This is a rather long post. I hope it rewards those who read it.
Psalm 83
1 O God, do not keep silence;
do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
2 For behold, your enemies make an uproar;
those who hate you have raised their heads.
3 They lay crafty plans against your people;
they consult together against your treasured ones.
4 They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation;
let the name of Israel be remembered no more!”
5 For they conspire with one accord;
against you they make a covenant—
6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
Moab and the Hagrites,
7 Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
8 Assyria also has joined them;
they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. Selah
9 Do to them as you did to Midian,
as to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,
10 who were destroyed at En-dor,
who became dung for the ground.
11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
12 who said, “Let us take possession for ourselves
of the pastures of God.”
13 O my God, make them like whirling dust,
like chaff before the wind.
14 As fire consumes the forest,
as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,
15 so may you pursue them with your tempest
and terrify them with your hurricane!
16 Fill their faces with shame,
that they may seek your name, O LORD.
17 Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever;
let them perish in disgrace,
18 that they may know that you alone,
whose name is the LORD,
are the Most High over all the earth.
Psalm 83 envisages Israel surrounded by hostile armies. Certainly, for much of her history Israel has faced enemies bent on her destruction. Even when without a land and scattered among the nations Jewish people often been objects of hate.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
For the past 70 years, since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Israel has experienced war and violence. The surrounding Arab nations have often been hostile and sometimes violent. Israel’s right to exist as a nation has been questioned by her neighbours. The Palestinians have been the most enduring enemies of Israel particularly the influential and sometimes governing terrorist groups among them. The principal dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is over territory; both make claims to the land.. Israel, in principle, supports a two state solution,, as do some Palestinians. Others argue for a one state solution, a ‘decolonised’ State where Israel has no special privilege and all are equal. There are deep problems with both these solutions. In the meantime terrorists like Hamas, who govern the Gaza Strip, have no truck with compromise and want only the extermination of Israel. For terrorists like Hamas, decolonisation means the eradication of Jews. Solutions are not obvious.
At the moment Israel is once again embroiled in war. Few, Christian or non-Christian, approve the recent callous slaughter of civilians by Hamas, the governing Sunni Muslim Palestinian organisation in Gaza. Right-thinking people have been shocked and the killings have been condemned by many countries. They were murderous attacks with no apparent motives other than hate and to create terror (though no doubt other secondary factors fed in). Hamas, however, is not alone in its hatred of Israel. Behind Hamas and bank-rolling them appears to be the much more powerful Iran which also wants Israel destroyed.
What has shocked many in the West are the protest marches which have taken place in their countries. We may have expected these to be in opposition to the stomach churning slaughter of Israeli civilians by Hamas instead they have been in support of the Palestinians and in opposition to Israel. It is hard to resist the conclusion that the ugly face of antisemitism, which it was hoped WW2 had brought to an end, is once again raising its head.
The claim of many is that Israel treats the Palestinians badly. When we look at two million Palestinians living in the small Gaza Strip (140 square miles) in what by all accounts are poor conditions we feel compassion for their plight. Is Israel responsible for their circumstances? The question is hotly debated. In response to the Hamas atrocity Israel is heavily bombing areas in Gaza where they believe Hamas to be hiding. Inevitably, civilian Palestinians are being killed; they are ‘collateral damage’. The question is how many Palestinian deaths are ‘acceptable’ in the pursuit of Hamas? These are the kinds of issues which fuel opposition to Israel and are used to legitimise deeper antisemitic motives.
We should not, however, create a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. To paraphrase Golda Meir’s words: ‘if Hamas put down their weapons today there would be no more violence. If Israel were to put down their weapons today there would be no more Israel’.
This is a very basic sketch of the present dilemma. The conflict is complex and goes back almost 100 years. The waters are further muddied by conflicting narratives. I make no pretence to understand the issues far less have any political answers. Instead, I want to consider the deeper story of Israel, namely her place in salvation history, for in many ways it is this story rather than events over the last 70 or so years that explain the nation we call Israel.
