The Polity in Biblical Israel
Authority, Power and Leadership in the Jewish Polity: Cases and Issues - Chapter 1
Daniel J. Elazar
The political experience of ancient Israel as recounted in the
Bible laid the foundations of the Jewish political tradition in
all its aspects. The Bible's concern with teaching humans,
particularly Jews, the right way to live in this world gives its
political dimension particular importance. The highly social
character of biblical concern with achieving the good life leads
to its emphasis on the good commonwealth. The biblical account
of the history of the Israelites can be seen in that light.1
At the same time, the biblical discussion of the government of
ancient Israel stands at the very beginning of Western political
life and thought. The record of that experience represents the
oldest stratum in Western political thought and, since the record
is derived very directly from the Israelites' experience, the
latter is in itself an important factor in the development of
Western political institutions.2 If this is more difficult to
perceive today than it was in Spinoza's time, it is because the
study of the political experience of ancient Israel has been
generally neglected since the Reformed Protestant theologians and
state-builders and the political philosophers of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries paid serious attention to it in shaping
the political views of the moderns who were to reject Scripture.3
The political experience of ancient Israel remains the foundation
of the Jewish political world view, particularly as it pertains
to the organization and government of the Jewish people. In
traditional terms, Judaism itself is essentially a theopolitical
phenomenon, a means of seeking salvation by constructing God's
polity, the proverbial "city upon a hill," through which the
covenantal community described in the Bible takes on meaning and
fulfills its purpose in the scheme of things. The biblical
account of the origins of the Jewish people reflects a blend of
kinship and consent that generates a special political culture
and a variety of institutions at home in it. A family of tribes
becomes a nation by consenting to a common covenant with God and
with each other, out of which flow the principles and practices
of religious life and political organization that have animated
the Jews as a corporate entity ever since.4
Methods and Procedures
Biblical political ideas are expressed through the description of
the institutions, events, and prophesies connected with the
government of ancient Israel. Less formally articulated than
Greek political thought, the biblical political teaching must be
discovered in the same manner that all biblical knowledge must
emerge, by careful examination and analysis of the text with
careful attention to recurring patterns and the reconciliation of
apparent contradictions.
Understanding the method necessary to approach the subject, it is
indeed possible to learn much about the theory and practice of
government in ancient Israel both in terms of the way in which
the Israelites governed themselves and in terms of their response
to the great questions of politics which they confronted in their
unique way, as every people must.
As in the case with other biblical teachings, the Bible does not
offer us a philosophically systematic presentation of its
political theory or of the workings of particular political
institutions. Rather, the theory must be derived inductively
from the biblical discussion of the political history and hopes
of the Israelites and from biblical critiques of institutions not
fully described. Contemporary understanding of biblical
political ideas and institutions rests in great measure on our
expanded understanding of the political institutions in the
ancient Near East as a whole, particularly those of the
civilizations of the Fertile Crescent. Advances in the study of
the history and life of the ancient Near East made during the
past two generations have enabled us to better understand the
Bible in its political dimension as well as in so many others.5
Constitutional Epochs and Their Characteristics
The political life and thought of ancient Israel can best be
understood in light of the constitutional epochs through which
the Israelites passed (see Table 1 in Introduction).6 Four
constitutional epochs can be identified from the time of nation
building connected with the Exodus from Egypt to the completion
of the biblical canon. Two others preceded the Exodus. Each was
marked by an initial constitutional development that
significantly changed the governmental structure, institutions,
and functions of the nation, a later modification of that
constitutional change in an effort to perfect it, and a final
governmental crisis leading to a substantial reconstitution
involving more radical changes in structure, institutions, and
functions. Each constitutional period lasted approximately three
hundred years or nine generations, with a new founding coming in
the tenth generation -- a pattern presented in the Bible itself.7
If the present theories are correct, the period of Jewish history
prior to the Exodus from Egypt encompassed between five hundred
and seven hundred years, or approximately a span of two
constitutional epochs. Indeed, the biblical accounts suggest
that it can be divided into the epoch of the patriarchs and the
epoch of the Egyptian sojourn. during both, the Jewish people
had a pre- or proto-national existence. During the first epoch
the patriarch was the sole repository of governmental powers. He
was governor and military leader and he conducted foreign
relations. He also received instructions from God and made the
covenants with Him which constituted the constitutional framework
for the emergent Jewish people. In that context he prayed,
sacrificed, built altars and monuments, and offered blessings.8
At the beginning of the second epoch of Jewish history, the
families of the twelve sons of Jacob were well-ensconced in
Egypt, living under a foreign rule which sooner or later reduced
them to slavery. There were no more patriarchs. In their place
are zekenim (elders) and shotrim (maintainers of the peace),
officials who administer the customary law of the tribes, perhaps
recalling in a latent way the patriarchal covenants.9
The first constitutional epoch after the Exodus stretches from
the founding of the Israelite tribal confederacy to the
establishment of the monarchy. The founding of the tribal
confederacy immediately after the Exodus from Egypt comes
simultaneously with the founding of the nation, or the
transformation of the Hebrew tribes into a national entity.
Since ancient times, Moses has been recognized as the founder of
the nation and its constitution-maker.10
The Mosaic constitution laid the foundations for the first
Israelite polity, which was organized federally around a loose
union of tribes, traditionally twelve in number. This union,
perhaps the first true federal system in history, was bound
together by a common constitution and law but maintained
relatively rudimentary national institutions grafted onto more
fully articulated tribal ones whose origins may have antedated
the Exodus. This situation prevailed, in great part, because the
constitution specified that God Himself was to be considered the
direct governor of the nation as a whole, assisted by a "servant"
or Prime Minister (Hebrew: Eved Adonai) who would be His
representative and who, in turn, would maintain a core of judges
and civil servants to handle the transmission of his or, more
correctly, God's instructions to the tribal and familial
authorities. Depending on the importance of the issue in
constitutional terms, the Prime Minister also interacted with
the assembly of the children of Israel congregated as a whole
-- men, women, and children -- the assembly of all men of
military age, a national council representing the tribes, or ad
hoc assemblies of tribal elders (zekenim) or delegates (nesi'im)
for purposes of policy making.
During for first two generations of the tribal confederacy, a
single Eved Adonai, who was granted God's charisma, exercised
authority over all the tribes according to the biblical account.
