What type of government does Israel have?

What type of government did Israel have under Moses Joshua and the Judges?

• Answer:

  The Israelites during that era had a situation which was unique in world history. They undertook a grand experiment: whether a nation could govern themselves for centuries with no king or organized government at all. During that era (of the Judges, about 350 years), when someone raised the possibility of having a king, the answer was: God will rule over you, not a king (Judges 8:23). The events of the Exodus and the Giving of the Torah were so fresh in the nation's memory that they didn't need a king; God was their King. Only at the end of the fourth century after the Exodus, in Samuel's old age, did the people (including their Torah-scholars) begin to feel that the time had come to institute a regular king and government. The Torah itself permitted this (Deuteronomy ch.17); and they saw that Samuel's sons didn't seem to have reached his spiritual level (1 Samuel 8:2-3). During the era of Moses, Joshua and the Judges, however, there was no fixed government. Instead, there were the officers of tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands (Exodus ch.18), and the court of Elders, who were Torah-scholars that provided Torah-rulings and guidance. Each of the leading Judges (Gideon, Deborah etc.) was a private citizen (not a head of government) who led the nation only during a brief episode of battle.