Oops, of course I meant Saul not Samuel. Oops.

Thanks for the tenor of your post it was much better. But, Dougg, by saying Israel rejected G-d by asking for a king flies in the face of what G-d Himself said (which I quoted) back in Deuteronomy:

Look at just a few of them. Do you remember G-d speaking to Abraham?

Quote:
Genesis 17:15 G-d said to Abraham, 'Sarai your wife - do not call her by the name Sarai, for Sarah is her name. 17:16 I will bless her, and make her bear you a son. I will bless her so that she will be [the mother] of entire nations - kings will be her descendants.'
.



G-d promised Abraham that the Jews would have a king. Yet when this happens for the first time (Saul) you say we rejected Him.

How so?

Now on the one hand you have Saul making a statement to Israel that they are rejecting the elohim who saved them from adversity. It could be that Saul was speaking of G-d but just as easily he could have been speaking of the judges who had, up till then, run Israel.

Your assumption that G-d was "hurt" because the Jews wanted an earthly king is simply unsupported in the Tanach.

Aside from G-d's promise to Abraham that there would be Jewish kings He repeats the promise to Jacob:

Quote:
35:10 G-d said to him, 'Your name is Jacob. But your name will not be only Jacob; you will also have Israel as a name.' [God thus] named him Israel. 35:11 G-d said to him, 'I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and increase. A nation and a community of nations will come into existence from you. Kings will be born from your loins


So here we have two promises from G-d. How do you suppose that G-d rejected G-d as their king when they did exactly what G-d promised Abraham and Jacob?

Then we have Deuteronomy 17 which tells us about the Jewish monarcy.

Quote:
17:14 When you come to the land that G-d your L-rd is giving you, so that you have occupied it and settled it, you will eventually say, 'We would like to appoint a king, just like all the nations around us.' 17:15 You must then appoint the king whom God your Lord shall choose. You must appoint a king from among your brethren; . . .17:18 When [the king] is established on his royal throne, he must write a copy of this Torah as a scroll edited by the Levitical priests. 17:19 [This scroll] must always be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life. He will then learn to be in awe of God his Lord, and carefully keep every word of this Torah and these rules. 17:20 He will then [also] not begin to feel superior to his brethren, and he will not stray from the mandate to the right or the left. He and his descendants will thus have a long reign in the midst of Israel.


Notice that my three quotes all come from Torah itself and all from G-d Himself. Remember that no one can come along later (even a prophet like Samuel) and change Torah. Therefore either Samuel did that (highly unlikely given that he was a great prophet) or you are misunderstanding what he said and why he said it.

Zechariah 14 is another thing altogether and has nothing to do with the messiah -- when he will or will not come. Zechariah 14 is speaking of a time when the nations will again turn on the Jews and G-d will save us. The entire world will then realize that the Jews were right and that HaShem is the one and ONLY G-d.
And everything that Sarah tells you, listen to her voice. Genesis, 21:12