Moses and Joshua were the two figures to bear that title and
exercise such authority. To the extent that the Eved Adonai's
principal function was to serve as God's messenger, as was
particularly true in the case of Moses, we already have the
embryonic division of powers which was to become classic in the
Jewish polity and which a thousand years later was to be defined
in terms of three ketarim (literally, crowns or investitures of
authority). Under this system the principal task of the Eved
Adonai was to bring God's word to the people. This later became
the task of the prophets and the soferim ("Scribes") who
developed the ketaric terminology.11
The Eved Adonai also shared power with the priests, particularly
Aaron and his sons, who had their own covenant with God
establishing them as a hereditary priesthood with certain
constitutional functions, principally judicial in character, as
well as cultic ones.
The principal function of the priests was to provide a channel of
communication from the people of God. They continued this
function throughout the biblical period, through what was later
termed the keter kehunah.
The nesi'im (literally, those raised up, best translated as
magistrates) and zekenim (elders) were responsible for the
day-to-day governance of the people, a function which was later
defined as the keter malkhut (literally, crown of kingship,
understood more generally as the domain of civil rule). They had
a dual function in that they headed the individual tribes and
also participated in the governance of the nation as a whole.12
An additional republican guarantee of this system was the fact
that the Israelites had no standing army but relied for
protection on the tribal militias consisting of every male age
twenty or over.
The entire body politic was known as Adat B'nai Yisrael from the
time of the Exodus onward. Edah means congregation or assembly
and reflects the popular and republican basis of the Israelite
polity. Thus from Sinai onward, constitutional decisions were
taken by the entire edah: men, women, and children, assembled
together to give their consent, while major policy decisions such
as declarations of war were made by the edah in its more limited
form of men of military age. Day-to-day governance was in the
hands of the institutions mentioned above, who represented the
edah. It was the edah which God led directly and to which He
spoke through the Eved Adonai. Within the limits of God's
constitution the edah acted autonomously.13
Once the nation had been formed by Moses and settled in the land
by Joshua, no single national leaders of this kind emerged until
the very end of the first constitutional epoch. Instead,
regional shofetim (judges) -- also charismatic leaders --
appeared from time to time, according to the biblical account at
least one in each generation, to act as proto-national leaders,
under God's direct sovereignty, primarily, though not
exclusively, in the military realm. The term "judge,"
introduced in English Bibles as the translation to the Hebrew
term, carries roughly the same meaning as the term originally did
in Anglo-American political life, that is to say, an executive
office whose duties may include the settling of disputes but are
essentially directed toward the authoritative execution of the
law, as in the case of the traditional county judge who actually
serves as the chief executive officer of the county.14
If the terminology used in the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua
is accurate, the use of the term "judges" to describe the
post-Joshua leadership of the nation accurately reflects the
less than nationwide scope of the judges' authority. The
Ministers of the Lord had in their governmental structures judges
and officers, lesser figures responsible to them whose authority
may have been parallel to that of the later judges, though
limited by the existence of a national leader. Only after their
departure did the judges acquire a leading role of their own.
The first constitutional epoch came to an end with the advent of
the monarchy, which was instituted with some reluctance to cope
with the Philistine threat to the very existence of Israel. The
epoch's last stage was dominated by Samuel, the last of the
judges and the first of the prophets, who brought the period to a
close with his efforts to revive national unity in the
traditional manner through a single nationwide leader with
limited authority primarily in the military field. His grant of
such limited authority, to Saul, whom he designated as "governor"
(nagid), represented an effort to restore the kind of national
institutions needed to promote energetic national unity that had
existed in the days of Moses and Joshua.15
For Samuel, the Israelite constitution demanded that energetic
government be limited government under God's continuing
sovereignty. He emphasized the idea of dividing authority
between the governor (keter malkhut) and the prophet (keter
Torah), with the former holding executive powers limited by the
latter's mediation of God's word. Samuel failed for a number of
reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the successful
implementation of such a political arrangement was not to occur
for many centuries. In the end, he himself took the decisive
steps necessary to create a more conventional monarchy, though
one limited by the traditional constitution.
The establishment of the kingship opened a new constitutional
epoch in Israelite history, one marked by the
institutionalization of a limited monarchy and the struggle over
the means to insure its limitation. David can be considered the
first true king of Israel, with Saul a transitional figure who
was really part of the older federal republican tradition. At
the same time, the struggle between Samuel and Saul did set the
stage for the character of the political struggle in the
monarchic period. As Saul was endowed with increasingly
monarchic powers, Samuel transformed his own role from that of
judge to that of navi, or prophet, whose main task was to keep
the monarch within the limits of the constitution in the largest.
To that end, he introduced the mishpat hamelukhah (the law of
the kingdom) as the framework for the limited kingship. This
tension between king and prophet was to be the primary
constitutional feature of the second constitutional epoch.
During most of that period, the prophets functioned to direct and
restrict kingly action and powers.16
David was the first to formally assume the mantle of kingship.
Like Saul, he did so through a combination of divine designation
(anointment by a prophet) and popular consent (covenants with the
elders of Judah and Israel). He established most of the
fundamental powers of the king during his long reign, including
the power of hereditary succession within his "house." He did so
by grafting the kingship and institutions designed to support it
upon the governing base of the old tribal federation, preserving
most of the institutions of the federation otherwise intact but
increasingly subordinate to the king and court. David
accomplished this by utilizing military necessity as the basis
for creation of a ruling class and a standing army whose powers
came from their military role rather than from traditional
sources and who were consequently tied to the king first and
foremost.
Brilliantly, he captured Jerusalem and made it his city, the
functional equivalent of a federal district in our time, outside
of the jurisdiction of any individual tribe, and then proceeded
to build his court there. He further strengthened the keter
malkhut by developing a royal bureaucracy and a small
professional army. Through the transfer of the Ark of the
Covenant and the designation of the Zadokites as the priestly
guardians of the Ark, David both strengthened the keter kehunah
and gained control over it. He showed similar wisdom in dealing
with the keter Torah as represented by the prophets, encouraging
the leading prophets to take up residence at his court by giving
them free rein to criticize him without penalty, but by the same
token subtly tying them to the king as their protector. In sum,
rather than seek to exert control by destroying the traditional
institutions of the Israelite polity, he co-opted them.
