you shall surely set him whom Yahweh your God chooses as king over yourselves. You shall set as king over you one from among your brothers. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
To set a king over Israel according to God's choosing
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
שׂוֹם תָּשִׂים עָלֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בּוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו למנות עלינו מלך יקבץ כל אומתנו וינהיגנו. והוא אמרו יתברך שום תשים עליך מלך. וכבר קדם לנו לשונם בספרי שלש מצות נצטוו ישראל בכניסתן לארץ, למנות עליהם מלך ולבנות להם בית הבחירה ולהכרית זרעו של עמלק. ולשון ספרי שום תשים עליך מלך שתהא אימתו מוטלת עליך. ושיאויים לבנו מהכבוד והגדולה והתהלה והמעלה עד התכלית האחרון שאין למעלה הימנה עד שתהיה מדרגתו אצלנו גדולה ממדרגת הנביא ומשאר הנביאים שיהיו בדורו ובבאור אמרו מלך קודם לנביא. כל זמן שיהיה מצות המלך צווי שלא יהיה סותר מצוה מן התורה הנה אנחנו חייבין לשמוע מצותו, ומי שיעבור על מצותו ולא ישמע אליו הנה ראוי ומותר למלך להרוג כמו שירצה כמו שאמרו ישראל על עצמן כל איש אשר ימרה את פיך וגו' וכל מורד במלכות יהיה דמו מותר למלך שהוקם על פי התורה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בסנהדרין ובפ"א מכריתות וז' מסוטה. (שופטים ושוטרים, הלכות מלכים פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to appoint a king upon us - [that] he gather all of our nation and lead us. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "You surely may set a king over you" (Deuteronomy 17:15). And the language of the Sifrei already preceded us (Sifrei Devarim 67:1), "Three commandments were commanded to Israel upon their entrance to the land: To appoint a king over them; to build the [Temple]; and to cut off the seed of Amalek." And the [further] language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 157:6) is, "'You surely may set a king over you' [...] - that his awe be over you." And [likewise] that we place in our hearts about him, the utmost honor, glory, praise and status of the highest magnitude which has nothing above it - until his level for us is greater than the level of one of the prophets that will be in his generation. Anytime that the commandment of the king does not contradict a commandment of the Torah, we are surely obligated to listen to his commandment. And one who transgresses his commandment and does not listen to him is surely fit - and it is permissible - for the king to kill [him] as he wishes; and as Israel said about themselves (Joshua 1:18), "Any man who flouts your commands, etc." And anyone who rebels against the monarchy can have his blood avenged by a king who was established according to the Torah. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Sanhedrin and in Chapter 1 of Keritot and 7 of Sotah. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Binding in the land of Israel
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Position not stated
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QT (Temple Scroll) cols. 56-59 read it more strictly
- 4Q252 (Commentary on Genesis A) 5 The catalog describes this reception as: thematically related (Davidic kingship, not direct reception of Deut 17)
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §156-162 expanded it homiletically
- Devarim Rabbah 5:8-11 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.151-169 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.223-224 reinterpreted it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:246-247 carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi royal self-presentation as divinely appointed lawgiver Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Prologue and Epilogue Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment to establish a divinely chosen hereditary monarchy as the normative form of government is structurally incompatible with secular liberal democratic principles that require popular sovereignty, separation of church and state, and government deriving legitimacy from consent of the governed rather than divine selection.