“When trying to convey God’s perspective on the establishment of human sovereignty in the form of dynastic monarchy, the author employed the following tone: I did not recommend that decision. It wasn’t the initial plan I had for you. Human kingship was your choice, which you insisted upon even after being warned. You wanted it and I couldn’t refuse you. So let us see how it unfolds, and what it means. And what will be my place in it. God’s ambivalence toward the political realm permeates the book with its nuanced and exploratory yet smolderingly critical force. Precisely because of its uncomfortable ambivalence, therefore, the Book of Samuel sets forth the proper attitude that should be assumed toward the political project as a whole. Illuminated from this systematically ambivalent stance, politics is seen as an overpowering human necessity that can never fully escape a potentially self-defeating betrayal at its very core.”