Three thousand years ago, Moses stood before the Israelites and made a prediction that would reshape the world. Speaking to a nomadic nation about to enter the Promised Land, he declared that foreign nations would one day look upon their laws and exclaim with wonder at their wisdom. That prediction found its ultimate fulfillment in the founding of America. Yet today, as America grapples with political division and moral confusion, the very foundation that made this nation exceptional lies buried beneath layers of secular rhetoric and forgotten history.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks recognized that Moses’ prediction came true in ways the great lawgiver could never have imagined. But here’s the startling question: What happens when the nation that became the greatest embodiment of biblical liberty begins to forget the source of its own greatness?
Moses understood something that modern political theorists miss entirely. In the Book of Deuteronomy, he made a stunning prediction about how biblical law would one day captivate the world:
This wasn’t wishful thinkingāit was a precise prediction that would reshape human history. And the most dramatic fulfillment of this prophecy happened in America.
Rabbi Sacks traced this transformation to the invention of the printing press and the translation of the Hebrew Bible into common languages. Ordinary people could finally read the Bible for themselves. The Geneva Bible of 1560 carried explosive notes in the margins that changed everything. When the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah defied Pharaoh’s order to kill Jewish babies, for example, the Geneva Bible declared “their disobedience in this was lawful.” Suddenly, the Bible wasn’t just about personal salvationāit was a manual for resisting tyrants and unjust kings.
Christian scholars began studying not just the Hebrew Bible but Jewish texts like the Talmud and Maimonides’ legal writings. They discovered three revolutionary Hebrew ideas: that republics work better than kings, that governments should help the poor, and that religious freedom protects everyone. These ideas became the building blocks of the American experiment.
The Puritans who led the American Revolution lived and breathed the book of Deuteronomy. They built a government based on covenant: the idea that rulers answer to God and the people, not the other way around. If you listen to the inaugural addresses of American presidents throughout history, they consistently invoke “one people under God” and America’s sacred mission. No other democracy uses this kind of language because no other democracy was built on the Hebrew Bible.
John Adams, America’s second president, recognized this debt with remarkable clarity: “I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilising the nations.”
Adams wasn’t being sentimentalāhe was stating a fact. The Hebrew Bible gave America its blueprint for freedom. As Rabbi Sacks demonstrated, history provides the proof in what amounts to a perfect experiment. Four great revolutions shaped the modern world. Two (the English Revolution of the 1640s and the American Revolution of 1776) were led by people steeped in the Hebrew Bible. Two others (the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution) were driven by secular philosophies, Rousseau and Marx respectively.
The results speak for themselves. The biblical revolutions produced constitutional government and lasting freedom. The secular revolutions produced the Reign of Terror and Stalin’s death camps. When nations build on the Bible, they get liberty. When they build on human philosophy alone, they get tyranny.
But America is forgetting where its greatness came from. Modern politicians talk about rights without responsibilities, freedom without obligations, and justice without any moral foundation. They’ve turned the Bible into a prop for photo ops instead of the blueprint it was meant to be.
This matters more than most people realize. The Hebrew Bible isn’t just ceremonial language for politicians; it provides the foundation that makes freedom work. Take away the idea that humans are made in God’s image, and rights become whatever the majority decides. Abandon the prophetic tradition of speaking truth to power, and democracy becomes mob rule. Forget that leaders must answer to higher law, and government becomes just organized force.
The Sages understood that ideas have consequences across generations. When the biblical worldview that shaped America’s founding gets replaced by secular alternatives, the nation loses more than its religious heritageāit loses the philosophical foundation that made freedom possible in the first place.
The biblical principles that built America, such as human dignity, moral law, prophetic accountability and covenant community, require constant renewal. They cannot survive on historical momentum alone.
American presidents have instinctively reached for biblical language when articulating the nation’s highest ideals, speaking of covenant obligations, divine image, and moral purpose. This is the natural vocabulary of a nation built on Hebrew foundations. But when these concepts become empty rhetoric divorced from their biblical roots, they lose their power to sustain liberty.
The Hebrew Bible created the moral and intellectual framework that made American freedom possible. The nation’s founders didn’t just borrow biblical languageāthey embedded biblical principles into the structure of government itself. Representative democracy, separation of powers, individual dignity, and limited government all trace back to Hebrew political thought.
America stands at a crossroads. It can continue drifting toward the secular political models that produced tyranny elsewhere, or it can rediscover the biblical vision that made it the world’s beacon of liberty. The choice will determine not just America’s future, but whether Moses’ ancient prediction continues to inspire nations seeking the wisdom of God’s law.
Rabbi Sacks saw clearly what many miss: the Hebrew Bible didn’t just predict Americaāit created America. Forgetting that foundation means losing the nation itself. Moses knew that when nations abandon God’s wisdom, they abandon the source of their own greatness. America must remember this truth before it’s too late.
