8:22 Obey their voice and make them a king. The Lord’s concession to the people’s sinful request is, at this point in the account, perplexing. If their desire for a king is sinful, amounting to a rejection of God as king (vv. 7, 18 and notes), how can God grant it? One answer lies in the standards of acceptable kingship that the Lord will establish. God is graciously willing to give the people a king and even to bless him, although not the sort of king they envisage (10:1, 7, 8 and notes). At the same time, because they adopted kingship in unbelief, they came to suffer under kings like those of the nations.

Go every man to his city. Samuel’s dismissal of the men of Israel implies that appointing a king will require some preparation. The course of that preparation will be related in the chapters that follow.