In an earlier blog I mused a bit over the significance of a melancholy anniversary. I didn’t start out to be quite so contemplative. Indeed, I intended only to draw attention to a brief excerpt that I have posted elsewhere that concerns the reality and the dimensions of the Theocracy in the Old Testament. To make sure that doesn’t get lost in the loquacity of that earlier blog, and in an attempt to whet your appetite a bit, here are two sections from that excerpt, here without documentation.
The theocracy is well defined as the “form of government under the sole, accessible Headship of God Himself,” who was “the Supreme Lawgiver in civil and religious affairs . . . and when difficult cases required it . . . the Divine Arbiter or Judge.” In sum, “the legislative, executive, and judicial power was vested in Him, and partially delegated to others to be exercised under a restricted form.” Gleig emphasizes that in this arrangement, God “assumed not merely a religious, but a political, superiority, over the descendants of Abraham; He constituted Himself, in the strictest sense of the phrase, King of Israel, and the government of Israel became, in consequence, strictly and literally, a Theocracy.”
That theocratic relationship, formed by Yahweh with Israel, was unique to human history. Thus, the term should not be taken as descriptive of God’s perpetual rule over all creation; as Oehler insists, “The Old Testament idea of the divine kingship expresses, not God’s general relation of power toward the world (as being its creator and supporter), but the special relation of His government toward His elect people.” Indeed, there has never been another people who knew God as their King in this immediate and actual sense (Deut 4:7). Peters makes this point carefully: “The simple fact is, that since the overthrow of the Hebrew Theocracy, God has not acted in the capacity of earthly Ruler, with a set form of government, for any nation or people on earth. . . . the application of the word to any nation or people, or organization since then, is a perversion and prostitution of its plain meaning.”
I would challenge you to consider carefully the Old Testament reality which students of that portion of God’s Word have often called the Theocracy. As I say in the longer blog, Absent the reality that there was indeed a period (indeed, a period of over 850 years) when Yahweh ruled as a real, actual, physically present Sovereign King over a nation of people, there is no making sense of what God is doing in the Old Testament and little hope of making sense of what He intends to do in days to come.