Solomon intensified this trend by transforming the ruling class
from a military elite to a more complex
military-bureaucratic-religious one, introducing bureaucratic
administrative forms as vehicles for centralizing power in the
country. Both did what they did, however, within the purview and
under the gaze of prophetic counterparts who were able to
maintain some constitutional limitations on the exercise of
kingly power if not on the increase in its scope. Indeed, there
is good reason to believe that the prophets were not initially
opposed to the centralization of power under the first two
Davidic monarchs, seeing the new centralization as a way to
better implement God's law in the nation as a whole.17
However, when Rehoboam attempted to further extend and intensify
the actions of his father and grandfather and impose burdens on
the Israelite public that were not only taxing but visibly
arbitrary as well, the major prophetic leadership deserted him
and fostered a revolution which led to the division of the
kingdom into two.18 While this division brought about an
important regime change on one level, on another it did not mark
a full constitutional revolution because even under David and
Solomon the northern tribes and Judah (which had virtually
absorbed the tribe of Simeon by that time) had been separate
groupings that accepted the rule of David and his son in separate
actions. The refusal of the northern tribes to accept Rehoboam,
then, was an act fully consonant with the Israelite constitution
as they understood it.
What the division did inaugurate was the development of two
different ways of integrating the monarchy into the
constitutional framework of Israel.19 In the southern kingdom,
where the Davidic dynasty continued to rule, the tension between
the kings and prophets was usually resolved in favor of the king,
even to the point where specific monarchs temporarily suppressed
the prophetic schools, though at no point was the tension
eliminated. The maintenance of the dynastic principle insured
this result in a way that was not possible in the northern
kingdom, where the succession itself was founded upon an
opposition to dynastic rule and a desire to restore the tradition
of charismatic leadership.
In the north, the prophets were sufficiently strong to prevent
the entrenchment of any particular dynasty and, indeed, the
prophetic role became one of supporting or rejecting particular
candidates for the kingship (by extending or refusing them God's
charisma) and thereby encouraging dynastic changes.
Consequently, kingship in the northern tribes meant, in no small
degree, a restoration of the principles and practices of the
tribal federation, with the kings far more limited in power than
their southern counterparts and the older institutions of the
tribal federation stronger in their governing role. At the same
time, a national ruling elite did emerge that was tied to the
monarchy, even if its composition changed with the dynastic
changes that took place in the north.
The active role of the prophets is attested to in the biblical
account which reveals far more prophetic activity in the northern
kingdom than in the southern, whether the activity of such
political leaders as Elijah or the more limited kind of protest
prophecy of Amos and Hosea. It is characteristic of the
situation that the leading prophet in this constitutional epoch
to appear in the southern kingdom was Isaiah, a relative of the
king and a member of the ruling elite, whose background stands in
great contrast to that of Amos and Hosea, not to mention Elijah
himself.20
With the destruction of the northern kingdom in 722 BCE, the
second constitutional epoch came to an end and the third began.
The southern kingdom stood alone as the single politically
independent entity of the Jewish people and, indeed, extended its
sway over part of the north and many of its people. It is fair
to say that the real meaning of the destruction of the northern
kingdom was not the dispersion of the people as recorded in the
legends of the "ten lost tribes" so much as the destruction of
the ten tribes as political entities.21 Subsequent Jewish
tradition which sees the restoration of the tribes as a major
element in the coming of the messianic age confirms this.22
The architects of the extended kingdom of Judah were King
Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah. Hezekiah was the most important
king between Solomon and Josiah, principally because he had the
opportunity to reunite the Jewish people and did so,
reinstituting the Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem and extending
Judean control over territories of the northern kingdom. In
doing all this he was supported by Isaiah, who raised prophecy to
a new level in Judah.23
Still, elimination of the northern kingdom had the consequence of
greatly weakening the role of the prophets as defenders of the
traditional constitution in the south, a tendency that was
further strengthened by the elimination of the federal
institutions that had survived in the north as additional
constitutional bulwarks. In the south, where the tribes had
already merged into the single polity of Judah, the old federal
traditions were preserved only in the local arena. Consequently,
the century between the destruction of the northern kingdom and
the ascension of King Josiah was marked by the greatest
violations of the traditional constitution ever to occur in the
biblical period. These violations led to a major constitutional
reform under Josiah, whereby the limitations on the monarchy
which the prophets had tried to sustain were, in effect, brought
together in the form of a more clearly written constitution (the
Book of Deuteronomy) that successfully changed the power of
relationships in the country, at least partly because the
kingship itself ceased to be a reality shortly thereafter.24
The Josianic reform centered on the introduction of the Book of
Deuteronomy as the basic constitutional document of a
reconstituted and more limited kingship. The king was further
limited by the loss of Israelite independence shortly after
Josiah's death. The reduction of the Davidic ruler of vassal
status in the Babylonian empire at the beginning of the sixth
century BCE, led, ultimately, to the disappearance of the throne
itself in a restored Judea early in the fifth century. By the
end of the third constitutional epoch, the monarchy had
disappeared as a viable institution, though hope for its
restoration became part of Israel's messianic dream. The
mysterious disturbances surrounding the last scion of the House
of David in the period immediately following the restoration
under Cyrus, marked the closing of the monarchic chapter in
biblical history (and, except for the Hasmonean interlude, in
Jewish history as a whole).25
The necessity to develop new modes of group survival in exile
enhanced the importance of the Torah as written constitution as a
source of authority in Israel. Consequently, in this third
epoch, the Torah became the ascendant political authority in the
Israelite polity, with the heirs of the prophets turning their
attention to expounding its principles and elucidating its
promises for future political success rather than being solely
responsible for the maintenance of the constitution.
