Shabbat shalom everyone,
This is the fourth Sabbath since the waving of the Omer, so as with our tradition, we are looking at another part of the Covenant. This week, we are examining the covenant sworn by God with Abraham, and with the Patriarchs Isaac and Jacob. This is the first of the four parts of the Covenant that apply specifically to the Assembly of Israel, and its obligations only apply to full converts to the Israelite faith and its daughter religions – Samaritanism, Judaism, and Talmidaism.
Importantly however, its protections and blessings apply also to Gentile Godfearers – that is, female Godfearers who have not converted, and male Godfearers who are not circumcised, as long as they worship YHVH exclusively, and do their best to live by the Sinai Torah and Yahwist values (Torah is what is different between Noachides and Godfearers).
Introduction to the Covenant with Abraham
This covenant is specifically to do with Israel being given the Land forever by God, and with Israel being maintained as a people forever by God. Before Abraham, as we saw last week, there were already other Gentile peoples and individuals who worshipped YHVH. However, none of these people were given any automatic and eternal right to any territory as Yahwists, nor were they moulded into a single, unified nation. For the very first time, a particular family of Yahwists are given an eternal home, and promised that they will become a people.
In ancient times, all over the world, your native land was where your ancestors were buried; this seems to have been a universal human belief all across the earth. This is why, in Abraham’s story, it was so important that it be beyond doubt that Abraham legally owned the cave of Makhpeilah, where he and his immediate descendants will be buried. It was also the reason why it was so important that the bodies of Jacob and Joseph should be carried back to Canaan after they died, to be reburied in the soil of Canaan.
The terms of the Covenant of Forever
As with all covenants, there are the promises and responsibilities of God, and then there are the promises and responsibilities of human beings. The main points to look at, are that the covenant establishes the rite of circumcision forever, that YHVH will be Israel’s God forever, that through Jacob and his descendants, they will be given the land of Canaan forever, and that they will be maintained by God as a people forever.
What God promises are the following:
- to maintain the Covenant forever
- to be the God of Abraham and his descendants forever
- to give Canaan as an eternal possession, specifically to the descendants of Jacob
- Be Sovereign Protector (as a king is a shield and protector to his people) forever
- Cause Abraham’s descendants to be numerous
- Watch over Abraham’s descendants wherever they may go
- Set Abraham’s descendants through Jacob free from slavery, and bring them back to Canaan
- Not leave them until God has done what God has promised
- Cause the nations of the earth to be blest through Abraham’s descendants
- Bless those who bless Abraham’s descendants, and curse those who curse them
What Abraham and his descendants must do:
- Worship YHVH alone, forever
- Keep God’s rituals, principles, laws and teachings forever
- Walk in God’s ways forever (i.e. hold to God’s values and principles forever)
- As a sign of the covenant, every male descendent must be circumcised, throughout every generation; also every male who is part of his household
The Rite of Circumcision
Because of what Paul wrote, Christians have come to think that Jews believe that circumcision is about salvation of the soul, and getting into heaven. Therefore, it is vitally important for people to realise what circumcision is really for. It is absolutely nothing to do with salvation – the statement in the Book of Acts (Acts 15:1), supposedly said by the Jewish followers of Yeshua, that “unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved”, is anti-Jewish propaganda, and a complete, utter falsehood. No Jew, then or now, would ever have held such a belief – it’s against the very fundamentals of Jewish belief (because salvation is open to all human beings, regardless of your religion). Such a statement has never been true – the Jewish faith has never connected circumcision with salvation of the soul.
The statement is also based on the premise of the Christian understanding of salvation (being saved from the blemish of sin, so that a Christian can go to heaven), instead of the Jewish one (YHVH rescuing human beings from humanly impossible situations, both worldly and spiritual). In other words, in order for the statement in Acts 15:1 to be true, it relies on the assumption that the Jews who said it held Paullist Christian beliefs – which they could not have done.
There are some Christians who are nevertheless insistent in this intractable belief – that the Jewish followers of Yeshua must have been religious fundamentalists – they would rather think that the Jewish followers of Yeshua were awful people, than accept the fact that Paul of Tarsus was a liar, and that the Book of Acts is wrong.
Circumcision binds you and your descendants to Érets Israel. All subsequent covenants – especially the covenant on the plains of Moab – clarify that even those who are not circumcised, yet worship YHVH alone and follow the Sinai Torah (i.e. Godfearers), are part of God’s Covenant with Israel too.
