Who did Moses choose to be king of Israelites?

Answer 1

This is the second answer submitted for this question, but this contributor has chosen

to interpose it above the first answer. To be perfectly honest, it was the experience

of reading the first answer that motivated this contributor to work on this question

at all.

-- The first king of Israel was Saul. Moses had nothing to do with it.

-- Moses' successor as military/political leader of Israel was Joshua, appointed

immediately before Moses' death, and shortly before Israel's entry into Canaan.

-- The anointing of Saul as Israel's first king took place almost 400 years later.

The question is about as reasonable as asking who George Washington chose

for the crew of Apollo 11.

We now return you to Answer #1, below the dotted line:

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Moses didn't appoint a king because YHWH (God) was technically the king of the Israelites. He did however appoint Joshua to take his place as leader of the tribes of Israel, which made Joshua the first judge of Israel.

Answer 2

In Samuel's old age, over four centuries after the Exodus, the people (including their Torah-scholars) felt that the time had come to take a regular government. The Torah itself permitted this (Deuteronomy ch.17); and they saw that Samuel's sons didn't seem to have reached his spiritual level (1 Samuel 8:2-3).

Answer 3

Samuel. The Israelites at that time were coming to the end of an era which was unique in world history. They had undertaken a grand experiment: whether a nation could govern themselves for centuries without a king or organized government.
Instead, there were the officers of tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands (Exodus ch.18), and the court of Elders (Sanhedrin), who were Torah-scholars that provided Torah-rulings and guidance. Each of the leading Judges (Gideon, Deborah etc.) was a private citizen (not a head of government) who led the nation only during a brief episode of battle.

• Link: The Judges
  

During that era (of the Judges, about 360 years), when someone raised the possibility of having a king, the answer was: God will rule over you, not a king (Judges 8:23). The events of the Exodus and the Giving of the Torah were so fresh in the nation's memory that they didn't need a king; God was their King. (The missteps which did take place in that era, is a subject beyond the scope of the present question.)

In Samuel's old age, over four centuries after the Exodus, the people (including their Torah-scholars) felt that the time had come to take a regular government. The Torah itself permitted this (Deuteronomy ch.17); and they saw that Samuel's sons didn't seem to have reached his spiritual level (1 Samuel 8:2-3).

Their usage of the expression "like the other nations around us" need not be a problem, since they were deliberately quoting the Torah itself (Deuteronomy 17:14).
What then was their mistake (why did Samuel criticize them)?

According to the Malbim commentary (on 1 Samuel), they should have waited at least until Samuel was too old to function.
According to the K'li Yakar commentary (on Deuteronomy), their precise choice of language ("for us," instead of the "over us" which the Torah had said), hinted that they wanted a king who might be affected by public pressure. See Talmud, Yoma 22b.

• Link: How Rehoboam gave in to pressure
  

According to Samuel himself (1 Samuel 8:10-18), they were taking a regrettable risk because later kings might be overbearing.

One more point: in Judaism we have a general rule which is called "the descent of the generations." This means that according to our tradition, the earlier a generation lived, the higher was their spiritual level (Talmud, Shabbat 112b). No Talmud-sage would dare to negate a verse of the Prophets; and no later Rabbi would dare to belittle a Talmud-sage.
For this reason, we must not judge that generation. And concerning Saul, our tradition explicitly states that he was a righteous man (Talmud, Moed Katan 16b; and Midrash Rabah 54:4); and he unified the Israelites and defeated their enemies round about (1 Samuel 14:47).

See also the other Related Links.

Link: About Saul

Link: About Samuel

Link: The Kings

Answer 4

The prophet Samuel chose Saul as the first king of Israel, but he was not happy over it.

Answer 5

Saul.....replaced by David.....Replaced by Solomon

Oh BTW . . . Saul, the first king, wasn't chosen by the people.