A KING. The word is ordinary Semitic and unremarkable everywhere in the ancient Near East; what is remarkable is how Deuteronomy uses it. ⭐ The bare word stands in seventeen verses of this book, and thirteen of them are foreign kings — Sihon, Og, the king of Arad, Pharaoh — before 17:14 raises the possibility of an Israelite one, in the people's own imagined words, like all the nations around me. ⚠ That phrase is quoted forward: the elders at Ramah use it twice when they ask Samuel for a king (1 Samuel 8:5, 8:20), which the book of Samuel reports as the thing that displeased both Samuel and God. ⭐ The law that follows is almost entirely negative — no multiplying horses, wives, silver or gold — and the single positive duty it lays on him is to copy out the instruction and read it daily. He is given no army, no court and no legislative power. ⚠ Whether the chapter COMMANDS a monarchy or merely regulates one is a genuine two-thousand-year split, and it turns on the doubled verb som tasim at 17:15. → first discussed at Deut 17:14