I Command You … That Ye Have No King

What could be more paradoxical than a king commanding his people to have no king? Yet that is exactly what Mosiah did.

The story has its roots more than a thousand years earlier. As Moses gave his people their final instructions before entering the promised land, he spoke openly about their potential future desire for a monarch. If they wanted a king, he said, they should let God choose one of them. The king should be modest in his demands. He should not use his office to enrich himself, and he should follow God’s law, “That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left” (Deuteronomy 17:20).

For many generations, the Israelites lived without a king. Instead they were led by “judges,” who were basically military heroes without clearly defined responsibilities or authority. The author of the book of Judges in fact attributed the relative chaos to the lack of a monarch:

In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Judges 17:6; 21:25; see also 18:1; 19:1

But when the prophet Samuel assigned his corrupt sons to be judges, the people demanded a change. “Behold, thou art old,” they said, “and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5). Samuel was unhappy with this request, and the Lord endorsed his displeasure saying, “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). That’s stronger language than the restrictions Moses had laid out, but those restrictions may not have been very realistic anyway. “Hearken unto the voice of the people,” the Lord said to Samuel. Rather than impose His will on them, He was willing to let them choose their form of government, although He did instruct Samuel to warn them of the consequences of their decision: The king would ignore every restriction laid out by Moses. He would enrich himself at their expense, and they would effectively be his slaves, not his equals. “And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day” (1 Samuel 8:18).

In spite of that warning, Samuel anointed Saul and then David as kings. From that day, for the next 450 years until the time Lehi left Jerusalem, kings ruled over Israel. Rightly or wrongly, monarchy was part of ancient Israelite life.

When Lehi’s family arrived in the Americas, some of his children wanted to make his son Nephi king. In a rather half-hearted response, he wrote, “I, Nephi, was desirous that they should have no king; nevertheless, I did for them according to that which was in my power” (2 Nephi 5:18). Whatever that means, just before he died, he “anointed a man to be a king and a ruler over his people now, according to the reigns of the kings” (Jacob 1:9). And the monarchy continued for nearly 500 more years, until a confluence of events led King Mosiah to abolish that system of government.

Mosiah learned of a corrupt king named Noah, who abused his authority and caused untold suffering among his people. One of his former priests, Alma, who was converted to the Lord by the words of a prophet, escaped from Noah with a group of people and taught them that they should have no king, “for thus saith the Lord: Ye shall not esteem one flesh above another, or one man shall not think himself above another; therefore I say unto you it is not expedient that ye should have a king” (Mosiah 23:7).

When Alma became high priest over the church in Mosiah’s kingdom, he related to Mosiah the suffering and harm caused by the wicked king Noah. Then, Mosiah’s sons experienced a miraculous conversion and all of them refused to succeed him as king. Before his death, he therefore devised and presented a new system of government to replace the monarchy.

Officers in this new system were (probably not coincidentally) called judges. Unlike the chaotic period described in the book of Judges, these officers would have clearly defined jurisdictions as well as checks on their authority. The most radical aspect of this new system of government was its egalitarianism: the judges were to be chosen by the people. In making this proposal, Mosiah appealed to the exact same principle the Lord had invoked in instructing Samuel to establish the monarchy in the first place, even using the Lord’s original words: “the voice of the people.” This time, however, instead of using that principle to accept a suboptimal form of government demanded by the Israelites, he was urging his people to adopt a form of government based on the principle itself:

Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord.
Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.

Mosiah 29:25-26

In Deuteronomy 17, the Lord sounds neutral at best about the prospect of Israelite kings. In 1 Samuel 8, He sounds opposed but resigned. Both passages, however, read very differently in light of Mosiah’s dramatic move nearly 1,000 years later: abolishing the monarchy on the basis of the very principles articulated in those chapters:

1. All people are equal.
2. Governments should be established according to the desires of those they govern.

Today, I will be grateful to live in a nation which upholds the principles of equality and self-government. I will recommit to participate actively in our democracy, remembering as Mosiah taught, that “the burden should come upon all the people, that every man might bear his part” (Mosiah 29:34).