Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 8:20

"that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles." — 1 Samuel 8:20 (ASV)

Like all the nations. —There is something strangely painful in these terms with which the elders urged their request—the wish “to be like other nations” seems to have been very strong with them. They forgot, or chose to ignore, the solitary position of lofty pre-eminence God had given them among the nations. They had, it is true, failed to comprehend it in past days, as in present days, but this haste to give up their lofty privileges, and to descend from the pedestal on which their God had set them, was, in the eye of one like Samuel, a strange, inexplicable foolishness.