Creation
In the account of creation in Genesis 1,2 we discover that God is sovereign; he simply speaks and what does not exist comes into being.. We discover too that he is good.; he creates a world and a garden where man could flourish in every way. Nothing that was for human good was withheld. However, against all reason, we rebelled against our Creator aspiring to be his equal. In this way sin entered the world and death by sin. We have been rebels at heart ever since.
The story of Gen 4-11 is largely one of human rebellion, divine judgement and remorseless death. Violence and corruption fill the earth. People groups ruthlessly carve out kingdoms. They want to posses land, establish a nation and be great on the earth. As a result God judges them. Yet, through these times God retains a people of faith who call upon him.
Abraham
In Ch 12, the narrative slows down and focuses on one man and his offspring. The man is Abraham. God called Abraham to follow him and promised to make him great, give him a land and give him offspring that would become a great nation. The things men fought to establish God promised to Abraham as a gift; everything lasting in this world is God’s gift. The promises are given to faith in Genesis 12 and expanded in later chapters
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation.
Who was the nation and what was the land? It is not long until the answer is given. The nation is Israel and the land is Canaan the land now inhabited by. Israel and Palestinians. In time Abraham’s seed become the nation of Israel and God brought them into Canaan the land he had promised as an inheritance. Apart from a brief period of exile Israel lived in the Promised land for over 1500 years. However, these years were often marred by battle, from within and without, and often blighted by famine and drought.. For many of the years they lived in the land, it was not theirs and was occupied by foreign rule to which they were subject.
Rebellion and the Sinai covenant
Why is Israel’s story so troubled? Was this the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham? No it wasn’t. Israel’s troubled history was because of her behaviour . When the Lord first committed himself to Israel in formal covenant he laid out the covenant conditions.
“If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples…. and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5).
However, if they rebelled then the covenant curses would come upon them, the worst being expulsion from the land In Leviticus God warns that idolatry and disobedience will bring fury and judgement
I will lay your cities waste and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing aromas. 32 And I myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled at it. 33 And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. (Lev 26:31-33)
Israel’s sorrows were because of her sins. When the covenant was restated before Israel entered the land, Moses had no doubt that the nation would rebel and the covenant curses would fall on them. By this time he knew them only too well (Deut 1, 31:27). Yet he also knew God and knew that despite their covenant-breaking disobedience God would ultimately be merciful. God’s last word for Israel would not be cursing but blessing (Deut 30; Ps 85). The promise to Abraham made this certain. The prophets of the covenant spoke of judgement for the nation but they also spoke of a future when God would send a King, a deliverer (Messiah) to rescue them as he had done in the land of Egypt. Messiah would usher in a golden age, an age of salvation. Then the promises to Abraham would be realised and Sinai covenant blessings experienced. Israel would be the head of the nations and not the tail (Deut 28:13). Messiah’s reign and blessings would never end (Isa 9:7; Lk 1:33).
Jesus Messiah
In the fullness of time the promised king arrived. He did not, however, fit Israel’s preconceived ideas of Messiah. He came from an insignificant background. He was believed to be illegitimate. He was a preacher and not a man of war. He did not rail against the hated Romans. Nor was the kingdom he proclaimed what they expected. Yes, he promised to remove the powers that oppressed them but these powers were not the hated occupying force of Rome, at least in the first instance. Instead the powers that enslaved were largely inside the nation. They were powers like sin, Satan, sickness and death. It was these he came to break and he demonstrated this in his miracles. Moreover, to belong to this kingdom being ethnically a Jew was not sufficient. Natural birth did not give access to this kingdom; another birth was necessary, a spiritual birth (Jn 3). Faith not family was the entrance requirement for Messiah’s kingdom; belief not blood made you a son of the kingdom (Jn 1). Only those who have their sins forgiven and follow him belong to God’s kingdom. Jesus was a king and his was a kingdom for which Israel was not ready. He and his message were unwelcome to religiously and ethnically proud Israel and so they crucified their king.
