"This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."Why should we expect that the King Moshiach will be any different from his Davidic ancestors? With the exception of Josiah and Hezekiah, and maybe one or two others, all of the Jewish kings after Shlomo "did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord." All of them abused their power, and mistreated their subjects. Not one of them brought us any closer to God or any kind of fulfilment. They were weak. Unstable. Corrupt.
The solution, I think, is not a King Moshiach, but a president Moshiach, someone who, like the Rambam said, will be an ordinary human, but one without unchecked power. Unchecked power, see, always leads to ruin, and it's a poor student of history, indeed, who'd ever wish to bestow it again on a human being.
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