Israel was neither a democracy nor a constitutional monarchy

This is a small caveat to all our discussions in which we look at Old Testament Israel to try to apply some of what was done back then to today’s economic and political situations and this caveat applies whether we are conservative or liberal. Israel was not a representative democracy. Israel was not a constitutional monarchy. Israel was not a parliamentary democracy. Israel was not a laissez faire capitalist country. Israel was not a socialist country.

So, what was Israel? Israel started out as a collection of twelve tribes all claiming descent from the 12 sons of one common ancestor father. Up through the Book of Judges, Israel behaved in many ways more like a tribal confederacy than like a nation. Read the Book of Judges and you will see that at one point the tribe of Benjamin nearly gets wiped out because of an inter-tribal conflict. In the Book of Joshua, the land was divided into tribal territories, and up until the time of the kings, each tribe ruled its own territory under the guidance of the tribal elders. In times of war, a message was sent out to the tribes, and they would choose whether to join in the war or not. In other words, after Moses and Joshua died, the cohesion they brought to the twelve tribes also disappeared and Israel reverted to a tribal/clan society. Note that even after David became king, it was several more years before all the tribes accepted him as king.

What about the Ten Commandments? Well, actually, they and several of the laws of Israel fit into the pattern of what are called suzerain-vassal treaties of the second millennium BC. Laws such as the Sabbath Year and the Year of Jubilee show two patterns. One pattern is God’s concern for the poor, the debtor, the widow, and the orphan. However, the way in which those “years” are applied shows the influence of a tribal background. Notice that the land return clauses of both years require the land to be returned to the tribe and to the clan, and, if possible, to the very family from whom the land was bought. That is a law that assumes a tribal background.

It is true that as the monarchy progressed, the tribal aspects of Israel grew less and less, but they were never completely lost.  Ask yourself, Jesus was a member of which tribe? And, the reason they had to go to Bethlehem was because that was the home of their clan in the territory of their tribe. But, even the monarch of Israel behaved like typical monarchs of that time period. I have heard sermons that tried to argue that Israel was a constitutional monarchy, that is, the King was under the law. But, there is no evidence of that in the record itself. There is not one time when a King of Israel was brought to trial on the charge of violating the Law. Neither were the king’s commands refused in royal Israel (with very rare exceptions). Rather, what the king commanded was done, even if it were to technically violate the law.

I suspect that many of you are now thinking of the Prophet Nathan and King David. You might also think of any of several other prophets that confronted any of several kings of Israel, such as the Prophet Elijah and King Ahaz. But, please note that the prophets were neither officials of Israel nor officers of the law, per se. What were they? They were representatives of the God of Israel. And, in fact, their speech and actions fit better into the pattern of the suzerain-vassal treaty that I mentioned earlier (more on that at some time in the future). They were definitely not prosecutions under Israeli law. In fact, the prophets were external to the law in Israel; they were representatives of the suzerain who was calling the kings to account for violating the treaty obligations.

But, what does all this mean? It means that the events of the life of Israel do not fully transfer to our experience today. They can provide helpful guidance on many social issues. They can provide principles of government. They can reveal God’s heart to us.  That is, they can show us what is permitted and what is outside of God’s economic and governmental desires for us. But, they cannot be used as proof of the goodness of capitalism or of socialism. They cannot show us whether a democracy or a constitutional monarchy is better. They cannot even help us to differentiate between a parliamentary democracy or the type of democracy we have.

It is important to keep those caveats in mind.