of foreign oppression but also the yoke of their own king.”2
Then Samuel said to the people: “Do not fear. You have done all this evil; however, do not veer away from following God, but serve God with all your heart. And do not veer away toward following the tohu, which cannot do any good nor rescue you, since it is tohu. For God will not abandon [God’s] people, for the sake of [God’s] great name, since God has undertaken to make you [God’s] people.” (1 Samuel 12:21-22)
tohu (תֺהוּ) = nothing, emptiness, void; unreality; chaos; worthlessness.
The noun tohu occurs in 19 verses of the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in the second verse of the book of Genesis, where it is something that existed before God began to create the world: either a primordial undifferentiated substance,3 or a void with potential. According to 16th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno:
“The first raw material was something entirely new. It is described as tohu to indicate that at that point it was merely something which had potential, the potential not yet having been converted to something actual.”4
Tohu means a condition of unreality not only in Genesis 1:2, but also in Jeremiah 4:23, Job 26:7, and four places in Isaiah.5 Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, tohu refers to a desolate trackless waste, either empty or chaotically ruined—the worst sort of desert.6
And four times in Isaiah the word tohu means complete worthlessness, a waste of time.7 This is probably the meaning of tohu in this week’s haftarah, when Samuel warns: “Do not veer away toward following the tohu, which cannot do any good nor rescue you, since it is tohu.” He is urging the Israelites not to disobey God, and unless otherwise specified, disobeying God usually means idol-worship—which is useless anyway. Samuel also reminds the people that they do not need idols of other gods, because God has adopted them and will not utterly abandon them. Underneath that message is the implication that the king they have requested is also tohu, a waste of time, since the Israelites were doing fine with God as their king and Samuel as their prophet and judge.
Will the king be a shofeit, a judge who enforces order, law, and justice in the land after Samuel has died? Or will the king be tohu whose majesty is an unreal fiction, a worthless leader who makes life more chaotic?
That is the question that confronts everyone facing a big change in the government, in an organization, or in personal circumstances. We all depend on the justice and mercy of other people. How can we know whom to trust, when we are not prophets and cannot get an answer from God?
- 1 Samuel 8:1-5.
- Isaac ben Moses Arama, Akeidat Yitzchak, translation by www.Sefaria.org.
- Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, 1160–1235) equated the tohu in Genesis 1:2 with the water mentioned at the end of the verse: something without definite, solid dimensions.
- Translation by www.Sefaria.org.
- Isaiah 29:21, 40:17, 40:23, 41:29.
- Deuteronomy 32:10; Isaiah 24:10, 34:11, 45:18; Psalm 107:40; Job 6:18, 12:24.
- Isaiah 44:9, 45:19, 49:4, 59:4.
Questioning Torah 