Since antiquity the Bible has been studied not only as a book of religious instruction but also as a work of political guidance. Replete with gripping scenes from political life—think of Korah's insurrection against Moses's leadership, Joshua's ruthless conquest of Canaan, and Solomon's expansion of empire through wisdom, diplomacy, and marriage—the Bible easily captivates the political imagination. Some have found in its pages a blueprint for constructing the ultimate polity, be it a royal monarchy, an oligarchy of elders, a priestly hierocracy, or a kind of democracy of the Israelite people. Countless others have combed through its historical, prophetic, and normative writings to glean insights about sundry political issues, including the foundations of a social contract, the benefits of a welfare state, and the path to revolution.

The first sustained effort to read the Bible (i.e., the Hebrew Bible, unless otherwise indicated) politically was advanced by Josephus nearly two millennia ago. Characterizing sections of the book of Deuteronomy as the Jewish “Constitution,” Josephus stated that a primary goal of his magnum opus, Jewish Antiquities, was to identify the Bible's core political teachings. Ever since, a string of leading commentators have read the Bible in a similar vein. Patristic writers, from Ambrose to Augustine to Eusebius, mined the (Christian) Bible for guidance about the relationship of the kingdom of God (and Christ) to the Roman Empire. In medieval times, Maimonides, echoing the Aristotelian teaching that man is a political animal, interpreted many norms of the Bible as having social utility in fostering a stable polity. In later Renaissance and early modern times, Continental political theorists turned to the (Christian) Bible as a source of authority and enlightenment. Over a hundred works about the “Hebrew commonwealth” were authored in seventeenth-century Europe. Spinoza, who disparaged the Bible's theological and philosophical import, nevertheless emphasized its political value to its original authors. Secular Zionists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries even found in the Bible a charter guiding them back to their homeland.

The latest iteration of this genre has been produced in recent decades, with a surge of interest in the field of “political Hebraism.” Scores of intellectual historians, political thinkers, religious scholars, and ideologues from America, Israel, and Europe have returned to the Bible and other works of the Hebraic tradition to consider their teachings on leadership, governance, and civil society. While some of these efforts are hampered by an apologetic or polemical streak, others have produced notable scholarly contributions exploring an all-too-marginalized perspective in the history of political philosophy.

Heading the latter group is Michael Walzer, a leading voice in political and moral philosophy who has made enduring scholarly contributions to a range of fields, including just war theory, the nature of social criticism, liberalism and communitarianism, and spheres of justice, and increasingly to scholarship on the Jewish political tradition. Over the past two decades he has authored and edited some of the finest works in this (rediscovered and once again) burgeoning field, and also lent academic credibility to the entire enterprise. Beginning with his pioneering work, Exodus and Revolution—a study of the reception history of the Exodus liberation story and the way it shaped later revolutionary politics—Walzer has spearheaded an anthology series entitled The Jewish Political Tradition (two out of a projected four volumes have been published thus far). These prior efforts have culminated with his own cogent account of the Bible's political teachings, which is elegantly presented in his latest work, In God's Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible.

In God's Shadow offers a masterful tour of political motifs in the Bible, including a dazzling array of insights on numerous biblical passages and foundational themes. To his credit, Walzer does not just examine the most obvious of relevant biblical texts (i.e., Deuteronomy or Kings), but casts his net widely, surveying Wisdom literature, prophetic texts, and postexilic writings in his study of a range of political subjects. Moreover, Walzer boldly chooses not simply to evaluate the Bible as it was read and understood by its various interpreters over the centuries, but to return to the original text. Selectively relying on critical methods to reveal its disparate voices and contextualize them as necessary, Walzer's choices are at times eclectic, but overall they certainly provide a richer account. Wading through the thickets of biblical studies, Walzer succeeds in opening up new horizons for biblical and political inquiry.

