Like it or not, Israel is blessed!
“And God said unto Balaam, Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed” (Num. 22.12). Thought Israel was far from perfect and had failed repeatedly, God did not allow Balaam to curse Israel.
As then, so today Israel has many enemies who believe they are right in opposing Israel, hating it, and cursing it. It’s become fashionable again to be antisemitic. We should not be surprised, because the whole world is still under the evil one (1 Jn. 5.19), who is know for his hatred and persecution of the chosen nation (Rev. 12:13-17).
First: "Thou shalt not go with them." Psalm 1.1 says, "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of scoffers." Hating and cursing the people of Israel is the counsel of the wicked, the way of sinners, and the seat of scoffers. A Spanish proverb says, “tell me who you walk with, and I will tell you who you are.” Proverbs 3.31 says, “Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.” Anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior offend God and oppose His holy will regarding Israel, His chosen nation. God did not err when He chose Israel, nor does He owe any of us an explanation for His choices. Don’t listen to the powerful and popular voices of the world, because they’re all wrong. They do not have divine approval.
Second: "thou shalt not curse the people." God forbids cursing Israel. Balaam soon learned his lesson. When the king of Moab asked him to curse Israel, he replied, “How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied?” (Num. 23.8). To do so would be madness. God promised Abraham the patriarch: "... I will curse those who curse you" (Gen. 12.3). The annals of history are littered with the corpses and disasters of Israel's enemies, including Egypt, Philistia, Edom, Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and in modern times, Spain, Germany, Russia, Syria, Venezuela and Iran. Clearly, those who curse Israel do not fare well, because God keeps His promise to curse Israel’s enemies. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and over and over they suffer the same sad consequences. Balaam rightly exclaimed, "Blessed are those who bless you, and cursed are those who curse you" (Num. 24:9). Therein lies the path of blessing and the path of cursing.
Some believe that it is justified to curse Israel and oppose the nation because, they say, Israel has committed sins and injustices. (Those who say this are also guilty of sinning and being unjust, but they only wish for Israel to be punished.) But we must step back and grasp the context of the book of Numbers. During forty years Israel was being judged for a series of sins, and as a result an entire generation of Jews lay dead and buried the desert. Hebrews 3.17 reports, “whose carcases fell in the wilderness.” Psalm 90 deals with God’s righteous wrath against His people for their sins, but at no point did God abandon or reject the nation. When Balaam saw Israel, under divine influence he declared: "Behold, I have received a command to bless; He has given blessing, and I cannot revoke it. He has not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen perversity in Israel. The LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them" (Num. 23:20-21). It doesn’t mean that God turned a blind eye to Israel’s sins. Surely it is clear that He dealt severely with them. But positionally, the nation remained the apple of His eye. He made it clear that He views Israel according to His divine redemptive purposes. William MacDonald comments:
“The second oracle assured Balak that God's original blessing on Israel had not changed (vv. 18–20). The first part of verse 21 describes the nation's position, not its practices. The people were recognized as righteous by faith. Similarly, believers today stand before God with all the perfection of His beloved Son. The Lord was with Israel, and the people could rejoice because He reigned as king among them (v. 21b). He rescued them from Egypt and gave them strength. No curse would be fulfilled against them. Rather, the victories Israel would win would cause the nations to say, "What has God done!" (vv. 22–24). Since Balaam refused to curse the people, Balak commanded him not to bless them either (v. 25), but the prophet protested that he could only do what Jehovah commanded.”[1]
We should note that it isn’t enough to refrain from cursing Israel; we should love and bless the Jews and recognize their privileged place, which is not by merit but by sovereign grace. Sadly, however, today we hear evangelicals claim that Israel is no longer God's people because it rejected and crucified the Messiah. Some of them are just parroting what they heard certain preachers say, without examining the Scriptures like good Bereans (Acts. 17.10). Such people seem to regard the rejection of the Messiah as an unforgivable national sin for which God has cut off Israel, but they are mistaken. Perhaps they also ignore that they’re using the same kind of argument that the Roman Catholic Church used during the Inquisition (forgetting that Rome was also very much to blame). The Nazis, in addition to their Aryan reasonings, also used that to excuse their persecution and massacre of millions of Jews. It is a gross error to curse Israel forever for the crucifixion of Christ.
Instead of following current fads in shallow thinking, which abound on the news networks and social media, Christians above all people should ask: “What saith the Scripture?” The apostle Paul, a converted Jew, wrote by divine inspiration: “Has God rejected His people? By no means”(Rom. 11.1). “God has not rejected His people, whom He foreknew” (Rom. 11.2). It’s true that the unbelievers of that nation are punished, but in spite of that, God never rejects the nation. Let us read His words to Israel again: “... for the Lord your God is a merciful God; He will not forsake you or destroy you, nor will He forget the covenant which He swore to your fathers” (Deut. 4:31). God affirms three things:
1. He will never forsake Israel.
2. He will never destroy Israel nor allow it to be destroyed.
3. He will never forget the covenant He swore to the patriarchs.[2]
It is not Moses but God who promises this. And what did the prophet Balaam say before? “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do it? Has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?” (Num. 23:19). Therefore, the allegations of those who say that Israel today is not God's people and does not enjoy His favor are baseless. It does not depend on them, but on God who swore it. Therefore, “thou shalt not curse the people.”
Third, “for they are blessed.” When God said this to Balaam, Israel had endured forty years of divine punishment for its disobedience, and an entire unbelieving generation had died. But “they are blessed.” Nothing can cause God to remove His sovereign blessing from His people, the nation. It was given without merit, and so it remains. God announced the blessing of His sovereign grace to Abraham when he had barely left Ur of the Chaldeans and still had much to learn. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Gen. 12.2). Centuries later, despite all the conduct of the Israelites during those years, Balaam declared that he had received divine orders: “Behold, I have received orders to bless; He gave the blessing, and I cannot revoke it.” Paul declares, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11.29). No one should continue to look for reasons to justify revoking the blessing, because God finds none, and He will not change what He has determined.
Israel is blessed by God’s grace, by sovereign election (Rom. 9.11, 16), by the unbreakable divine promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God does not need our permission or approval to do so. Human opinions and protests carry no weight in heaven. Everything will be fulfilled with Israel, not with the Church or anyone else. It is not because of Israel's behavior, but because of God's sovereign will. Even if disobedient individuals and generations are judged and lost, the nation will never lose its favored position. God has decided, and His Word is forever settled in heaven. “They are blessed.”
Carlos Tomás Knott
[1] William MacDonald, Bible Commentary, p. 88, CLIE.
[2] To which some protest that the New Covenant supersedes the Old and is made with the Church. They are wrong. The New Covenant is expressly promised to Israel in Jeremiah 31.31-34. Years after the nation rejected Christ, Scripture affirms that the promise is to Israel, not the nations and not the Church. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord” (Heb. 8.10). Romans 10.26-27 explains: “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.”
