[Avodah] having a melech: lechatchila or bideved???

[Zev Sero]

Harvey Benton wrote:
> Is having a melech a bidieved or a lechatchila?
> In the torah it mentions "when you will ask for a king like the
> nations around you...."  This sounds like to me that God does/did
> not want us to have a king like the rest of the nations, but, like
> the spies, and the shlav, God went along with it and instituted the
> mitzvah of us having a king. 

That's how it would seem from the chumash and from Shmuel, but the
Rambam is pretty clear that it's lechatchila, that we were meant
eventually to have a king, that it's one of the three mitzvos that
we were to fulfil when we were ready for them.

And this must be so, because if it were bediavad, and only to be
implemented if we really insisted, then Moshiach would not restore
the monarchy; having come to understand that it's not desirable, we
would no longer ask for it, so why restore it?  So we must understand
the chumash and Shmuel as not being against a king per se, but against
demanding one for the stated reason: to be like the goyim.  Had we not
demanded a king of Shmuel for this reason, we would eventually have
grown enough to understand that we need a king for our own reasons,
having nothing to do with the goyim, and then Hashem would have been
glad to give us one.


> This is also the view of the Rambam, if I am not mistaken, regarding
> the korbanos. It is only to appease us that Hashem instituted the
> korbanos as mitzvos, not necessarily because He wants us to have them....... HB 

Only if you take the Moreh at its word.  Certainly there is not a hint
of this attitude in the Yad or the Pirush Hamishnayos.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher