02_Walton_179_200_179_200 10/07/15 11:58 Pagina 186 186 JONATHAN H. WALTON 186 venerated the gods: “Viewed from heaven, the king is the principal divine emissary to his earthly community; viewed from earth […] he is the principal emissary of his community before the pantheon” 37. Or, said another way: “The Assyrian king may have divine quali- ties, but he is not the embodiment of Aššur or Šamaš on earth, nor does he mirror a god on earth” 38. While a king divinized in this manner might well violate the covenant at some level (though maybe not: one of the metaphors for divine kingship is adoption into divine sonship 39, a status also extended to the Davidic line in 2 Sam 7,14), in no way does it constitute a replacement of the deity. Kings of the nations were part of the divine realm, perhaps, but they were not gods and were not worshipped as gods. Having a king like the nations would not have constituted an expansion of the pantheon, and thus cannot be considered de facto idolatry. The argument that human kingship and divine kingship are mu- tually exclusive is usually supported by appealing to Judg 8,23 40. Tsumura draws a distinction between the type of ruler the elders ask for (melek) and the type God chooses to grant them (nāgîd), with the distinction involving power dynamics: “The ruler is called ngyd when his bond or subordination to God is preeminent, mlk when the origin of his position and base of his power lie in the peo- ple” 41. (Though compare Launderville, “The sovereign was king of the gods and the earthly king was his representative. As such the earthly king received his sovereignty from the heavenly realm and not from the people” 42.) In this more nuanced version, the divine realm is still acknowledged; there is no secularism or atheism, but the mediator is granted greater autonomy. This shift actually is re- 37 MACHINIST, “Kingship and Divinity”, 186. 38 Z. BAHRANI, The Graven Image. Representation in Babylonia and As- syria (Philadelphia, PA 2003) 142. 39 WALTON, Thought, 283. We may also note that Israel regularly acknowl- edges creatures native to the divine realm other than YHWH (angels, cherubim, the divine council, etc.); it simply refrains from worshipping them. 40 So GERBRANDT, Kingship, 150; See also BALDWIN, Samuel, 83; GOR- DON, Samuel, 109; KLEIN, Samuel, 75; TSUMURA, Samuel, 243. 41 TSUMURA, Samuel, 249. See also M. TSEVAT, “The Biblical Account of the Foundation of the Monarchy in Israel”, The Meaning of the Book of Job and Other Biblical Studies. Essays on the Literature and Religion of the He- brew Bible (New York 1980) 93. 42 LAUNDERVILLE, Piety, 291.