You’re right that the state does hold a similar form. Thus to have a market and thus freedom in the classic sense one needs first to have the institutions that make a space for that market and choices. You can see then that rights of various sorts are a kind of creation by the state that enables freedoms. As I think we saw in Iraq when those institutions aren’t in place you really don’t have freedom.

That said I’ll be taking up the philosophy of modernism next. I originally had written that part, then decided I didn’t like it and realized I wanted to write this part first even though it’s really just an extension of what I wrote last week.

As I’m sure you know, I am fully on board with pulling modern liberal freedom apart from “Hebraic” freedom….. With that said, the version of freedom that you speak of does sound a lot like a modern state whose primary responsibility is to enforce contracts and property relations while also remaining (ideally) neutral with regards to the terms of those contracts.

The imagery of God holding back the chaos in order to give us space to choose doesn’t sound all that different from the freedom granted to producers and consumers within the modern state.

Again, I absolutely do not wan to read such modern ideals into the ancient text, but I’m not seeing the big difference that you seem to see. Care to elaborate a bit?