On the Anti-Monarchy/Anti-Imperial Tradition in Judaism

I promise, this is what I was planning to write even before the Queen died.

So this came about as an attempt to pull off something cool at my job. I teach Middle School Judaics, including Parsha, Tanach, and Mishnah/Gemara. In Tanach, I teach the 7th grade Sefer Shmuel, and the 8th grade Sefer Melachim, and as parshat Shoftim rolled around, I saw that my seventh grade class was about to get up to the part in Sefer Shmuel where Shmuel is made to appoint a king, and that the 8th grade was about to get to Shlomo HaMelech’s reign. I decided to use one Parsha class to set up two different classes in two different grades by teaching the rules laid down in Shoftim on the monarchy, which would lead into the stories each class would be learning. Which would not only be cool, but save me a lot of time.

The 7th grade saw the debate among commentators as to whether there is a mitzvah to appoint a king, as well as the phrase “Like all the nations surrounding us”, which led into the Israelites telling Shmuel to appoint a king “like all the nations surrounding us”, and then we talked about how which side of the “mitzvah to appoint a king” debate this story falls on. It’s the “not a mitzvah” side. God says appointing a king is a rejection of God! It’s pretty nuts! (But more on that in a bit.)

The 8th grade, on the other hand, saw that the king was prohibited to amass too much gold or silver, marry too many wives, or have too many horses, and then watched as Shlomo amassed too much gold and silver, marry too many wives, and have too many horses, like an idiot, I mean, the Torah said that stuff pretty explicitly! Which then led to the Gemara that said that Shlomo thought that, because he was wise and because he knew the reasons for these restrictions, he wouldn’t be corrupted by them. But he did. Rationalization is a very tricky trap, kids.

But I want to take a deep dive into an aspect of this. Namely, that at first glance, Shlomo is not only a successful king, he is the greatest king! He builds the Beit HaMikdash! He brings peace to the Israelites, so that every person can sit under their fig tree and grape vine! He’s wildly economically successful! He’s the wisest man in the world! People come from near and far to learn from him, to gawk at his success and wealth!

While the main narrative, about Shlomo’s greatness and wisdom and wealth, seems to see Shlomo as the Paradigmatic Good King, I maintain that there is a counternarrative lurking beneath, occasionally popping into view, but more often subtly hinting. And that counternarrative is deeply suspicious of the kind of power wielded by Shlomo, indeed of monarchy and empire building in general. And that idea is not just present in Shlomo’s story, but in the entirety of Tanach and Jewish tradition more generally.