A resource blessing

If we identify the government as being in charge of political questions and the market as being in charge of economic questions, then the covenant is in charge of the connection between the two. 

The covenant is neither about the government nor about the market, it is about how the culture mediates and addresses market failures (which is the entire realm of the apportionment and allocation of surplus and abundance) as well as government failures (duty and stewardship) to achieve, for the people, both plenty as well as contentment. 

The covenant mediates these two, basic, national institutions of society: the military (the premier institution of government) and the economic household (the premier institution of the marketplace) through the action of their corresponding covenantal institutions: the sanctuary for the military and the sabbaths for the markets. 

The covenant refers to the national unit and addresses national institutions. It tempers the national impulses while at the same time solidifying the national identity as it softens it. 

The covenant creates social and cultural contexts in which people can reasonably conduct themselves acccording to the values of caring and contentment. The role of the covenant is to attenuate the tzva’ot: the five-fold regimentation – cosmic, national, military, clerical, and intermediating – described in the Bible and to imbue in those regiments a measure of the sublime. 

It lifts the resource curse and transforms it into a resource blessing.