For female converts, the Covenant of the Land comes into play once the conversion process is declared as complete. For male converts however, this is the most difficult part to have to go through. Since we currently do not have any mohalim (men who perform the operation), the only men who will currently be able to become full converts, will be those who are already circumcised (unless they are able to arrange the operation themselves).
Men who wish to become Talmidis, but are currently not circumcised, will still be able to play a full part in the life of the community. The only restriction is that uncircumcised men cannot become leaders in the community (because of Dt 17:15). Otherwise, we have provisions that such Godfearers can be fully acknowledged as Talmidis, and be full members of our community. If you have gone through the year-long period of study, and you have committed yourself to YHVH, and to the Talmidi Israelite faith, then you are unquestionably part of God’s Covenant with the Assembly of Israel – the Moab covenant enables this, where God swore the Covenant with Israelites and with uncircumcised Godfearers.
YHVH will be Israel’s God forever
The biggest thing to realise about this covenant, is that, even if the people of Israel renege on the deal between God and Israel, it will never mean that YHVH will renege on the deal – YHVH’s side of the deal stands forever. This is what ‘covenant loyalty’ or ‘faithfulness’ relies on, on the part of God. YHVH will always be Israel’s God, and Israel will therefore always exist as a people. Even in passages where it appears that God is ready to wipe out the people of Israel, and then God changes God’s mind, that is actually not what is happening. In such instances, it is a chance for Israel to be reminded that the eternal Covenant exists, what God has promised, what God has the power to do, and that God will actually not wipe out Israel – ever, because of what God has promised. These instances are examples of the ancient method of teaching important principles through the didactic technique of exaggeration.
The key part of this covenant, is that it is all forever. YHVH will be our God forever, we will have the land of Canaan forever, and we will be a people and a nation forever, no matter where we are on earth. Even if we are scattered across the face of the earth, and the country of Israel no longer legally exists as a recognised entity, it will be God who will gather us together, bring us back to the Land, and make us into a country again. Anyone who battles to stop that happening, is, in effect, fighting God. And in such a fight, God will always win.
The Ishmaelites and Keturites: God’s Covenant with the Arabs
The southern Arabs of Arabia, and the northern Arabs of the Levant and Mesopotamia, are given their lands through the Abrahamic covenant. God made a promise to Abraham (Gen 15:18), that the lands from the Gully of Egypt as far as the River Euphrates, would be given to Abraham’s descendants, but the land of Canaan would specifically be given to his descendants through Jacob.
This covenantal promise to the Arabs was fulfilled through his son Ishmael (see Gen 25:18). The promise for the rest of the lands to be given to the Arabs was fulfilled through the descendants of Abraham’s second wife, Keturah (see Gen 25:1-6).
The southern Arabs of Arabia are Ishmaelites, and the northern Arabs of the Levant and Mesopotamia are Keturites (the Bedouin Arabs of Israel in the Negev, however, are the descendants of Esau). To ensure that it was the descendants of Jacob who would receive Canaan, Abraham bequeathed everything he owned to Isaac alone (Gen 25:5), and sent the 12 sons of Keturah, along with their families, to the lands of the east (Gen 25:6).
The Gully of Egypt (Gen 25:18) is not the Nile. The Gully (or Brook or Wadi) of Egypt is a deep river valley that lies a short distance south of the modern Gaza Strip, and runs into the Negev. It is so-called, because during certain periods in ancient history, it formed the legal border between Canaan and Egypt.
The bottom line is that, just as the Abrahamic covenant gives Canaan to the descendants of Jacob forever, so too is the rest of the Middle East given over to the Ishmaelite Arabs and the Keturite Arabs, by an eternal covenant of YHVH.
Israel will be maintained as a people forever
God made the promise, 3800 years ago, that the people of Israel would remain a people forever. Even if you hold that this belief is completely fictional, and was made up only when the Torah was finally written down in its present form 2,600 years ago, it is still an astonishing promise from so long ago, that God has actually fulfilled.
The Babylonians couldn’t wipe us out, the Romans couldn’t wipe us out, the Catholic Inquisitions couldn’t, the Russian Tsars couldn’t, and the Nazis couldn’t. The single reason why, is because they were all fighting against God. No leader, nation, people, religion or political movement can ever fight against God; none of these can ever hope to win in a fight against God. Nor will Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, or any other nation or people who wants to see Israel destroyed, ever be able to. If God has promised something, God will keep that promise, and nothing any human being can do, can possibly make God unable to keep such a promise.
