God as a political player

It is a mistake to try to define essential features of men or of Jews in terms of the political philosophy of the biblical regime or the rabbinic regime. Jewish politics is just not preoccupied with moral essences. The biblical regime is about the institutional structure of Israel's sons insofar as that structure includes YHWH's participation. It's not that YHWH establishes a covenant with Israel's sons; it's that He's involved with Israel's politics in the first place. Covenant is simply the natural instrument for facilitating that participation.

The moral philosophical frame in which we consider political questions informs our understanding of those questions so much that it's often difficult to separate the question from the answer. Most of the time the answer to a moral philosophical question is that the question is misconceived and must be recast.