As part of the latest installment in a long intellectual tradition, Walzer's recent work shares much with other modern scholars who have been drawn to read the Bible politically. Whereas many premoderns assumed the Bible's teachings carried the weight of divine authority or encapsulated natural law, most modern thinkers have explored biblical and Hebraic political thought for different reasons. Here they have found an alternative political perspective to the dominant traditions of the West that trace back to classical sources. Moreover, many Hebraic political ideas were formulated from a position of weakness and they therefore capture a rare early political voice of the disempowered. Further, Hebraic writings often reflect a freer political imagination, as practical implementation was of lesser concern (they even spawned an entire subfield of political messianism.). Finally, Hebraic writings offer a unique theocentric account of political ideas. It is this final fascination, already alluded to in the book's title, that most absorbs Walzer.

Yet it is precisely this focus that also leads Walzer to draw a dramatic conclusion that diverges from many of his predecessors and contemporaries. While they maintain that the Bible contains substantial political teachings (more political thought than political theory), Walzer argues to the contrary that the heart of the Bible has an antipolitical or apolitical message (a message of “political indifference”) since it was formulated in God's shadow. Note that Walzer's conclusion is particularly surprising given that he is analyzing the biblical period, when Jews largely had a land and were autonomous, and not the more politically anomalous diasporic phase when Jews were disempowered.

Compared with other recent studies of political Hebraism such as those written by Yoram Hazony (The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture) and Joshua Berman (Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought), who have arguably overstated the political importance of the Bible, Walzer's conclusion offers a welcome corrective. But his argument is not just intended to even the scales, but as a strongly argued thesis in its own right. It is this conclusion that most deserves the reader's attention and critical appraisal.

In his final chapter, Walzer supports his conclusion with three cumulative arguments. First, although the Bible stresses several “almost-democratic ideas” it does not give them political form. Second, the Bible does not impart a positive political teaching, and instead reflects many disagreements about the most basic political issues, in contrast with its more uniform teachings on religious and moral issues. Third, the Bible's deepest political impulse is to defer to God and God's sovereignty, and limit human agency in governance. Overall, this leads to Walzer's general claim that the Bible is apolitical, or in its stronger version, antipolitical.

Each of these arguments should be briefly taken up in turn, before examining the larger thesis. The first claim may be true, but only speaks to the Bible's democratic values. While scholars such as Yehezkel Kaufmann, Daniel Elazar, and even Walzer (more cautiously) have talked about democratic ideas in the Bible, this should hardly be the yardstick for gauging its political discourse—for “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

The second claim is likewise unpersuasive (although Walzer deserves great credit in exposing such disparate political voices in the Bible). The Bible has much disagreement about many themes and topics, which is not surprising given its time span, range of genres, and multiple authors (indeed, for Walzer the very disagreement on political topics is itself a political value). Conversely, what one does see in the Bible is a substantial number of writings on political themes (especially when contrasted with rabbinic literature), and even more developed (perhaps plural) political ideologies.

The third argument—which Walzer builds throughout the book through a stunning set of thematic connections, ranging from the Bible's treatment of kingship, to prophecy, to international affairs, to exile, to wisdom, to messianism—raises a more formidable challenge. While there is no doubt that the Bible contains voices that contest the role of human power, there is something almost Augustinian about Walzer's formulation which separates a secular temporal sphere from an eternal divine realm. In any event, saying that the Bible's core message is to oppose human initiative is unconvincing. Even just focusing on the heroic narratives of Genesis and Exodus highlights the (religious-historical-political) role of human actors and efforts in the drama of the history of Israel (to be sure, the effort of humans may all transpire under a providential plan, as is intimated in the narratives of Joseph). Moreover, in a much more sweeping sense the notion of covenant—and even theocracy—underscores the centrality of human input, a point I will return to below.

Beyond these three particular claims, Walzer seems to be claiming in a larger sense that the Bible does not stress the importance of politics, political issues, political advice, political structures, etc. But this raises a set of baseline questions of what Walzer means by “politics,” and what his barometer is for evaluating “biblical politics.”

