Reading the Bible amid the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

On reading the Bible

There is no doubt that the Hebrew Bible (with only slight variation in the Christian Old Testament) attests the chosenness of Israel and the promise of the land to Israel. The Bible, however, is a field of play that yields no simplistic outcome concerning this people or this land. Thus we are able to notice that the Abraham and the Moses traditions yield very different testimony concerning the claims of chosenness and land.

The Abraham tradition voices God’s unilateral commitment to the people of Israel for the future. In Genesis 12, the beginning point, Abraham is promised a land, a name, a great nation, and a role as a carrier of blessing. In Genesis 15, the covenant God makes with Abraham includes a sweeping land promise, the borders of which extend to what is now termed “Greater Israel.” In Genesis 17 the covenant is said to be “an everlasting covenant … throughout their generations.” There are no stipulations, commandments, or conditions.

On the other hand, the Moses tradition at Sinai states God’s offer of covenant to Israel in a conditional way with a huge qualifying “if,” with an intensive imperative verb (in absolute infinitive) requiring listening to (obeying) the commanding voice of God (Exod 19:6). That “if” of conditionality persists in the Moses-covenantal tradition, so that the loss of covenantal status and chosenness is at least thinkable in the tradition. That conditional “if” of Sinai prepares the way for subsequent prophetic assertion that in the monarchal period of ancient Israel entertains the prospect of the demise of Israel and of Jerusalem.

There are of course interpretive maneuvers that manage to reconcile the two traditions that are quite clearly in tension with each other. Those reconciling maneuvers are not givens in the Bible, but are in fact interpretive moves. And like all interpretive moves, these reconciling maneuvers are not innocent or disinterested. Rather these interpretive maneuvers are characteristically presented as though they are absolute givens in the text when they are acts of derivative imagination. When we recognize that adjudications of the tradition are variously voiced derivative interpretations, we become aware that different adjudications are also possible.

For that reason the question lingers concerning the Sinai tradition, What might be the terms of the “if” of conditionality? In the tradition of Deuteronomy, the “if” concerns Torah obedience at the risk of losing the land (Deut 30:15–20). But if Torah obedience, then what part of the Torah pertains as defining conditionality that makes loss of chosen status thinkable? And of course it may not surprise that for this writer (it is an act of imaginative interpretation with no answer in the back of the book!) it is economic justice on which conditionality pivots:

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. (Lev 19:33–34)

The identification of “alien” (sojourner) and “citizen” (native) in Lev 19:33–34 raises the question about how the carriers of the promise (heirs of Abraham) are to relate to those without the promise, those outside the community of Israel. Again the tradition yields no single, straightforward answer. It is possible to imagine a “clash” of the kind that Samuel Huntington has otherwise anticipated. The tradition makes clear, however, that the interface between the promise-carriers and those without the promise need not be a “clash.” The tradition variously champions exclusion of those outside the promise and welcoming hospitality toward those outside. Thus the Ezra tradition, so elemental to the formulation of early Judaism, is intensely exclusionary in order to protect the “holy seed” (Ezra 9:2). In the same 5th century, however, there are texts that counter such exclusion. Isaiah 56, for example, voices a readiness to welcome the “foreigner and eunuch” who are prepared to engage in covenant. The restored temple, moreover, is imagined to be a “house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa 56:7). Thus the tradition offers alternative interpretive options, and one cannot pretend that the biblical tradition dictates or requires interpretation in one direction.

The dominant interpretive line of Israelis at the moment is to assert that the covenant promise to Israel is unconditional and functions without any qualification or condition, thus disregarding the starchy Torah-conditions of Sinai. That same dominant interpretive line asserts an exclusionary stance toward all those who are not carriers of the promise, that is, not Jews, or even given internal disputes about “real Jews.” The wall that the Israeli government has erected is, I suppose, an articulate metaphor for the exclusionary interpretive option.

But the Sinai “if” is insistent, and the welcoming hospitality voiced in the prophetic tradition suggests that the Hebrew Bible countenances a move outside exclusionary practice toward those who are economically vulnerable. The text offers such voices of interpretation amid much testimony to the contrary. Interpretation that attends to conditionality and obedience interrupts any biblical interpretation that imagines a simple direct line from ancient promissory biblical text to contemporary practice. We know enough, moreover, about the historical and hermeneutical possibilities to know that there is not and cannot be any straight, direct line from ancient text to contemporary claim. Thus we know that there is no straight line “from there to here” concerning race (slavery) or gender practice or any other disputed issue. When interpretation disregards the playful ambiguity and unsettled pluralism of the biblical text and offers conclusions that are absolute, we may be sure that the Bible on any issue is being read mistakenly. Thus we are, in my judgment, required to continue to struggle with the conditional–unconditional and the exclusionary–welcoming hospitality trajectories without assuming an absolute resolve that disregards the capaciousness of the tradition. We may be sure that every absolute (final) reading anticipates an absolute “final solution.” For good reason, we know better than that!

