The Ashkenazi Revolution

31Earth”. In accordance with this, He was the central leader of every judgingpeople, as His judges it.In the first chapters of the book of Genesis, God fulfills all the functions ofjudge. He is the investigating judge (“who told you that you are naked?”).He passes sentence upon Cain and, at the same time, worries that Cain notbe punished more than he should (“anybody who kills Cain will be avengedseventy times as much”). He worries about the needs of criminals (“theLord God made robes of leather for Adam and his wife and clothed them”).The basic attitude that reveals itself, in the first chapters of the book ofGenesis, is that Adam is a younger brother and God as the older brotherwho is qualified to judge his younger brother. In accordance with this, thecentral personality among every people was that of the judge. A tribe is acongregation, a people gathered around its judge. The authority of the kingwas formed in a much later era. This is not a religious or moral authority,but an authority of commandment. The verb “reign” (malokh) and the verb“go” (halokh) are related. The king goes before the people and brings it towar. Samuel says to “all Israel”, that is to say, “to all the peoples ofIsrael”: “Now behold, the king goes before you”, (Samuel 1 12:2). That isto say, goes and brings sometimes to this front and sometimes to anotherfront. The king oversees a “kingdom” (this word was created in a laterera), which is supposed to be the land of several tribes. But the People ofIsrael is always a tribe, that is to say, one historical unit that is tied to itsjudges and elders.The difficulty in the transition from the rule of judges and elders to the ruleof kings emanated not only from the fact that, in his reigning over othertribes, he emphasized the superiority of his own tribe and the inferiority ofthe other tribes, but also from a different reason. A king twistslegal/religious concepts by virtue of his maintaining instances of militarydynastic rule. For his intention is to murder, eliminate and destroy personaland dynastic competitors. The rule of a king does not mimic godly rule,rather it is a tyrannical rule. With the formation of a kingdom in Israel,began a series of murderous conspiracies, murder and mayhem that aretypical of the house of David and the house of Saul and stand in stark