All the people said to Samuel, Pray for your servants to Yahweh your God, that we not die; for we have added to all our sins [this] evil, to ask us a king.
"We have added ... this evil ... to ask for ourselves a king"  (1 Samuel 12:19).  There is every evidence that the sin of Israel did not lie in their motives for asking a king, but in the fact of their asking it.