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God gave Old Testament Israel the Law, His commands for them to follow. The Law basically seems to consist of two different parts, the national law for Israel as a nation, and the personal law for each follower of God in the nation (and also for those of other nations who would follow God with the Israelites).

The national law is basically addressed to the congregation. The rules may speak directly to each Israelite, but they are given with national interest in mind. In it we can find the civil government that God introduced for the nation. For example, the laws concerning cities of refuge, concerning the conquest of the land, and concerning marriages with other nations (the marriage rules in Deuteronomy 7 may also partially have to do with the personal law, because the reason for the rule was that the marriages would turn the Israelites from following God. But if God had not specifically selected Israel, intermarriage would probably have been fine, so I list it as national) are given to the nation. Had God not specifically chosen Israel as a special nation, these laws would probably have never been given.

But these laws don’t always deal with things that we would categorize as civil affairs today; for example, circumcision was fundamentally a religious act, yet it was a national affair, and someone who was not circumcised was supposed to be severed from the nation, no longer allowed to be an Israelite. “And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.” (Genesis 17:14) We find this same type of scenario more than once in the Law, a religious law with the civil power behind it. In fact, most, if not all, of the Levitical law had national significance as well as religious significance. Religion and nationalism were basically the same, and this scenario was by no means limited to Israel. People believed that “gods” belonged to specific territories, and, as it’s unlikely that too many foreigners considered the uniqueness of Israel’s God, they probably viewed God as simply the special protector of Israel. “Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?” (Isaiah 36:20) No one but Israel was expected to follow God, and this situation provided an opportunity for civil and religious law to be mixed.

Everyone in Israel was required to at least go through the ritual of following God; to not do so would be inviting civil punishment. “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.” (Deuteronomy 13:6-9) The civil judges had the responsibility to enforce the Law of God.

National religion, of course, was fundamentally concerned with location, and Jerusalem was not only the civil capital, but also the religious capital of the nation (at least during Solomon’s time when his Temple was the religious center of Israel). “Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD.” (Exodus 23:17) All the men had to come and offer sacrifices. This meant that religion played an important role in holding the nation together, and so it was easy for rulers to value having a single religion centered in their nations’ main cities. When Jeroboam became king of Israel, he became afraid that if the people continued to worship at Jerusalem, they would want to be under Rehoboam’s leadership again, so he created a new national religion.

It’s probably because religion played such a large part in national issues of that time that it focused on ritual rather than daily practice. Even in the Law of God, we see detailed descriptions of acts that the priest should perform.

A man from another nation who wished to follow God would probably have to give up his own home country and move to the Israelite nation, or else, like the Ethiopian eunuch, travel long distances to “appear before the Lord GOD.” A born Jew probably had a much better opportunity to follow God than a Gentile, even when Israel had lapsed into idolatry.

We find another characteristic of nationalistic religion in blessings and curses in the Old Testament. Most, if not all, of these are aimed at the nation. If the nation followed God they would be given material prosperity; if the nation didn’t follow God, they would have material troubles.

Even in these Old Testament times, however, there was a glimmer of things to come in the other section of the Law, the parts that applied to people individually. These gave commands that were between a man and God, and the nation did not enforce them. For example, the commandment against covetousness was not enforced by the state, and murder was addressed on an individual level as well as a national one. National religion itself, however, would not be changed until the gospel itself burst upon the scene.