By: Ken Berry, MD, Opinion Contributor
Most Americans can quote the opening of the Constitution, “We the People,” but few know where that idea truly began. Long before Madison put quill to parchment in Philadelphia, a moral and political seed had already been planted in the ancient pages of Scripture. It sprouted in the laws of Alfred the Great, blossomed in the Puritan colonies, and ultimately bore fruit in the American experiment in self-government.
The seed is found in Deuteronomy 1:13–17:
“Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you… Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother.”
In this brief passage, Moses establishes principles that later thinkers recognized as the blueprint of republican government: leaders chosen from among the people, judges obligated to serve impartially, and rulers accountable to a higher moral law. Authority flows upward from the people, while justice and restraint flow downward from God.
When Christianity reached the Anglo-Saxons a millennium later, those tribal farmers and warriors heard something familiar in Moses’s words. King Alfred the Great (c. 890 A.D.), in his Preface to the Laws of England, began his code with this same text from Deuteronomy and Exodus, writing:
“Then the Lord said to Moses, Choose you from among all the people wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.”
(Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, Thorpe, 1840, pp. 46–47)
Alfred did not see divine law as a rival to English custom but as its foundation. From this fusion came the Witan, the council of wise men chosen from the people, and the early English concept that even kings stood beneath God’s law. Out of this soil grew the principle that government is not ownership of men but stewardship under moral order.
Centuries later, when English settlers crossed the Atlantic, they carried that same seed of self-rule. In the winter of 1639, the Puritan freemen of the Connecticut River towns framed what historians call the first written constitution in the Western world. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut declared:
“The foundation of authority is in the free consent of the people… As God hath allowed the free choice of their magistrates by the people (Deuteronomy 1:13, Exodus 18:21).”
That explicit citation shows the chain unbroken from Moses, to Alfred, to the Puritans. When Jefferson later wrote that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” he was echoing a truth that had already traveled through 3000 years.
It is often forgotten that the Founders were steeped in history, languages, and law. They were not shallow men repeating slogans but deeply educated students of civilization, government and human nature. Many of them read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Thomas Jefferson even learned the Anglo-Saxon language so that he could study the early English laws in their original form. They understood that liberty was not invented in 1776; it was inherited, refined, and consecrated by moral wisdom reaching back to Moses.
Today, when civics is seldom taught and cynicism is socially rewarded, we would do well to remember that the American Constitutional Republic did not spring from mere Enlightenment philosophy or political convenience. It rests on an ancient understanding: that freedom survives only when those in authority fear God more than they covet power, and when the governed take seriously their duty to choose “able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness” (Exodus 18:21).
Our Constitution is not a modern accident, or even an experiment. It is the mature fruit of an old and sacred tree. To defend it, we must tend the same roots: faith, virtue, and the conviction that law is higher than any lawgiver.
Dr. Ken Berry is a physician practicing in rural West Tennessee. https://www.drberry.com/
