Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before Yahweh. Samuel sent all the people away, every man to his house.
It was an exceedingly difficult thing which God did in raising up a king for Israel.  The tribes were not at all unified.  Only recently there had been a savage war against Benjamin; and, in the days of Jephthah, the trans-Jordanic tribes fought the tribe of Ephraim with over forty thousand casualties of the Ephraimites.