The removal of the last of the Davidides from the political scene
ended the third constitutional epoch and led to the inauguration
of a second historical period, known as the Second Commonwealth,
and a fourth constitutional epoch, which brought with it the
restoration of fully republican government. At the beginning of
the epoch, the Jewish people was divided among three
concentrations, the Persian province of Yahud, or Judea -- a
small territory around Jerusalem in Eretz Israel; a major
concentration in the Persian Empire from Mesopotamia eastward
into Iran; and in Egypt's Nile Valley. Biblical history
concentrates on the Judean community as the continuation of
Jewish independence although, in fact, as the Bible itself
indicates, Yahud was only an autonomous Persian province.26
While there are only a few sources on the subject, it appears
that the Jewish communities in the diaspora also had substantial
autonomy.27
Significantly, the biblical account of the inauguration of this
fourth constitutional epoch features the promulgation by Ezra and
Nehemiah of the Torah as Israel's constitution by popular demand
in a special ceremony at which public consent to the Torah was
reaffirmed. Thus the Bible presents the covenantal process as
having come full circle. At Sinai, God initiated the covenant
which, among other things, launched the first constitutional
period in Jewish history. After three epochs, that period came
to an end and a new period was inaugurated by the Jewish people
in Jerusalem, initiating a renewal of the covenant with God.28
Characteristic of this fourth constitutional epoch was rule by
the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah, a council which shared power with
the high priest and the soferim (scribes). Thus the separation
of powers system inaugurated in the previous constitutional
period was maintained. The Anshei Knesset HaGedolah represented
the keter malkhut. The term knesset itself was a Hebrew
adaptation of the Aramaic kenishtah, which means edah. The High
Priest continued to represent the keter kehunah and the soferim
inherited the mantle of the keter Torah. Indeed, the three
ketarim become known as such during this epoch.29
What happened within this separation of powers system was a shift
in power, with first the soferim and then the High Priest
becoming the principal leaders of the people. While the
biblical canon was not yet completed in this epoch, after the
Bible recounts the history of the reconstitution under Ezra and
Nehemiah, the period itself drops out of the Bible's purview
except for the two accounts of events in the diaspora in the
Scroll of Esther and the Book of Daniel.
Forms of Political Organization
By and large, our knowledge of the forms of Israelite political
organization is limited. The Bible offers the only available
account of the subject, although it can be supplemented by
limited archaeological evidence and documents from other West
Asian polities of the biblical era. We are assisted by the
biblical discussion of political institutions in the context of
its larger purposes and our increased understanding of the
political institutions of the ancient Near East in general.
Three arenas of political organization are to be noted: local,
tribal, and national, each of which underwent transformation
through the various constitutional epochs. Local institutions
had their origins in the familial structure developed before the
first national constitution when the Israelites were semi-nomads.
The various mishpahot (clans) formed by the combination of
households (bet ab) formed the tribal substructure in those
times. After Israelite settlement of Canaan during the first
constitutional period, the clans settled down in discrete
villages or townships (a more accurate term) and the relationship
among those households was transformed into one that was linked
with the particular locality of their settlement.
The clans were governed by elders (zekenim), no doubt consisting
of the heads of their several households. After the conquest,
these became local councils known as Shaarei Ha'ir (the Gates of
the City), referring to the location within the Israelite
township at which they met to conduct their business. These
local councils seem to have persisted throughout the biblical
period and, with some changes, into the post-biblical period as
well. We must assume that these local councils handled
whatever governmental functions were conducted locally, combining
within them such legislative, executive, and judicial functions
as were exercised at the various periods of their existence. It
is possible that the judicial functions were shared with locally
based priests from time to time. These local councils
adjudicated disputes, regulated markets, spoke in the name of the
township on local affairs and in conjunction with tribal and
national bodies. While they were apparently selected by
consensus, they were responsible to the township assembly, known
in the Bible as yotzei ha-ir (those who go out from the city),
consisting variously of all local inhabitants on constitutional
matters or the military age males constituting the local militia
on others.
Tribal political institutions also grew out of the familial
structures of the presettlement period. During the first
constitutional epoch, the tribes were entrusted with the major
governmental responsibilities of the nation, with the linkages
among them being essentially confederal. Tribal government was
apparently vested in a council of elders representing the various
families and clans within each tribe. Specific members of the
council of elders or others co-opted for the purpose were given
special responsibilities of an executive character, while
policy-making and adjudicating functions remained in the hands of
the tribal council. It is unclear whether tribes were led by
nesi'im (singular, nasi, erroneously translated as "prince" in
many English versions of the Bible, and actually meaning "he who
is raised up" or selected to represent; a reasonable English
equivalent is magistrate), or whether such nesi'im were simply
selected to represent the tribes in national activities. During
this first period, reference is also made to sarim (singular,
sar or officer) and alufim (singular, aluf, leader of a
thousand), both military titles used to describe commanders of
tribal levies.
During this period, the tribes also took on a territorial basis
so that in the course of a few generations, the very term shevet
acquired strong territorial connotations. The land as divided
into tribal segments was further subdivided into private and
tribal parcels with cultivated lands passing into family
ownership and pasture lands remaining the common property of the
tribe.
During the second constitutional epoch, the governmental role of
the tribes was substantially reduced as the role of national
authorities was strengthened. In the southern kingdom, the
virtual merger of the tribes led to the emergence of single
council of elders which became, in effect, the popular organ of
the state, which shared power with the king in ways not quite
clear from the information we have on hand. In the northern
kingdom, where central authority remained weak, the tribal
councils apparently continued to function and exercise
substantial control over tribal affairs. Constitutionally, their
powers remained relatively uncircumscribed by the fact of
kingship, though particular kings exercised great power over them
by virtue of their power position in the kingdom as a whole.
These tribal councils disappeared with the fall of the northern
kingdom.30
The elimination of separate tribal governments with the fall of
the northern kingdom ended the federal structure of the biblical
polity, though it did not eliminate the use of federal principles
in the organization of power in that polity. In the third
constitutional epoch, tribal institutions as such were no longer
in evidence though the tribal council survived as the popular
body of the Kingdom of Judah, in the pattern which had already
emerged during the previous constitutional epoch. The pattern
was carried over into the fourth constitutional epoch when the
council became the dominant political institution in the country
as the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah.
The greatest changes in political forms in the biblical period
took place on the national plane. These changes have already
been described above. Examining them more directly, we find that
in the first constitutional epoch national institutions were
rudimentary, consisting primarily of leaders exercising authority
nationwide or over several tribes with small entourages of
assistants responsible to them plus councils and commissions
constituted for particular purposes. A rudimentary corps of
officials existed in the form of the shotrim, who were
responsible for implementation of the decisions of the national
leadership. In addition to the charismatic leaders, the High
priest (and perhaps lesser priests in the period of the Judges)
also exercised authority in certain fields, apparently sharing
certain powers with the charismatic leadership particularly where
certain impartiality among the tribes was required.