Throughout the course of his book, Walzer appeals to various factors in defining politics. He refers to the central concerns of the political philosophy of the Greeks—ruling and being ruled, the best regime, the meaning of citizenship, the deliberative process, civic virtue, and political obligation. He also discusses other features of politics, including: human initiative; a secular realm; an arena which openly considers the best regime and offers justifications for political institutions and decisions; a process of rational deliberation and debate; prudential advice and practical reasoning; day-to-day planning and incremental solutions; compromise, negotiation, and pragmatism; and discretion and the capacity to deal with contingencies. This is a long (nonexhaustive) list whose various elements could be separately parsed, and below I will contest the claim that they are all absent from the Bible. The more crucial question, however, is whether in their totality these are the proper indicia for evaluating the political nature of the Bible.

The above considerations seem inherently problematic since they reflect modern political sensibilities, which are informed by classical and Western political values. As a result, when Walzer explores the politics of the Bible, he does not adequately address the biblical material on its own terms. Therefore, his book falls short in its effort to reclaim the Bible's notion(s) of the political.

At times this shortcoming is felt more acutely in the book. For instance, Walzer's analysis of the politics of war in the Bible is surprisingly restrained. Discerning two strands in the biblical discourse—advancing doctrines of holy and limited wars—Walzer offers a somewhat strained contemporary account of the former (which he links to Rousseau's jingoistic ethos of separatism, criticizing the morality of both the Bible and Rousseau), and hardly touches on the latter. But the limited war doctrine contains surprisingly regulated laws of war (see Deuteronomy 20). To evaluate the politics of the Bible this normative framework must be noted, and its substance has to be examined—does it assume a division between mandatory and optional wars (especially when Deuteronomy 20 is read as an entire unit)? What is its notion of conquest? What are its rules for offering peace, and guidelines for warfare when peace is refused? Who is included in the draft and who is exempt? Who declares war, and who commands the army? To be sure, there is nothing precluding Walzer from then critically assessing the coherence, prudence, and moral integrity of this scheme. But a treatment of the politics of war in the Bible has to first engage the scriptural material.

Walzer's account of the biblical doctrines of war is a more glaring manifestation of his broader reticence to analyze what the Bible means by politics. Employing such a methodology would undercut one of the more jarring items on the list of political factors enumerated above: politics as a “secular realm.” For the Bible represents a religious political philosophy, not a secular one (the very impulse to carve out a secular sphere is a minority voice in the Bible which hardly represents its cumulative viewpoint, and the alternative option is not just an abdication of politics). Its political ideas are more akin to the political thought of the ancient Near East or of Christian (more Eusebius than Augustine) and Muslim writings, or they at least offer the most helpful comparative frames of reference rather than the ones Walzer (explicitly or implicitly) invokes.

In contrast with Walzer's characterization, it seems evident that the Bible has a significant share of political ideas. More, it contains a positive vision of a just society, and this is at the heart of the project of articulating a political philosophy (an aspiration of religious and classical political traditions alike). Likewise, the Bible contains numerous prescripts that seem political in nature: how to divide the land among the different tribes; the demarcation of a Levite class with cities; a central Temple city; a priestly order; a judicial structure throughout the land; civic responsibilities of members, etc. These political motifs are especially manifest when one approaches the Bible on its own terms.

Walzer's book, in fact, can be read instead as a challenge to articulate more fully in what sense the Bible is “political.” What is the nature of its “political visions”? Given the supreme role of God, how does this really allow for a space for humans that can be called “political”? To be sure, the political visions of the Bible are at odds with much of what is seen as political today (hence Walzer's critique)—so what are its distinctive “politics”?

A full answer to these questions—that is, a positive account of biblical politics—requires a book of its own (indeed, one senses that Walzer would approve if his work elicited this kind of an effort). Here I wish to just sketch one dimension of biblical political philosophy that is missing from Walzer's account, or, more accurately, to connect disparate topics he addresses in order to home in on a theme that does not receive adequate attention in his work. If one combines materials in his discrete chapters on “The Covenants,” “The Legal Codes,” “The Rule of Kings,” and “The Priestly Kingdom” (which Walzer separates, even though some have strong interconnections), as well as various other scattered passages (including the very last pages of the book), and properly conceptualizes them, a substantial political vision emerges.