We must stop now and underline something critical. Jesus’ message of repentance and faith was really not new. These had always been God’s requirement. When I said the seed was Israel and the land was Canaan this was true but both these statements require qualifying.
Israel was never the whole nation. It was always a subset of the nation. Israel was that part of the nation that like Abraham and the patriarchs authentically trusted in Yahweh and followed him. It was people of faith who were the true sons of Abraham. As Paul says, a real Jew is not outward (circumcision) but inwards (circumcision of the heart… Roms 2:29). In Paul’s words once more, ‘not all Israel are of Israel.’ (Roms 9:6).
In her history, faith was often a scarce commodity in Israel. She became as morally bankrupt as the nations which surrounded her – sometimes more so. She worshipped other gods. Soon the covenant curses began to fall. Thus time and again Israel was attacked by other nations. The attacks were God’s doing. He raised up nations to chasten Israel and bring her back to him. He wanted the nation to repent and trust him and prove themselves to really be Israel. Yet his disciplining was generally to no avail. Of course, these nations who attacked Israel attacked for their own reasons some of which are revealed in Psalm 83. They hated Israel. They wanted her wiped out. They wanted to steal her developed pastureland. More about this presently. Israel’s story is one of rebellion.
In the NT, Israel’s rebellion against her God came to a head in her murder of her Messiah. It was her crowning sin. She murdered God’s son – her king. This callous act of regicide and deicide is a decisive point in Israel’s story. The future could only be bleak. The full wight of the covenant curses must now be felt. Jesus, with tears, announces this future before he is crucified. He draws near to Jerusalem as her king riding peaceably on a donkey but knowing only too well that the crowd who hail him as king will soon change their tune. And so in Luke 19, we read,
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
Soon the temple the pride of Israel, would be left without one stone standing on another, the city would be razed , the people butchered and many scattered among the nations. Jesus says in Luke Ch 21,
But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, 22 for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written. 23 Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. 24 They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Within a generation the prophesy was fulfilled. In AD 70, the armies of Rome wreaked terrible revenge on Jerusalem for opposing them. In AD 135 they returned to finish the job. Rome was the instrument of God’s judgement on the nation. Many were scattered into the nations. Some remained but the Ottoman Empire centuries later resulted in none but a few Jews remaining in the land. As Jesus had prophesied the blood of all the slain prophets would fall upon that generation (Lk 11:50). Yet strangely the generation who murdered Messiah were not idolaters like earlier generations. Some seemed to be zealous for the law. Their sins were pride, self trust, jealousy, hypocrisy and a concern for their own skin. For these kinds of reasons they crucified their Christ and for almost two thousand years they were exiled from the land.
The true Israel
Was this the end of Israel? If so, who were Messiah’s people, the true Israel? Had Messiah no nation to populate his kingdom? Were his labours for nothing (Isa 49)? Messiah had a people. During his ministry Jesus began to build up a nucleus of followers who would be the basis of his messianic community of faith. He called them his ‘little flock’. And to them Messiah’s kingdom belonged Luke 12:32
Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
The kingdom would be taken from Israel at that time and given to a nation who would produce its fruit; the nation was also termed by him ‘my Church’ (Matt 16). He would build a people that the gates of hell could not withstand (Matt 16). This small nucleus of Jewish believers he sent out into the world to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28). At Pentecost, 3,000 Jews were added to the church. Soon gentile believers were added creating ‘one flock and one shepherd’ (Jn 10) and one commonwealth (Eph 2). In a word, the Christian Church is the messianic community, the holy nation, the Israel of God, the seed of Abraham who inherit the promises (Gals 3,4). Christ’s Church, composed of Jew and Gentile, equally God’s sons, is the true seed of Abraham; or perhaps better, Christ is the true seed and all in him are therefore Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise (Gals 3,4).