It is unclear as to whether there was a continuing national
assembly during the first constitutional epoch or whether ad hoc
assemblies of tribal elders functioned in lieu of such a body
when the occasion arose. Beyond that, the biblical account
portrays the constitution of special commissions for special
purposes on the basis of one representative per tribe, such as
the commission of the twelve spies to scout out Canaan prior to
its conquest, the commission which carried the Ark of the
Covenant across the Jordan when the invasion commenced, and the
commission established to work with Joshua and Elazar, the High
Priest, to allocate the land among the tribes after the conquest
was completed. Smaller commissions, comprising representatives
of more than two but less than the full number of tribes, appear
to have functioned during the period of the judges to assist them
from time to time. Thus, national government, in the first
constitutional epoch, emphasized joint action on the part of the
tribes for very limited purposes.
During the second constitutional epoch, separate, autonomous, and
continuing national institutions emerged, centered around the
king. The first of these were military and related to the
development of a military command structure. This command
structure gradually gained civil responsibilities as well and was
strengthened by addition of strictly civil components based on
the priesthood and non-Israelite elements.
During the reign of Solomon, a civil bureaucracy was created and
the country was divided into administrative districts which were
probably coordinated with the tribal governments over most of the
country but in the south, at least, superseded them. While the
thrust of this new national structure was primarily to undertake
national executive and judicial functions in a political system
where legislation in the modern sense was unknown, it essentially
preempted the powers of authoritative decision making to itself
in all matters which the king deemed to be of national importance
except where he was constitutionally or politically restrained
from doing so by effective local institutions or prophetic
actions.
These national institutions reached the high point of their
strength in the third constitutional epoch and then disappeared
in the catastrophe that destroyed the First Commonwealth. Their
reemergence in the fourth constitutional epoch was in a
substantially different guise, since the kingship could no longer
serve as their focal point. Apparently, the scribes staffed the
reconstituted national administrative structure functioning
within the boundaries of the Torah.
The Exercise of Political Functions
Very little is known about the exercise of political functions in
the biblical period. Modern conceptions of limited or unlimited
government are not easily applied to a period in which the role
of the family was extraordinarily strong in fields later to
become governmental responsibilities, and the connections between
the political and the cultic aspects of life were inseparable.
It is clear that Israelite government was not intended to be one
that penetrated into all aspects of life. At the same time, the
notion of government limited to the exercise of political powers
also would have been foreign to the ancient Israelites.
Political and cultic authority were so intertwined as to be
inseparable even for analytic purposes. The community felt
free to regulate the economy in numerous ways and the state
undertook economic development tasks, but government-sponsored
social services were essentially nonexistent.31
Israelite government pursued a limited but active role in the
affairs of society, a role whose level depended upon the needs of
the time. It is very likely that local authorities exercised
some control over local economic conditions, if only to regulate
competition. By the same token, after the rise of the kingship
and the development of the commercial dimension of Israel's
economy, the national government pursued clearly mercantilistic
policies designed to promote commerce through joint
governmental-private ventures which tended to favor the ruling
elite.32 It was during this period that the national government
took responsibility for providing a proper infrastructure in the
way of roads and security protection for the fostering of
commerce. In the domain of religion, it seems that there was
general agreement that government had a responsibility to foster
proper observance of cultic forms. This was true regardless of
whether the cultic forms were those of Israel's God or foreign
gods, with the struggle being between parties that wished to
direct government effort one way or another.
While the Bible makes provision for public activity in the realm
of education and the social services, there is no particular
indication that this public activity must be governmental in any
way, and it is unclear as to whether there were any governmental
roles played in this realm.33
Even less is known about the way in which political interests
were articulated and aggregated in the biblical period. Was
there voting? What does that Bible mean when it says the entire
people would gather together to affirm or ratify particular
decisions? How were elders chosen? How did one enter the ruling
elite in the second and third constitutional epochs? These are
questions which remain substantially unanswered.
The Bible does describe various covenant affirmation ceremonies
in which the people or its representatives would reaffirm a
covenantal relationship with God and a particular constitution or
leader. These invariably occurred at points of constitutional
crisis where it could not be assumed that a popular consensus
persisted from the previous period. These covenantal acts are
politically intriguing but their descriptions in the biblical
accounts are not very revealing politically, so that we can only
speculate regarding their relationship to the larger political
system and processes of ancient Israel.
Fundamental Principles of Government and Politics
It may fairly be said that the fundamental principles animating
government and politics in ancient Israel were theocratic,
federal, and republican. The theocratic principle underlies all
of Israel's political institutions. God is conceived to be
directly involved in the governance of Adat Bnai Yisrael. During
the first constitutional epoch, He is accepted as the great
governor of the nation. Under the two constitutional periods in
which the kingship existed, He was conceived to have, in effect,
delegated that direct role to kings and, finally, in the fourth
constitutional epoch, He was viewed as having resumed that role,
though in ways which were at once better institutionalized and
more obscure than in the first period.
This theocratic principle had two immediate consequences in
shaping the Israelite conception of politics. In the first
place, politics or the governance of the state was not an end in
itself in the Israelite scheme of things, but rather a useful
way of serving divine purposes. This meant that the state did
not exist as an end in itself. Indeed, Israelite political
thought does not conceive of the state as a reified entity. There
was no Israelite equivalent of the Greek polis, that is to say ,
the city whose value as a political entity exists independently
of its inhabitants. There is no generic term for state in the
Bible, only terms for different regimes with kahal or mamlakhah
coming closest to being used generically. Medinah, the
contemporary Hebrew term, is used in Scripture to describe
territories with juridical status and a measure of autonomy but
without political independence. Even Adat Bnai Yisrael,
important as it was in the fulfillment of God's plan, was
conceived to be a king of partnership of Israelites and not an
entity that existed independently of its people. Political
institutions were viewed not as serving the state but as serving
this partnership which united the people with each other through
their common linkage with God.
At the same time, politics was important because the
establishment of the Holy Commonwealth, later to be called God's
Kingdom of Earth in some quarters, was a primary goal of the
Israelite nation, a goal mandated by God. Thus the character of
Israelite political institutions was constantly judged in the
Bible in terms of their success in fostering the development of
the Holy Commonwealth. The very institution of the kingship
became an issue because it involved the abandonment of God's
direct rule over the people and thus was viewed by many as a
departure from the path leading toward the Holy Commonwealth.
