The past several years have seen a deepening interest in the political vantage point of the OT. Some of the more notable volumes that have appeared are Norman Gottwald's The Politics of Ancient Israel (Westminster John Knox), J. G. McConville'sGod and Earthly Power: An Old Testament Political Theology (Continuum), Mira Morgenstern'sConceiving a Nation: The Development of Political Discourse in the Hebrew Bible (Pennsylvania State University Press), and Jules Gleicher's Political Themes in the Hebrew Scriptures (Palgrave Macmillan). The recent publication of In God's Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible by Michael Walzer can be added to this list. Walzer is professor emeritus of social science at Princeton University and has widely published in the area of political theory.

In the preface Walzer gives the aim of the book as well as his vantage point. He also discusses what his work does and does not intend to accomplish. The aim of the work “is to examine the ideas about politics, the understandings of government and law, that are expressed in the Hebrew Bible” (p. ix). He approaches the biblical text from the point of view of a political theorist, not a theologian. With this his intention is not to figure out whether the events of the Bible are truthful or to confirm his own political view (social democrat) or write as an apologist, and he is not trying to discuss the influence of biblical politics on modern political thought. Instead, he wants to answer questions that surround the kingship of God, his giving of divine commands, and how that relates to issues of national decision making. With this in mind he notes that the Hebrew Bible is not concerned primarily with politics and that the biblical writers are actually rather anti-political with their understanding of God as a man of war and as king. With this said, however, he believes that even anti-politics is a type of politics and that the biblical writers have much to say about political matters. Therefore, the “program in this book [is] to look at the biblical writers, more or less chronologically, as they deal with the different covenants, the three legal codes, the successive regimes, the wars of Israelite judges and kings, and the experience of imperial conquest and to describe the arguments . . . that the writers make about legitimacy, hierarchy, and social justice” (p. xiii).

His treatment is broken into twelve chapters that are roughly fifteen to twenty pages in length. In the first nine chapters Walzer goes through various biblical subjects in roughly chronological order. Chapters ten and eleven deviate from this slightly with a discussion of messianism and politics in chapter ten and a discussion of elders in ancient Israel in chapter eleven. The final chapter entitled “Politics in the Shadow” serves as Walzer's concluding thoughts. His analysis can be partially summed up in the following, “The Bible contains an explicit history of political change-from judges to kings to priests-even as it explicitly repudiates the idea of change in religion or morality. Its writers invite, though they do not practice, a comparative politics; they neither invite nor practice a comparative religion. Each successive regime has its defenders; no alternative religion is ever defended” (204).

There are a number of admirable qualities in Walzer's work. The first is the work's readability. This book is written in such a way that either a popular or academic audience could find great benefit from its content. A second admirable quality is the way in which Walzer is clear about what this book aims to do (and not to do) and the vantage point from which this subject is viewed. Walzer understands his limitations as a political theorist when discussing biblical ideas, but realizes that he has valuable insight into the text. His discussion of the text from the vantage point of a political theorist allows him to approach the text without the baggage of some of the preconceived notions of biblical scholarship. This is evidenced on the issue of kingship, which has largely been viewed negatively within biblical studies. Waltzer, while he sees a tension in the portrayal of the monarchy, does not appear to see kingship as any more antithetical to the rule of God than any other political authority, such as the authority that is exercised by priests or prophets (see p. 204). A third contribution is his keen look at different biblical subjects and the politics inherent within them. One of the more interesting subjects broached was that of the politics of wisdom. While it is easy to see how prophets, priests, kings, and law encounter politics, it would be easy to skip over wisdom.

There are also some deficiencies to be noted within this work. There are a few minor things that if included in this work would have improved it significantly. First, it lacks a Scripture index. The index includes page numbers where biblical books are referenced, but it references no individual passages. A Scripture index is standard on any book that deals largely with the biblical text. For instance, it would be helpful to be able to find all of the references to Deut 17:14-20 instead of having to skim back through the work. Second, the book lacks a bibliography. All of the authors that are referenced within the body of the work can be found in the one index of the book and in the endnotes section, but it would be helpful to have a bibliography. Third, there are a number of important works on this subject that Walzer does not interact with at all. Of the recent books dealing with politics and the OT mentioned in the introduction of this review the only one that Waltzer interacts with is Gottwald. There are a few other glaring omissions. On the subject of Yahweh as a man of war there are two works that could have been interacted with: Miller's The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (SBL) and Longman and Reid's God Is a Warrior (Zondervan). On the subject of the kingship of God, Waltzer's discussion is largely dependent upon the older work of Buber. He would have done well to interact with Gray's The Biblical Doctrine of the Reign of God (T&T Clark) and Brettler's God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor (T&T Clark). There are other aspects of the work that could be discussed here, but many of them center on theological subjects that are not the main focus of this work.

While I disagree with several points of Walzer's work, there is still much value to it. It will not become the standard for understanding political thought within the OT, but it does serve as a valuable introductory-level read into the political thought of the OT from the vantage point of a political theorist. This book would be valuable to the discerning reader who is interested in politics and biblical thought.

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