Thomas E. Peck on the Judicial Law of Moses

While government is the ordinance of God (Rom. xiii.), in the sense that the social nature of man necessarily gives rise to it, yet as to the form which this government may assume in all other other nations, and the special laws by which the ends of government may be secured, God has prescribed nothing except that the civil magistrate shall have the power of life and death, and that it shall be his duty to inflict the penalty of death for the crime of murder. Regulative principles of government are implied in the moral law, and in the general tenor of Scripture teaching, but the constitutive principles of government there are none, except in the case of the Jews. The case of the Jews was made an exception, because they were to be separated from all other nations for the specific purpose of being a type of the kingdom of God and a preparation for it. Hence, a purely natural civil development could not be allowed, as it would interfere with the execution of this purpose. If the Hebrews had been permitted to determine their own polity and laws, they would soon have lost their distinctive character and become mingled with the Gentiles. In point of fact, we find that they did lose it in a very great degree, in spite of all the legal regulations which were prescribed to prevent it. The great powers of the old world struggled for the possession of the land of Palestine, just as the great powers of the modern world have struggled for it, and are now watching one another with intense eagerness and jealousy in regard to it. It was to prevent the Hebrew power from becoming a member of the “political system” of the Orient that the judicial law was given, but given, to a great extent, in vain (Writings of Thomas E. Peck, Volume Two, pages 158-159).