Subsequent to the introduction of kingly rule, particular
dynasties were judged in terms of their faithfulness to God's
will in this connection. Thus the disappearance of the ten
tribes as political entities is lamented as a break in the right
order of things that must be mended if the Holy Commonwealth is
to be achieved.
The biblical concern with political matters is so pervasive
within its moral framework that references to such matters can be
found in virtually every book and range from discussion of the
origins of imperialism to the nature of statesmanship, aside from
its major concern with the government of Israel. Thus, biblical
thought is, on one hand, highly political and, on the other, very
clear in its subordination of the political to higher goals.
Political relationships in ancient Israel were based on the
covenant or federal principle (the word federal is derived from
the Latin foedus which means covenant). In fact, the Bible
portrays the covenant principle as the basis for the
relationships between God and man, between the nation of Israel
and God and among humans. Covenants in biblical thought are the
means through which lasting relationships are forged, designed to
preserve the respective integrities of the partners and to
provide a basis for cooperation among them in order to achieve
the common ends delineated in the compact. Thus the basis of all
of Israelite society was federal down to its roots.
The first covenant between God and Israel according to the
biblical account, the covenant with Abraham, is proto-political
in character, involving as it does two promises -- the
establishment of the Jewish people and the allocation to them of
the land of Canaan. The covenant at Sinai was the first great
political covenant. It created the federal relationship between
God and the Israelites. By doing so, it also constituted the
Israelites as a nation, that is to say, as something more than a
family or descendants of a putative common ancestor.
The Bible clearly relates the formation of the political
institutions of Israel to the Sinai experience, whether in the
form of the Book of the Covenant which is the basis of the first
constitution of the Israelite federation or in connection with
Moses' following the advice of his father-in-law to establish a
national administrative and judicial structure, which is
presented as taking place at the same time, though without the
same divine character attached to it. The Bible is quite clear
in indicating that no particular form of government is mandated
by God, though some forms receive divine sanction and others do
not.
The theopolitical aspects of this great covenant were reaffirmed
at subsequent points in the history of the Israelites, invariably
as times when constitutional change had taken place. Thus, the
reaffirmation of the covenant under Joshua marked the point where
the political institutions of Israel had to be adapted to
permanent settlement in Eretz Israel. Similarly, David was made
king by covenant, indeed, by two separate covenants, one with the
elders of Judah and the second with the elders of Judah and
Israel. Covenant ceremonies were held at various times during
the history of the kingship when the institution itself was in
jeopardy. Finally, the institution of the Josianic reforms and
the Deuteronomic constitution involved a major covenant renewal
ceremony. The initiation of the fourth constitutional epoch
involved another major covenant renewal ceremony with Ezra
reading the Torah before the community at Sukkot to obtain their
consent to it in the approved constitutional manner.
The covenant not only forms the basis for political organization
in Israel but does even more than that. Israel becomes in
effect, a partnership held together by covenantal or federal ties
which link the people to each other through their tribes and,
through their tribes, also link them to God. These federal
principles became so ingrained in Israelite political thought
that, ever since, Jewish communities have been conceived as
partnerships and have been organized through articles of
agreement that are in themselves small covenants.
At first, these federal principles were translated into a federal
system of government. Even when the Israelites abandoned the
tribal confederacy as a form of government, they were careful to
retain federal structural elements under the king and would have
continued to do so by all accounts except for the conquest of the
northern kingdom. Although this federal structure disappeared at
the end of the second constitutional epoch because of objective
conditions rather than for any internal reasons, the federal
principles remained to animate the formally unitary structure
that replaced it. At the same time, the federal structure of the
earlier age was enshrined in the prophetic literature as a
messianic goal. The various biblical descriptions of the ideal
commonwealth all emphasize the federal structure as a major
element within it.34
Republicanism is the third political principle of biblical
Israel. Understood in its broadest sense, republicanism reflects
the view that the political order is a public thing (res
publica), that is to say, not the private preserve of any single
king or ruling elite but the property of all of its citizens and
that political power should be organized so as to reflect this
fact. Republican government involves a limitation on the powers
of those given authority and some provision for the
representation of public concerns as a matter of right in the
formulation and execution of public policy. All these conditions
prevailed in biblical Israel except during periods when
individual kings essentially usurped powers and were considered
to be usurpers by the biblical account.
So republican was ancient Israel that even the institution of
kingship, limited as it was, persisted for less than half of the
biblical period (the precise length of time depending upon the
way in which the biblical period is calculated). The Bible does
not mandate kingship but makes its institution a matter of public
choice and, in any case, clearly provides for constitutional
limitations on the king, who is never the sovereign. The
prophets, indeed, refrained from referring to kings as kings
(melakhim), but rather referred to them as negidim, roughly
translated as high commissioners; in other words, God's
commissioners to lead His people or, in the case of Ezekiel, as
nesi'im, God's elected ones.35 This is a reflection of an
antimonarchical tradition that persisted among the prophetic
schools during the entire period of the kings, leading in the end
to something of a dualism in Jewish political thought whereby the
traditional role of Elijah became associated with a kind of
prophetic republicanism, with or without a king as a national
leader of a limited scope in the messianic age.36
Similarly, it seems that certain republican institutions were
preserved through the period of kingship and emerged as more
powerful institutions once that period had come to an end. These
institutions embodies principles of shared power that were never
relinquished.
Out of these three principles there emerges a picture of the
ideal commonwealth as embodied in biblical political thought.
Two principal descriptions of this ideal commonwealth have been
canonized, with a third description that emphasizes political
structure and organization less while portraying the kind of life
and society that the commonwealth will create. The two
descriptions are to be found in the Book of Joshua and in the
prophecies of Ezekiel.
The Book of Joshua, an idealized version of the conquest and
settlement of Canaan by the Israelites, can properly be viewed as
an expression of what the ideal Israelite polity should be,
describing as it does in some detail what the polity was
conceived to have been at the time of Joshua, that is to say, at
the time of its greatest achievements in Canaan. If this
biblical utopia looks to a great past situation for its
inspiration, Ezekiel's utopia looks to a great future situation;
yet, the description that emerges is quite similar to that found
in the Book of Joshua. Finally, Isaiah's messianic vision
implicitly assumes conditions such as those described in Joshua
and Ezekiel.37
Characteristic of these utopian accounts is the three principles
described above and the separation of the three ketarim. In all
three, the theocratic principle is fundamental. Politics becomes
a means for achieving and maintaining the Holy Commonwealth. God
is sovereign and exercises His sovereignty more or less directly,
mediated only through His servants who act as national leaders
and the traditional institutions of the people. Those
institutions are federal and republican in character, with the
federation of tribes at their base and the popular institutions
growing out of that federation the major instrumentalities of
governance alongside of God, His chief minister, and supporting
staff.
