The Jewish Power Blog: Deep States and Supreme Leaders

Among the instructions in the book of Deuteronomy, for how Israel is to live in the land once they have taken possession of it, is the option of appointing a king: “You shall be free to set a king over yourself.” (Deut. 17:15) It is the nation that decides to appoint the king; and his power is by no means unlimited:

He shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess. When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of the Teaching written for him on a scroll by the Levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read it all his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God, and to observe faithfully every word of the Teaching as well as these laws. Thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows or deviate from the Instruction to the right or to the left…(Deut. 17:17-20)

That is, the king is not free to do whatever he wants. Not only does his authority rest on the will of the people, but he is subject to an authority with even deeper roots than the will of the people – the Torah. Louis XIV declared a rejection of this view, with his famous “L’etat c’est moi.” The Torah makes clear that the king is not the state, but a functionary chosen to further the interests of the state through leadership in war and governance in peace: limited, expendable, replaceable – the wellbeing of the state and the Torah’s laws transcend the king’s personal interests or even his ideological commitments.

We can see the Levitical priests as the professional civil service, who are empowered to determine the long-term interests and values of the state and the people, to make sure that those interests and values are preserved regardless of the king’s needs and desires, and to assure continuity and consistency. They carry forward, over time, a system of laws, a constitution, developed at the interface between the people’s will and the professed values of the nation, and that transcend the power of any particular king. Indeed, it is important that they serve independently of the king’s power to appoint, depose, or issue executive orders. (Note that the priests and Levites were from the tribe of Levi; the king from the tribe of Judah).

This “deep” authority of the state’s laws and their keepers both grants the king legitimacy and significantly limits his power. Like Louis XIV, kings and other holders of political power often seem to chafe at this set of constraints; the tension is, I guess, natural: being a supreme leader does have its attractions, and with power often comes the illusion of one’s own infallibility and indispensability.

Lest this all be seen as just theoretical, take a look at the case study in I Kings 12, where we read how Solomon’s designated successor, Rehoboam, faces a choice as to how to govern: The elders (the deep state) urge a conciliatory approach to the people; his personal advisors encourage a harsh assertion of authority, to sear in the people’s consciousness that the king can do whatever he wants. He chooses the latter course. But, alas, as we know from later experience, “searing consciousness” rarely lives up to its hype, and so it came to pass that the glorious empire of David and Solomon collapsed after just two generations (eighty years).

The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.