There is a great irony here. Presently, Israel is desperate to retain her. national identity even risking the charge of apartheid to do so. The national-state-law says that all citizens have human rights but national rights belong only to the Jewish people. We can understand Israel’s paranoia to retain power and identity given her history. Yet this history is the fruit of her unbelief. Meanwhile, in Christ, Arabs and Jews, find their identity together in Christ; every wall is broken down, ethnic, religious and political. The contrast the gospel brings is stark.
Israel’s future
If the church is the nation that has been given the kingdom does this mean Israel is permanently displaced? Has Israel stumbled completely and been irrevocably cast off by God? No it doesn’t and no it hasn’t. Yes, presently nations throughout the world are believing the gospel. They will sit down with the patriarchs in the kingdom banquet while the sons of the kingdom (Israel to whom it first came) will be cast out. (Matt 8:12). Presently, many, in fact most, in Israel are unbelievers. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone (Roms 9:33). God has judicially blinded them because of their unbelief. However, the gifts and callings of God are never revoked (Roms 11). Israel has not stumbled irrecoverably. To be sure, presently most of the nation through the last 2000 years are branches severed from the olive tree of faith. They have paid a terrible cost for their unbelief and it seems they must yet suffer,
Over the last seventy years Israel once again has occupied the land. They have been, as we noted, difficult years of war, with the ever present threat of violent attack which frequently erupted. . The nations surrounding are not Israel’s friends even if with a number she has alliances. It seems, however, if I rightly understand Scripture, that a day is coming when Israel will yet again be surrounded by hostile armies and find itself on the brink of extinction. However, on this occasion she will be delivered. She will be delivered by her Messiah (Zech 14). Jesus will return in great glory and power. Israel will look in repentance and mourning on the one they pierced. It will be a day of national repentance and salvation… a day when all Israel is saved (Roms 11).
Is this day imminent? We are encouraged to expect the Lord to return soon, however, before he returns it seems the Man of Sin, the anti-Christ, must come who will persecute the church and probably Israel (2 Thess 2). Anti-Christ does not yet rule and so Israel’s present distress is not her final battle. To be sure Israel’s return to the land and her amazing God-given victories in battle suggest that the stage is being set. But here we must stop and not second guess God. The future is his to arrange (Ps 33:10-12).
It is easy when thinking of Israel to romanticize her. Her defiance of the enemies that surround her, her David and Goliath victories, her prominent role in biblical history, and God;s love for her can easily blind us to her faults.. This would be a mistake. Israel presently is in full rebellion against her God and her Christ. She is a sinful nation like other nations. She sees her deliverance in herself. She trusts in her strength, her chariots, and her political alliances; it is as much a mistake today as it was in the past. The one person she should trust – the Lord – she doesn’t. (Ps 33:16,19). Many in Israel don’t believe that God even exists perhaps because like ancient Israel she is morally lax, and often approves what God condemns; moral laxity creates atheists. As a result Israel is still subject to divine judgement. If she is attacked then God has permitted it. He is still disciplining the nation.
As Christians, we should not support Israel unreservedly. Neither Jesus nor the Jewish apostles saw Israel through rose-coloured spectacles. Jesus pronounced woes on the leaders of his day. Paul weeps for his people but recognised that Jerusalem and her children were in slavery and under judgement. John speaks of her synagogue as ‘a synagogue of Satan’.
Israel today is a covenant-breaking nation disobedient to God. She has therefore no divine right to the land. Rebellion saw Adam and Eve banished from Eden. Rebellion exiled Israel from the land. It can lead to excommunication from the church. And rebellion will find many outside the New Jerusalem experiencing the judgement of God. Israel’s present occupancy of the land is by the goodness of God. It is not because of her righteousness. He said to Israel in the past,
If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
20 but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be eaten by the sword;
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
God did not excuse Israel because they were his people, in fact, he judged them all the more rigorously. He says to the nation on one occasion ‘You only have I known of all the nations of the earth therefore will I punish you for your iniquities’ (Amos 3:2). To whom much is given much is required.
