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+Lure of theocracy
+#################
+
+:date: 2023-10-26T09:40:34
+:status: draft
+:category: faith
+:tags: sermon, politics, monarchy, democracy
+
+\ 
+
+    “So all the elders of Israel gathered together and approached
+    Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, ‘Look, you are old, and your
+    sons don’t follow your ways. So now appoint over us a king to
+    lead us, just like all the other nations have.’
+
+    […]
+
+    So Samuel spoke all the Lord’s words to the people who
+    were asking him for a king. He said, ‘Here are the policies of
+    the king who will rule over you: He will conscript your sons
+    and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they
+    will run in front of his chariot. He will appoint for himself
+    leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, as well as those
+    who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of
+    war and his chariot equipment. He will take your daughters to
+    be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers. He will take your best
+    fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his own
+    servants. He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce
+    of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his
+    servants. He will take your male and female servants, as well as
+    your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own
+    use. He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves
+    will be his servants. In that day you will cry out because of
+    your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t
+    answer you in that day.’”
+
+    -- 1. Samuel 7:4-18
+
+We have heard this text in one of our Sunday sermons, and the
+preacher talked to us how we could accept it both personally (“Be
+careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”) and fromthe
+point of view of a nation (“We will be like all the other
+nations.”), but we haven’t talked much about pure politics of it.
+
+And we should, because this moment when the Israel asked for
+a king, and they changed radically from the situation when “[…]
+there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right
+in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) to the organized kingdom was
+from the political/sociological point of view probably the most
+important moment in the history of the nation of Israel.
+
+And we should talk about it even more, if “[w]e believe, teach,
+and confess that the only rule and norm according to which all
+teachings, together with [all] teachers, should be evaluated and
+judged are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and
+New Testament alone.” (Lutheran Book of Concord, Formula of
+Concord, 1), because when thinking about the government of the
+state, The Holy Bible presents us with rather difficult
+challenge.
+
+We should talk about this passage more also because there is a
+wide variety of interpretations of this passage with terms of
+aspirations of many current Christians for what would constitute
+“the true Christian politics”, and some of these interpretations
+are in my opinion based on pure misunderstanding of the text and
+(even more) on misunderstanding of the political theory.
+
+Some Christians idolise the era before the establishment of the
+kingdom as some kind of dream state which we should hope to
+re-establish in our era. Sources of this excitement differ, but
+none of them seem much persuasive to me.
+
+I have met some sources of libertarian persuasion, which tried to
+describe the pre-kingdom era as time of unblemished
+libertarian/anarchistic utopia, where people could live free
+without an interference of a government, which God allowed only
+ad hoc when it defence required it.
+
+Most political evangelicals I have ever read had even more
+frightening attitude of adoring the Judges era as their dream of
+the political theocracy.
+
+If we want to base our teaching about state on The Holy
+Scriptures then we have to start with studying what really is
+present in them.
+
+.. Were judges prophets? Did God directly talked with them?
+
+----
+
+Let us sum what actually is in the Book of Judges.
+
+
+----
+
+Merovingian dynasty where gradually all power was taken by mayors
+of the palace (originally manager of the king’s household,
+glorified butler, like Mr Carson of the Downton Abbey; the same
+combination of steward taking over the power while ruling in the
+name of the absent king was used by J.R.R.Tolkien in Minas Tirith
+of “The Lord of the Rings”).
+
+“Země pak měla mír čtyřicet let, než Otniel, syn Kenazův,
+zemřel.” (Soud 3:11, B21)
diff --git a/faith/thou_shalt_not_suffer_witch_live.rst b/faith/thou_shalt_not_suffer_witch_live.rst
index 37a0af4..1e52fcb 100644
--- a/faith/thou_shalt_not_suffer_witch_live.rst
+++ b/faith/thou_shalt_not_suffer_witch_live.rst
@@ -402,4 +402,11 @@ but neither condemns them, nor even comments on their
   explainable).
 
 .. [#] Mostly from http://www.religioustolerance.org/divin_bibl.htm
-   
+
+----
+
+https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/India.html
+
+India is mentioned twice in the Bible (Esther 1:1 and 8:9) and
+transcribed as Hodu (הדי), which is something related from
+“handle snake” or “snake charm”.