Samuel had accepted the change with sorrow and misgivings because he saw clearly that the monarchy, or as we would say the state, was in irreconcilable conflict with rule by the Law. In the end he was proved right. The Law was defied, God angered, and the Babylonian Exile followed. The Second Commonwealth ran into exactly the same difficulties and likewise perished. Thus the Jews went into the diaspora. It was the essence of Judaism that the exile would be ended by a metaphysical event, in God’s good time, not by a political solution devised by man. The Zionist state was simply a new Saul. To
...more
