My Life and Books (15) No Executive

A big shock was realising that there is no Executive branch of government in the Torah. There was no one appointed to implement government programs. There was no bureaucracy to carry out political programs.

One reason why there is no Executive is that there is no compulsory taxation in the Torah. All giving to the community was voluntary. There was an expectation that people would be generous to the poor and needy, but there was no agency with the authority to enforce that.

This means that one of the three standard branches of government described in most political theologies, the Executive Branch, are missing from God’s system of government. The executive branch can only function with money. If there is no compulsory taxation, the executive branch loses its power.

An important step was realising that God does not want kings. He allowed Samuel to appoint a king for Israel, but he was very clear that they were copying the surrounding nations, not doing something that God commanded (1 Samuel 8). Samuel warned that the king would harm the nation and the people would suffer.

I discovered that Moses’ role, apart from being a prophet, was to be a temporary military leader. When the nation was attacked, and the people gathered to defend it, they would agree on a person to lead them. That was a temporary role. When the enemy was defeated, the military leader would go back to their home and become an ordinary person.

Kings are really permanent military leaders. They tend to become dangerous because they are tainted by war, but gain lots of power. No human king is good.