The Behaviour of Israel outside of the Land
After the second Jewish revolt ended (136CE), the Roman conquest of Judea effectively scattered the Jewish people all over the world. I would like you to examine how Jews behaved in the lands where we were scattered to. In the Israelite faith, there is the strong belief that no Jew should work against the country to which God has sent us. This is because of what it says in Jeremiah 29:7: “Seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to YHVH on its behalf; for if it prospers, then you prosper.”
In spite of all the oppression, cruelty, restrictions, repressive laws, denial of civil rights, imposition of humiliating customs, and the widespread dehumanisation of Jews throughout the ages, we never went to anyone else’s country and started riots, smashed and burned down buildings, threw rocks or bombs at anyone, engaged in civil unrest, or tried to destroy the countries or peoples among whom we lived; because to do so would have been against God’s will.
Political and religious Empires have many countries where their people can live in peace; however, there is only one small place where Jews can truly call home – the Land.
Experience our history of persecution for yourself, and then decide where you would go
If you are not a Jew, nor someone who is interested in Judaism, I would humbly ask you to imagine this scenario: You belong to a people – you, the person who is reading this article. Presumably, there is a geographic origin to your people, your ethnic group. Imagine now, that your people are expelled en masse from your home-country by an outside invader, who repopulates your country with their own citizens, and scatters you all over the world – your people. Wherever you go, the people you live amongst hate you – your people, spouting all kinds of wicked and ridiculous falsehoods against you to justify their hatred. You are persecuted, oppressed, treated in the most inhumane way, and denied citizenship of those countries – your people. Governments in these countries actually try to wipe you from the face of the earth – your people. There is nowhere where you are safe – no place where your descendants will ever be safe.
Your people go from country to country, land to land, continent to continent, and are given no rest or freedom from abuse – your people. After generations of this, what do you think your people would be longing for? After generations and centuries of being denied a place to call home, what would your people think – what would your people want? If you can imagine this alternative history for your own people – if you can imagine that all these awful, wicked and inhumane things have happened to your people – then, can you imagine what your people would want and yearn for?
It would be logical to assume that your people would want to find some place where they could legitimately call home – a place where your people could legitimately defend themselves, against anyone who would wish to kill you and wipe you out. And where would that place be? What would your logical answer be?
To try and return to the one place your people originally came from.
In our case – in the case of the Jewish people – God even predicted, millennia ago, that we would one day return to the land of our origin.
The Jews in Palestine
Up until the 4th century CE, Jews were still a majority in the Land, while most Gentiles had by then converted to Christianity, and formed a significant minority. Then, from the 5th to the 11th century, Gentile, Greek-speaking Christians were in a majority, and Jews were in a minority. Before the Muslim conquest of the province, Arabs – even pagan Arabs – were a tiny, insignificant minority (see the Demographic history of region of Palestine). There was never any period during which Jews were completely absent from the Holy Land – there have always been native-born Jews in what had become the Roman – and then the Byzantine and Ottoman – province of Palestine.
When Jews began returning to Palestine from elsewhere in the 19th century, they all had the hope that Jews and Arabs could live peacefully together. Jews recalled that Isaac and Ishmael were brothers. To avoid conflict, those early Jewish pioneers initially decided to settle only in areas of Palestine where no one already lived – for example, what is now the city of Tel Aviv was originally an uninhabited swamp. There were areas of rocky wilderness around Palestine where Jews decided to settle, and reinvigorate the soil. The Jews of the late 19th and early 20th centuries wanted to live side by side with Arabs in peace.
That unfortunately changed with the rise of Arab nationalism in the 1920s and 30s, and with the massacres of Jews around Palestine, when Arabs turned on their Jewish neighbours and murdered them. As a result of this experience, Jewish settlers and indigenous Jews in Palestine decided to ask the world to allow them to have a separate state.
My personal views
I will say right now, that I do not believe that anyone should be expelled from their homes. No one should be expelled from the place that they call home. No religious or ethnic community should ever have to suffer mistreatment, humiliation or oppression. I value the fact that modern Israel is a place where no one has any restrictions placed on the practice of their religious faith. I value the fact that modern Israel is made up of Jews – both religious and atheist – as well as Arabs; Christians as well as Muslims; Druze as well as Baháʼís; Africans, Caucasians, South and East Asians, and others.