We should treat Israel and her enemies evenhandedly. We should approve their good and abhor their evil. We should pity all those who suffer. Christians love both Israel and the Palestinians. We want both to seek the Lord. We want both to be reconciled to the Lord and through this be reconciled to each other. We know God has salvation plans not only for Israel but also for Arabs. If we are asked whose side we are on then we are on the side of righteousness and mercy. We should wish that both be treated with what Piper calls ‘a wise mingling of justice and mercy”. May God enable the nations to bring this kind of evaluation as they attempt to advise and adjudicate.
Antisemitism and is roots
Yet we probe at the question, is the widespread hatred of Israel by the nations explained by objectionable characteristics in the nation? Is it simply her Zionism that draws such animosity? Is her suffering over the centuries all the judgement of God? Is the prophecy of Jesus and their crucifying of him the reason she is a pariah? To be sure God raises nations as instruments of his justice but the motivations of those who oppose her are their own. Israel is hated now as a nation state but Jews were hated even when they had no homeland. Most acknowledge that there is a profound hatred for Israel that has no rational basis. Reasons may be presented but they are largely excuses for a profound and apparently irrational antisemitism.
Psalm 83 points to this primal elemental hatred. Israel’s enemies in the psalm wish to exterminate her as a nation so that her name is remembered no more (v4). This is visceral hatred. Israel’s enemies are many in the psalm. Some are her own relatives. They are united in their desire to destroy Israel. Yet, while these nations that are named often harried Israel, there is no record of a time when they joined in a covenanted confederacy to destroy Israel.
Psalm 83 appears to be a prophecy awaiting fulfilment. I wonder how many of the nations that presently surround and hate Israel have their ancestry in these ancient people groups. I note that Assyria (v8),modern Iran, is one of them. Envy and greed is one cause of their hatred; they are like other enemies of Israel in the past who wanted Israel’s land for themselves (vv 9-12). But I suspect we need to look deeper for the cause of this hatred. Verse two supplies the answer. The truth is they are not merely Israel’s enemies, they are God’s enemies. They not only hate Israel, they hate Israel’s God. How conscious this hatred of God is I’m not sure, but surely behind the irrational antisemitism that has followed Israel is the orchestration of the enemy against all that belongs to God. Satan is the roaring lion that devours. He is the serpent that seeks to destroy the holy seed. He stirs up hatred for all that God has chosen. He has devoured many in the church; they have been persecuted simply because of their faith in Christ (Cf. Jn 18:23). He seeks to devour Israel who will yet turn to God in faith. He stirs the nations to hate. If Israel hated Jesus without a cause the nations will hate Israel without a cause.
Many of the nations opposed to Israel are Muslim. Presently, a previous leader of Hamas is calling for jihad, a holy war against Israel and all who support her, But it is futile. All who oppose God’s purposes and plans will finally fail. The nations may rage against God and Christ but they laugh at puny rebellion. God has set his Davidic King at his right hand until all his enemies become the footstool of his feet (Ps 2). Israel will survive.
Psalm 83, however, is written from the perspective of faith. The psalmist describes Israel to God as ‘your people…your treasured ones’. He calls upon God to judge the nations that threaten them. Imprecations are common in the psalms. We have an unease which is at least in part misplaced. Imprecations are a call for God to judge; vengeance is not taken into one’s own hands.
