An important shaper of 20th century history has been a battle between ideology and politics. Ideology tapped into power's more atavistic side while politics shaped the duties and responsibilities of governance. The strongest ideology of the 20th century has been anti-Semitism; the strongest politics has been market economics.
What makes the biblical regime an important innovation in political design is that the Bible's is a democratic ideology whose focus counters ideological forces more than the political. The biblical regime addresses more the matter of vengeance than it does the matter of proper policy. The attitude of God in the biblical regime is to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. YHWH doesn't really wish to bother with "Ceaser's" stuff.
Judicial courts can know only law; executives must manage the vengeance; and it is the legislature that must balance the policy and the ideology in the shaping of authority's governance. The legislature is sovereign over the land, not the executive and not the judiciary.
A society with a weak popular voice is one that has strong executive authority and strong judicial authority but weak legislative authority. Such a society does not have a firm purchase on its land or on the resources the land contains. Extraction must be managed by the values of the commonwealth and of civil society. Iran or Saudi Arabia would be good examples of such a weak popular voice where civil society is being ground out of existence.
For YHWH to be the divine author of covenantal law is to place the supreme avenging authority into the hands of One Who would dignify civil society's values by using the law to temper the executive. When the judiciary is reluctant to inhibit the prerogatives of the executive, as is most often the case in matters of war and national security, it does so because war requires vengeance more than justice, and so courts, which administer justice and despise vengeance, understand they are not useful in such contexts.
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