Israel wanted a king, and they got one. But then they realized it wasn’t everything they thought it would be. We might think the natural response would be, “Ok, we don’t like this as much as we thought, so let’s make the Lord our king again.” But that’s not how this works from God’s perspective. There isn’t an undo button. Israel wanted a king, and they got one.
And this new arrangement entails not only being ruled by a king, but also any and all other sociopolitical realities that go along with it, effectively paving the way for different forms of government in the course of time (oligarchy, democracy, etc). The common thread that ties all such forms of government together is that they represent mankind being ruled by himself rather than God. And this is what we’re stuck with now. There’s no going back to the way it used to be.