In the Israelite faith, there was the belief that if you supported wrongdoing, or made excuses for the wicked and cruel actions of others, then you suffer the same punishment from God as if you had committed the sin yourself. This comes from Prov 17:15 – “He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous, both of them are an abomination to YHVH”.
If the government in Israel is in the wrong about anything, then as a Talmidi Israelite, I would never try to defend it – because I do not want to become an abomination in the sight of God. If right-wing Jewish settlers commit acts of violence against Arabs, I would never try to make excuses about the right of Jews to live in the Land – because violence is wrong, no matter who does it, and no matter against whom it is committed.
In disputes between Jews and Arabs, I do not automatically default to defending the Jewish side. My ‘side’ is not always right, and ‘the other side’ is not always wrong – and of course, vice versa. My cause is the same as God’s – Justice (“Justice, and justice alone, shall you pursue” – Dt 16:20). My call, in whatever dispute there is, is: ‘May YHVH deal righteously in the matter, and defend the cause of the victim.’ It does not matter to me which religion the wrongdoer belongs to, or what religion the victim is – because YHVH our God is always for the victim, and as for me, I will always be for YHVH.
That victim isn’t always the Arab, but it isn’t always the Jew either. No single people is free of all fault, no people or religious faith is perfect – only YHVH alone is perfect; only YHVH’s ways are perfect, and without fault.
YHVH our God gave the Land to the descendants of Jacob – Yisrael. However, that does not give any justification to persecute and ill-treat those in Israel who are not Jews: “you shall not ill-treat resident foreigners or oppress them, for you were once foreigners resident in the land of Egypt.” (Ex 22:20 / Xtian bibles Ex 22:21).
There are 2 million Arabs resident in Israel, who are willing to live peacefully alongside Jews – these we can live with, and work together with them for peace. They themselves are proud citizens of Israel; they call Israel their home, where they have full civil rights with Jews. Contrary to the world’s propaganda, there is no apartheid in Israel. There are also those who wish to see the complete destruction of Israel, and annihilate every Jew who lives in the Holy Land. The rights of the first should be defended by all decent human beings, but why do people then make excuses for the violence of the latter?
Even the Quran gives the Holy Land to Israel: “And thereafter, We said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell in the land’. When the promise of the Everlasting Life comes, We shall bring you all together.” (17:104). “And [remember] when Moses said to his people: ‘O my people, … enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then you will be overthrown, to your own ruin.” (5:20-21)
Unlike other conquering religions and vast empires, we sent no armies to invade other peoples’ countries, and we sent no imperial colonisers to take over other peoples’ lands (because the only land on earth that God permitted us to have was the tiny land of Canaan).
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I am proud of how, no matter where we Jews were on earth, no matter the severity of the provocation, no matter the cruelty, repression, inhumanity or wickedness perpetrated against us, we did not return that same violence against the native peoples of those lands. We did not seek the destruction of the countries or peoples we lived amongst. We did not seek to impose our will or our religious laws on other peoples. We did not riot, or rampage, or throw rocks, or bomb anyone, destroy their farmlands, or burn down their shops, smash up and ransack their buildings, or terrorise the native people of those lands of our exile.
I want the modern nation of Israel to carry on those same values in the Land. I would also like to encourage those same values amongst all our neighbours. Violence doesn’t help anyone – there is no excuse for it, no matter who does it. It is utterly indefensible. There are peaceful ways of achieving civil rights, and not all Jews are anti-Arab, or anti-Muslim. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Israelis do want peace with their Arab neighbours. There are many Jews in today’s Israel who do stand up for the rights of the Arab citizens of Israel. There are people in the Israeli army (the IDF) from all religions and ethnic backgrounds, and they defend the lives of all Israeli citizens, no matter their religion or ethnicity.
Conclusion
YHVH gave Israel the Land, and there is nothing that anyone can possibly do that can ever change that – because if anyone tries, they will be fighting against God. However, that does not mean we should oppress non-Jews in the Land. If we are just and fair in how we behave towards others, then we will have a righteous cause, no matter what anyone else says or does against us. Those who bless Israel, will receive blessings from God; but those who curse Israel, will receive only the same curse returned to them (Gen 12:3). Isn’t blessing and peace better than a curse? Remember too, that to defend violence and evil, and to make excuses for them, is an abomination to God, as also is cursing the righteous and the innocent (Prov 17:15)
Next week, we will be looking at the Sinai Covenant – the one which gives the Torah to the Assembly of Israel.
Shabbat peace and blessings
your brother in peace
Shmuliq