This ideal biblical commonwealth, reflected in the idealization
of the realities of political life in ancient Israel, became a
major force in the political thought of the Western world,
shaping the ideals and animating the visions of most Western
thrusts toward republicanism. Echoes and expansion of that
vision permeated Western political thought after the rise of
Christianity, just as they continued to permeate Jewish political
thought after the Bible itself was canonized and the biblical
period came to its conclusion.
Notes
1. See, for example, Robert Gordis, "Democratic Origins in
Ancient Israel -- The Biblical Edah," in The Alexander Marx
Jubilee Volume (New York, 1967); Martin Noth, The History of
Israel (New York: Harper and Row, 1958); G.E. Mendenhall,
"Ancient Oriental and Biblical Law," Biblical Archeologist 17 (2)
(1954), pp. 26-46; C. Umhau Wolf, "Terminology of Israel's Tribal
Organization," Journal of Biblical Literature 65 (1946); Norman
Gottwald, All the Kingdoms of the Earth (New York: Harper and
Row, 1964); N.H. Snaith, "The Covenant-Love of God," in The
Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (New York, 1964), pp.
94-127.
2. For an overview of the contribution of the Israelite
experience in the development of Western political institutions,
see, inter alia, G.H. Dodge, The Political Theory of the
Huguenots of the Dispersion (New York, 1947); Harold Fisch,
Jerusalem and Albion (New York: Schocken, 1964); Christopher
Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford,
1965); Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Macmillan,
1961); Zacharas P. Thundyil, Covenant in Anglo-Saxon Thought
(Madras: Macmillan of India, 1972); Eric Voegelin, Israel and
Revelation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957);
Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books,
1985) and The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1965).
3. Johannes Althusius, Politics, trans. Frederick Carney (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1964); Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), p. 143; Benedict Spinoza,
Political-Theological Tractate (Italian translation by C. Sarchi,
1875 [1670]); John Locke, First and Second Treatises on
Government, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: Mentor, 1965); Daniel J.
Elazar and John Kincaid, eds., The Covenant Connection (Grenshaw:
Carolina Academic Press, 1990).
4. See Daniel J. Elazar, "Kinship and Consent in the Jewish
Community: Patterns of Continuity in Jewish Communal Life,"
Tradition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Fall 1974), pp. 63-79; "Covenant
as the Basis of the Jewish Political Tradition," in Kinship and
Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and its Contemporary
Uses, Daniel J. Elazar, ed. (Ramat Gan: Turtledove, 1981); and
Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart A. Cohen, The Jewish Polity: Jewish
Political Organizations from Biblical Times to the Present
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
5. See, for example, Albrecht Alt, Essays on Old Testament and
Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 173-222; H.
Tadmor, "'The People and the Kingship in Ancient Israel: The
Role of Political Institutions in the Biblical Period," Journal
of World History 11 (1968), pp. 46-68; Martin Noth, History of
Israel; W.F. Albright, "Tribal Rule and Charismatic Leaders," in
The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra (New York, 1968), pp.
35-52; Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Biblical Account of the Conquest of
Palestine (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1953) and The Book of Joshua:
A Commentary (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1963).
6. Daniel J. Elazar, The Constitutional Periodization of Jewish
History (Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Community Studies, 1980)
and the files of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Jerusalem.
7. Elazar and Cohen, The Jewish Polity, Introduction and Epochs
I-IV.
8. On the epoch of the patriarchs, see A. Malamat, "Origins and
the Formative Period," in H.H. Ben Sasson, ed., A History of the
Jewish People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976),
pp. 3-87; B. Mazar, ed., "The Patriarchs," The World History of
the Jewish People, Vol. I (New Brunswick, 1970); E.A. Speiser,
ed., "Genesis," The Anchor Bible, Vol. 1: Social Institutions
(New York, 1965), pp. 3-15.
9. John Bright, A History of Israel, 3rd. ed. (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1982); G.E. Mendenhall, "Ancient Oriental and
Biblical Law," Biblical Archeologist 17:2 (1954), pp. 26-46; M.
Weinfeld, "Berit - Covenant vs. Obligation," Biblica 56:i (1975),
pp. 109-128.
10. Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political
Leader (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984); Leo
Schwarz, Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), ch. 1; John Bright, "The
Constitution and Faith of Early Israel," A History of Israel,
Part II, Ch. 4; Moshe Weinfeld, "The Transition from Tribal Rule
to Monarchy and Its Impact on History," Kinship and Consent; A.
Malamat, "Origins and the Formative Period"; Daniel J. Elazar,
"The Book of Joshua as a Political Classic," Jewish Political
Studies Review I:1-2 (Spring 1989), pp. 93-150; Martin Noth,
"Israel as the Confederation of the Twelve Tribes," Part I in The
History of Israel; W.F. Albright, "Tribal Rule and Charismatic
Leaders," The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra (New York,
1968), pp. 35-52; R.G. Bowling and G. Ernest Wright, eds.,
"Joshua," The Anchor Bible, Vol. 5 (New York, 1982); G.E.
Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East
(The Biblical Colloquium, 1955); Studies in the Book of Joshua
(Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1960).
11. M. Weinfeld, "Judge and Officer in Ancient Israel and in the
Ancient Near East," Israel Oriental Studies 7 (1977), pp. 65-88;
"Keter ve-Atarah," in Encyclopedia Mikra'it, Vol. 4 (Jerusalem,
1962), clmns. 405-408; Stuart A. Cohen, The Concept of the Three
Ketarim: Its Place in Jewish Political Thought and Its
Implications for a Study of Jewish Constitutional History,
Working Paper No. 18 (Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Communty
Studies, 1982), pp. 1-40, and "Keter as a Jewish Political
Symbol: Origins and Implications," in Jewish Political Studies
Review, I:1-2 (Spring, 1989); C. Umhau Wolf, "Terminology of
Israel's Tribal Organization," Journal of Biblical Literature.
12. E.A. Speiser, "Background and Functions of the Biblical
Nasi," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1965), pp. 111-117; M.