Messiah’s return and Israel’s salvation
Is this psalm a description of Israel’s final battle (Zech 14)? It seems to be. What will be the hearts of those believers who have believing faith in Israel at that point? Well, as we have just noticed they will call upon the judge to act as a warrior on their behalf. He prays that these enemies of Israel and Israel’s God will be brought low and brought to shame. Yet he prays that in their humbling they may seek the Lord; he prays for their salvation. For all who refuse to repent he prays that they may be ashamed and dismayed forever. His prayer is that all may know that the Lord alone is the Most High over all the earth. In NT language, his prayer is for a day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2), It is a prayer that will be answered with Jesus return to the Mount of Olives with the armies of heaven. The day of salvation for the church composed of the redeemed nation of Israel and countless gentiles whose faith is in Messiah (Zech 14).
At his first coming the Mount of Olives was significant in Jesus’ life (Lk 22:39); it was especially significant at the end of his life and in resurrection. . Four significant events happen on the Mount of Olives at this point. Firstly, it is there he is hailed as king as he approaches Jerusalem (Lk 19: 28-40). Secondly, it is from the Mount of Olives he delivers his Olivet discourse about the course of the age and his second coming (Matt 24,25). Thirdly, after he eats the passover meal with his disciples and inaugurates the new covenant meal commemorating his death as the sacrificial lamb he goes out with his disciples to a garden on the Mount of Olives where he is deeply troubled in spirit and subsequently betrayed (Lk 22: 39-46; Cf 2 Sam 15:30). Fourthly, after his resurrection and on the occasion of his return to heaven Jesus takes his disciples to the Mount of Olives (Lk 24:50-52; Acts 1:6-12). He ascends to heaven from the Mount of Olives and to that mountain he will return to deliver the nation who had rejected him. Israel’s salvation is in the Lord and not in herself. May she increasingly realise this.
The land
If we need as Christians to be more nuanced about Israel we also need to be more nuanced about the land. In God’s providence he has seen fit to bring Israel back into Canaan and the David versus Goliath victories Israel has known reveal God’s protection thus far. It seems likely that history will come to an end with a scenario not so dissimilar to those she has already experienced only more so. Israel will be in the land desperately defending it against besieging nations (Zech 14, Matt 24). On this occasion her deliverance will be permanent. But there is an irony we may miss. Israel’s every effort presently is to keep the land. However, Israel’s future doesn’t lie in the present strip of land on which she presently lives. Canaan was only ever a ‘type’ an ‘impression’ of the land that redeemed Israel and the nations will inherit.
Abraham, as far back as Genesis, knew that Canaan wasn’t the country that God intended as his inheritance. He lived in it as a pilgrim not a resident. To be sure he walked through it as a mark of ownership. Yet he bought only one small part of the land and that was as a burial ground. It was an act of faith. Abraham looked for a land that lay on the other side of death in resurrection. Only in such a world could the promise of a land belonging to him and his seed forever be realised (Hebs 11). He looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. The prophets also realised that something much greater than earthly Canaan was promised. By revelation, Isaiah envisaged a new heavens and new earth. He also envisaged a new Jerusalem the home of the redeemed of all nations (Isa 54, 66:20). God would create all three (Isa 65). Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world (Jn 18:36). If it were his servants would fight. Israel today is fighting for a land that is not their final destiny.. God’s purpose for the redeemed of Israel and the nations lies beyond this world in a world yet to come – a world where righteousness is at home (2 Peter 3).
Conclusion
I understand that the land is important to Israel. It confers identity and a sense of security for Jews throughout the world. They need this because their identity and security is not in their God. Jews living among the nations think of Israel as the country to which they can flee if persecution should arise. Yet, like Egypt of old, it is a broken reed (Isa 36:6). True security is found only in God. It is to God the psalmist entrusts the nation (v1).
Hamas wants to clear the land of Israel from the river to the sea. This seems to mean from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Hamas does not realise that one day Immanuel’s land, Israel’s land , will stretch from sea to sea and from the river (Euphrates) to the ends of the earth. (Ps 72:8; Zech 9:10). The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.
May the nations discover the God of Israel as their security and salvation and may Israel find him too (Ps 85).
Cave Adullam 