God’s plan for Israel was that it should not be a nation. We are apt to look at what was, as though it was what ought to have been, forgetting that from first to last the people refused, to a greater or less extent, to walk in the counsel of God. We see the Jewish people with judges, and officers, and all the paraphernalia of civil government; but we must remember that God’s covenant provided something far different, which, on account of unbelief, they never fully realized. EVCO 399.1