Weinfeld, "Judge and Officer...".
13. Moshe Weinfeld, "From God's Edah to the Chosen Dynasty"; R.
Gordis, "Democratic Origins in Ancient Israel - The Biblical
Edah," in The Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume.
14. B. Lindars, "Gideon and the Kinship," Journal of Theological
Studies 16 (1965), pp. 315-326; R.G. Bowling and G. Ernest
Wright, "Judges," The Anchor Bible, Vol. 6 (New York, 1980); W.F.
Albright, "Tribal Rule and Charismatic Leaders," The Biblical
Period from Abraham to Ezra and Samuel and the Beginnings of the
Prophetic Movement in Israel (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College
Press, 1961).
15. A. Alt, "The Formation of the Israelite State," in Essays on
Old Testament History and Religion (New York, 1966); Daniel J.
Elazar, "Dealing with Fundamental Regime Change: The Biblical
Paradigm of the Transition from Tribal Federation to Federal
Monarchy of David," in Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and
Nahum M. Sarna, eds. From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), Vol. I, pp. 97-129; Moshe
Weinfeld, "From God's Edah to the Chosen Dynasty: The Transition
from the Tribal Federation to the Monarchy," in Kinship and
Consent, pp. 151-166; J. Levenson, "The Davidic Covenant and Its
Modern Interpreters," Catholic Bible Quarterly 41 (ii) (1979);
W.A. Irwin, "Saul and the Rise of the Monarchy," American Journal
of Semitic Languages and Literature 58 (1941), pp. 113-138.
16. Benjamin Offenheimer, Early Prophecy in Israel (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 1973); J. Muilenberg, "The 'Office' of the Prophet
in Ancient Israel," in J.P. Hyatt, ed. The Bible in Modern
Scholarship (1966), pp. 79-97; M. Galston, "Philosopher-King vs.
Prophet," in Israel Oriental Studies 8 (1978), pp. 204-218;
Roland de Vaux, Jerusalem and the Prophets (Cincinnati: Hebrew
Union College Press, 1965); S. Talmon, "Kingship and Ideology of
the State," in The World History of the Jewish People, Vol. 4,
Part II (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 3-26.
17. A. Alt, "The Monarchy in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,"
in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (1951), English
translation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell and Mott, 1966), pp.
239-259; A. Malamat, "Organs of Statecraft in the Israelite
Monarchy," Biblical Archeologist 28 (2) (1956), pp. 34-50; Roland
de Vaux, "The Administration of the Kingdom," in Ancient Israel
(New York, 1965), Vol. 1, pp. 133-142; B. Halpern, The
Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (Cambridge: Harvard
Semitic Monographs, 1981), No. 25; Y. Kaufman, "The Monarchy,"
The Religion of Israel (Chicago, 1960), pp. 262-270.
18. B. Halpern, Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel; W.O.E.
Oesterley and Theodore Henry Robinson, History of Israel
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932).
19. Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart A. Cohen, "Epoch IV: Brit
ha-Melukhah (The Federal Monarchy)," in The Jewish Polity
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
20. Norman K. Gottwald, All the Kingdoms of the Earth (New York:
Harper and Row, 1964).
21. Bright, A History of Israel, Ch. 7, pp. 249-287; Albright,
"Tribal Rule and Charismatic Leaders," The Biblical Period from
Abraham to Ezra, Chapter 7, pp. 67-74; Noth, The History of
Israel, Part III, Section I, pp. 253-299; Oesterley and Robinson,
History of Israel.
22. Martin Cohen, "The Role of the Shilonite Priesthood in the
United Monarchy of Ancient Israel," Hebrew Union College Annual
Vol. 36 (Cinninnati: Hebrew Union College, 1965), pp. 59-98; B.
Porten, Archives from the Jews of Elephantine (Berkeley, 1968).
23. John Bright, "The Monarchy: Crisis and Downfall," in A
History of Israel.
24. E.W. Nicholson, Deuteronomy and Tradition (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell and Mott, 1967); G. von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy,
English translation (London: SCM Press, 1953); H.H. Rowley, "The
Early Prophecies of Jeremiah in their Setting," reprinted in Men
of God (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963), pp. 133-168;
Oesterley and Robinson, History of Israel.
25. John Bright, "Tragedy and Beyond: The Exilic and Postexilic
Periods," in, The History of Israel pp. 76-94; Leo Schwarz, Great
Ages and Ideas, pp. 341-401.
26. L. Falk, "The Temple Scroll and the Codification of Jewish
Law," Jewish Law Annual 2 (1979), pp. 33-44; Leo Schwarz, Great
Ages and Ideas; Elazar and Cohen, The Jewish Polity, Epoch VI; S.
Zeitlin, The Rise and Fall of the Judean State, Vol. 1
(Philadelphia, 1962).
27. Ibid.
28. E. Bickerman, From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees (New
York, 1962); J. Bright, "The Formative Period of Judaism," in A
History of Israel; M. Snaith, "Nehemiah," in Palestinian Parties
and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (New York, 1971), pp.
126-147.
29. See Elazar and Cohen, The Jewish Polity, Epoch VI.
30. J. Bright, "The Monarchy: Crisis and Downfall," in A History
of Israel.
31. Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965),
2 vols.
32. J. Bright, "Israel Under the Monarchy: The Period of
Self-determination," in A History of Israel.
33. Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel, especially Vol. 1, Social
Institutions.
34. Daniel J. Elazar, The Covenant Tradition in Politics, Vol. I
(forthcoming).
35. Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20. A new translation with
introduction and commentary (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1983); Moshe Greenberg, "Ezekiel -- XV," The Anchor Bible v. 22,
pp. 388; Moshe Greenberg and Charles Cutler Torrey, Pseudo-Ezekiel and the Original Prophecy (New York: Ktav, 1970);
Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel from its Beginnings to
the Babylonian Exile, translated and abridged by Moshe Greenberg
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 426-446.
36. Martin Cohen, op. cit.; William Lee Holladay, Isaiah, Scroll
of a Prophetic Heritage (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eermans,
1978); Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel from its
Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, Part III, Ch. 12, pp.
378-394 for Isaiah and Part III, Ch. 13, pp. 426-446 for Ezekiel;
Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament
(New York: Harper, 1948), Part IV, "The Latter Prophets," I, The
Book of Isaiah, pp. 415-481; Gil, III, pp. 518-565.