Consider Walzer's strongest argument about the antipolitical thrust of the Bible that emerges from its conception of the supreme role of God, which ostensibly leaves negligible space for human actors. Here it is crucial to underscore that the Bible's metaphor for the omnipotent God is a political one—God as king. That is, the very theology is itself political in nature. Returning to Walzer, he further probes the nature of God's sovereignty—or “theocracy”—and cites the book of Judges, which intimates a kind of “spiritual anarchy,” as Martin Buber described it in his Kingship of God. But the notion of God's sovereignty finds a much more concrete depiction in another context: the foundational covenant of Sinai with which Walzer thoughtfully begins his book.

At Sinai, God, in the role of suzerain (as biblical and ancient Near East scholars underscore) enters into a “political” pact with Israel, the vassal (collectively, Israel is “a priestly kingdom”). While God is the ultimate source of authority, the vassal Israel has reciprocal responsibility as the covenantal partner. Moreover, the Sinaitic covenant clearly mandates its distinctive political duty: to administer the laws revealed at Sinai.

Incidentally, the Sinai account can also be translated into classical tropes to illuminate some of the central topics of Greek political philosophy delineated above. Sinai clarifies the issue of ruling and being ruled; it presents the constitutional construction of the best regime; it defines the “citizenship,” the “civic virtues,” and the “obligations” of all Israelites to establish an optimal society that will achieve justice through implementing divine laws. Therefore, Walzer's claim that these matters were never fundamental in biblical thought, and can only be teased out, must be rejected. His further contention that we cannot find arguments in the Bible on these issues is misplaced. For the Bible proclaims its politics, which it explores through narratives and counternarratives, but never debates its propositions in a Socratic manner.

Importantly, unlike many other political arrangements where legislation is introduced at a secondary phase, at Sinai the laws are stipulated upfront and are integral to the political formation of the community. It is in this vein that assumption of responsibility over Sinaitic laws constitutes the primary political charge of the priestly royal nation. More specifically, Israelites are called upon to implement, warn, testify, indict, enforce, adjudicate, interpret, perhaps even elaborate upon, and to live according to these laws, and thereby construct a just society, and achieve and maintain covenantal holiness. Walzer likewise recognizes the role of the covenantal community, however narrowly he focuses on its responsibility for social welfare, while he oddly characterizes its political orientation as prudential (i.e., a strong domestic policy being the best foreign policy). But in fact Sinai's political vision is its covenantal commitment to constructing a just and lawful society.

Early on in the book (and again in the chapter on “Where Were the Elders”) one can already sense the need to adjust its focus from even a minor example concerning the nature of “the gates of the city.” Walzer underscores the absence of political activity in this space: we never hear of deliberations that transpire in the town gates, or decisions that are reached there by the people or an assembly of elders. But Walzer's frame of reference must be exchanged. The Israelite town gates are not a Greek agora, but (ideally) a local venue for implementing the norms of the covenantal community. The elders sit and adjudicate (and the town members indict, testify, and observe) the laws at the town gates—this is their political behavior or the way they act. For in living according to divine laws Israel achieves its political ideal.

So the Bible has a strong political vision (emanating from the chosenness of Israel, but not necessarily restricted thereby), albeit one that is profoundly different from classical or Western notions of politics. It is a political philosophy with a palpable religious nature, rooted in covenant and structured around law.Footnote ¹ Walzer in part resists this finding because it does not contain the elements of politics that he underscores: secularism, discretion, deliberation, incremental action, daily decisions, and compromise. Indeed, in a profound sense this fundamental vision of the Bible, which offers a sacral, revealed, and principled conception of the just society, controverts these features. It is perhaps Walzer's same perspective, already reflected in his Spheres of Justice, that withstood the notion of a fixed template of justice (for all communities, in all circumstances, at all times), but such is an essential conception of the Bible. It advances a sweeping religious political vision that relies on the participation of members of the covenantal community to achieve its normative principles and ideals.