Image from heartofgodisrael.org
[First posted May 8, 2012; revised and updated for this 4-years later post. Guess what is the answer to the question?—Admin1]
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The gentile prophet Balaam spoke only as YHWH’s ‘mouthpiece’ to declare to the gentile king Balak: [AST] Numbers 23:9
Behold! It is a nation that will dwell in solitude
and not to be reckoned among the nations.
In the biblical world as presented in the TNK, it would appear that there are only two categories of people: the chosen, and the others.
Prior to the people of Israel—
- individuals like Adam and Eve were spoken to and given specific commands.
- Cain the firstborn in the second generation was specifically warned to dominate his natural instincts or he would commit something called “sin”.
- Later, individuals like Noah and Abraham were “called” to carry out specific assignments .
- And of course from a particular bloodline of Abraham’s descendants [Isaac, then Jacob] was formed the people of Israel;
—-formed first but already chosen,
—destined to bear the responsibility of being light-bearer for the Creator of the universe.
For what purpose? To live and model His lifestyle intended for every person made in His image—that would be everyone else “in the dark”—the gentiles, the nations.
Gentiles exist only from the perspective of the people of Israel, an “us” and “them” or “we” and “they” ethnic separation. People never know they’re “gentile” until they start reading the Bible. And most people are clueless who’s an Israelite and who’s not. In fact, most readers think Adam and Eve and everyone else singled out and named in the Bible is Jewish. It’s not surprising, because there are articles from Jewish websites that have titles like “Abraham, the First Jew.”
Abraham was called a “Hebrew” but that word meant “one who has crossed over” which is what Abraham did, crossing over from Ur of the Chaldeas through Haran to the Land he was told to go to. Etymologists also think Hebrew came from Eber, a great grandson of Noah’s son Shem from whom the word Shemite/Semite/Semitic originated.
At least this is how the Bible unfolds it:
- The first Jew would be Jacob who was renamed “Israel”.
- And strictly speaking, his line should be called “Israelite “up till the time of the loss of the land of Israel to gentile powers, when the upper kingdom called Israel was no longer existing, and the lower kingdom of Judea was occupied by the Romans.
- From Yhudah, Judah, came the word “Jew”.
It is important to use the proper ethnic designation so that people are not confused, specially in bible study.
Non-Israelites, non-Jews, or gentiles like ourselves who read the Hebrew Scriptures struggle to understand how a people handpicked by the God of the universe could possibly ignore, disobey and rebel as much as their history records expose that they did, particularly when the blessings for obedience were jaw-dropping incentives enough, even without the “OR ELSE” — the curses for disobedience —which were horrendous enough to make even the hardest criminal want to reform!
It’s one thing to make that judgment in hindsight, knowing what we know now; and another thing to live through ancient history in cultures and under pressures we can hardly relate to. You would think that with a dismal historical record like Kings and Chronicles in the TNK, Israel’s scribes would expunge all the self-damning misconduct from their national record to save themselves the embarrassment of being chastised by unchosen people and judged for being “stiff-necked” generation after generation! But to their credit, they recognized their divine-ordained existence; and that truth is truth, history is history . . . and as YHWH’s chosen people, theirs is not just a nation’s history but “Scripture,” where words of blessing as well as curses from the very mouth of YHWH are embedded in their historical documents.
The nations, we gentiles, are immensely blessed if we read the Hebrew Scriptures. There we discover —
- the God of Israel,
- the God of all people
- and His revelation for all humanity, the Torah.
If we had been previously misled by man-made scriptures or man-sourced religious teaching, here is the standard against which all teachings claiming to be God-sourced are to be measured. The Christian New Testament claims no less; in fact the early church fathers deemed it necessary to append the Hebrew Scriptures as a “prequel” because without it, the sequel “New” cannot stand alone! And yet how far does the “New” depart and deviate from the original “Old”?
So, back to the question:
Did Israel fail to be YHWH’s
“light to the gentiles”?
Image from www.studyjesus.com
First of all, how would we even know about YHWH today if it were not for Israel?
- They left the best legacy to humankind, their Hebrew Scriptures. It is up for any gentile now to read and study and learn and apply!
- The chosen people have fulfilled their divine mandate in simply recording the Way, God’s Way to Live, YHWH’s Torah.
- Prophecies recorded about their future, Neviim, is now history.
- Inspired writings such as the Psalms and Proverbs collected in the third part of their Scriptures, the Ketuviim, are widely used by other major world religions.
- Today, modern Israel functions as a miraculous state backed by their “stiff-necked” will to survive in this world where there is such great pressure to annihilate them again, still a Jewish David among Gentile Goliaths.
And needless to say but we’ll say it so nobody misses the obvious: the same God Who backed them up from the time He chose them some six millennia ago has never abandoned them, even if it appeared so in their darkest hour. Granted, not all Jews are Torah observant, but the restored nation functions today applying Torah principles in government, use of land resources, in dealing with their enemy, the only nation that obeys the Sabbath commandment.
Are the 10 commandments enshrined in the laws of democratic nations? The ‘light-bearer’ reached almost all corners of the earth in their exile.
Chosen Israel has done its part; the time has come for the UNchosen, the Gentile nations, to now learn from Israel and their Hebrew Scriptures and to get to know the God Who still speaks through its pages but more importantly, it is time for all, chosen or unchosen, to recognize HIM as the One True GOD/Elohim, and choose HIM as LORD/Adonai:
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Image from fineartamerica.com
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