On Friday 27th September Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he referred to the Bible: ‘We face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse. And that is the choice we face today: the curse of Iran’s unremitting aggression or the blessing of a historic reconciliation between Arab and Jew.’
He was referring to Deuteronomy 30:15-16: ‘See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.’
Mr Netanyahu did not mention God, or the conditions that were attached to the blessings: “If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God…”
The promise of blessings is extended to all nations, not just to the Jews. God gave promises to a man called Abraham, who became the ancestor of the Jews and many or the Arabs: ‘In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice’ (Genesis 22:18). According to the Bible the Jews are God’s chosen people (for example Isaiah 43:10), but the Bible later makes clear that the ‘offspring of Abraham’ who was the subject of God’s blessing was actually Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:16). Abraham’s blessings are available to all who have the faith of Abraham, whether or not they are his physical descendants (v. 9).
So how does this relate to what is happening in the world right now?
Blessings from God are conditional, as we see from Deuteronomy. Yet although the present nation of Israel acts with self-confidence and generally does not acknowledge God, He has a purpose with them. The blessings they are seeking will only happen when they have learned to trust in God. Bible prophecy says that one day Israel will be in a dire situation: ‘For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped…’ (Zechariah 14:2). It tells how God will fight against those nations: ‘On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west…’ (v. 4). An earthquake in that area will have far-reaching effects.
‘Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts’ (v. 16).
God’s blessings are offered to everyone. We are asked to obey His commandments, and the Lord Jesus Christ explained that the most important commandments are to love God first and to love our neighbour as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). In the quest for peace in the Middle East, these don’t seem to be uppermost in anyone’s priorities.
We can each of us have a part in the promises given to Abraham, but we need to pay attention to what God says. The curses are playing out before our eyes; we await the blessings God has promised to those who love Him.
Rachel Leah
Photo credit: DYKT Mohigan, CC BY 2.0