Q&A: The Commandment to Appoint a King
The Commandment to Appoint a King
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Following this week’s Torah portion,
is there supposed to be a monarchy according to the Torah?
It seems to me that this is the straightforward understanding, for example in Maimonides’ Laws of Kings.
Or is it only important that there be a government, and the Torah does not specifically require one particular form of government?
It seems to me I once heard a suggestion from a Torah scholar that a king could be a representative figure, with almost no authority (like the Queen of England), but that seems to me like a superfluous role and far from the Torah’s discussion of a king.
Answer
To appoint a king who is merely a representative figure is not an implementation of the commandment to appoint a king. That is just the same term being used loosely. But it is certainly reasonable that if one wants a different form of government, not a monarchical one (a democratic king), that is also fine. Beyond that, it is not clear whether the commandment to appoint a king is even a commandment at all, or merely a post facto concession to the will of the people.
Discussion on Answer
Why not? No one knows what will be there, but I do not see any obstacle to that.
“Like all the nations around me”—
a unique commandment that has such a condition.
Meaning, if you see a good system of government, you can copy it.
Once it was a king.
Today it is democracy.
Abarbanel thought this way, and from his experience in several royal courts,
he proposes democracy in the name of the Torah,
and from his words in the introduction to the American Constitution.
Hello Rabbi, and thank you very much for the answer, and in general for all the illuminating content that you publish.
Following the answer you wrote, a question came to me on a somewhat different but related topic:
Can the Messiah king also be a democratic king?