Chosenness decisive and problematic

There is no doubt that in the Hebrew Bible Israel is the chosen people of God (Deut 7:6; 14:1–2). The language of chosenness is used of Abraham (Neh 9:7), of Zion (Ps 132:13), and of Israel (Isa 14:1), all in the service and interest of the same claim.

“Chosenness” is a decisively defining point and inside the biblical tradition it is a hugely daring act by God. While the interface of Israelis and Palestinians has the chosenness of Israel decisively in play, we may better grasp the emotive intensity of chosenness if we consider other chosen peoples who make the same sort of claim.

Thus there is no doubt that in the New Testament, the community clustered around Jesus understood itself to be chosen by God:

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. (John 15:25–26)

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are. (1 Cor 1:27–28)

There is no doubt that in the orbit of US exceptionalism the United States understands itself to be God’s most recently chosen people or, as Abraham Lincoln termed it, “almost chosen.” Nor is there any doubt that US chosenness readily evolved into imperial ambition and aggression.

There is no doubt either that in the modern world whites (of European extraction) have uncritically and tacitly understood ourselves as chosen, therefore superior and therefore entitled to the possession and exploitation of non-whites.

I have set alongside the chosenness of Israel these other claims of chosenness in order to consider that chosenness is indeed highly problematic. Current Israel’s appeal to the Bible takes the chosenness of Israel as a simple given without acknowledgement of any problem, as in the recent exposition of Joel Kaminsky (Yet I Loved Jacob). We may, however, identify problematic dimensions to the claim.

Traditions of chosenness variously practice hostility or hospitality toward the unchosen, but in any case the presence of the unchosen is not and cannot be disregarded. Thus the chosenness of the early church had to come to terms with the unchosen Gentiles. Thus the USA as chosen has worked its power among the unchosen, with a strong sense of racial superiority over Asians and Africans, a sense of superiority that has been evident in the rhetoric and policy of the USA. Thus US whites currently struggle with the inclusion of non-whites who eventually cannot be slotted as second-class citizens. So in the Hebrew Bible there is an ongoing sorting out of “good and acceptable” others and “bad and unwelcome” others. But the challenge of the other makes any special claim of chosenness more complex than the chosen most often assume. The temptation to exclusivism comes with chosenness.

There is ample evidence that chosenness contains within it the seeds of violence toward the unchosen. It is a potential that need not be acted out, but it is always there. Thus the church has variously enacted violence among the unchosen, as recently Pope Francis has apologized for “crimes committed against the population in South America,” and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission has acknowledged of “cultural genocide” committed by church institutions against the native population. And we need hardly mention the violence that whites have perpetuated against non-whites, most visibly in US society in which the “peculiar institution” of slavery was regarded as normal and essential to a viable economy.

The capacity for violence on the part of chosen Israel is evident from the beginning, in the book of Joshua. Interpreters now employ great energy justifying or explaining away that violence, but in fact the land was, according to the tradition, seized by violence. And now that violence of the chosen toward the unchosen is being acted out with reference to the Palestinians, the current non-chosen who suffer at the hands of the chosen who have reduced the tradition to an unconditional promise and who have reduced the practice of “the other” to exclusion. Of course the Palestinians also commit unacceptable violence; but the subject here is the role played by appeal to the biblical tradition of chosenness as a justification for violence.

We may be sobered by the recognition that the biblical text itself witnesses to an awareness that there are other chosen peoples in the sphere of the providence of God beyond chosen Israel or the chosen church or the chosen United States (“Other sheep that do not belong to this fold”; John 10:16). That is, the reach of God’s favorable rule is not defined by or contained within a particular claim of chosenness. In Amos 9:7 with an appeal to Israel’s treasured Exodus memory, the poetry can allow that God has also performed Exodus for other peoples, most pointedly Israel’s sworn enemies, the Syrians (Arameans) and the Philistines who may be a placeholder for the belated Palestinians. The text does not call these other peoples “chosen,” but they are recipients of God’s special emancipatory engagement. In Isaiah 19:24–25, moreover, the poet imagines a coming time in God’s governance when the aggressive superpowers, Egypt and Assyria, will be reidentified and given names that bespeak a pivotal connection to YHWH. Remarkably the text articulates three pet names for Israel as God’s chosen people—“my people, the work of my hands, my heritage”—and freely assigned them to Israel’s enemies. Thus the erstwhile enemies are transformed and now are dubbed as chosen peoples. Prophetic imagination leads to the recognition that God has many chosen peoples. Isaiah has no interest in denying Israel’s status as chosen. But he does assert that Israel has no monopoly on that status; he asserts that in the largeness of God’s rule there are many chosen peoples, not least the ones long slotted as enemies of this particular chosen people.

And now, in the parlance of liberation theology, we are able to speak of “God’s preferential option for the poor.” The phrase attests that God is particularly attentive to the poor and vulnerable as the ones whom God most loves and with whom God is most engaged. Jon Levenson (The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism), in a forceful and important statement, has resisted the transfer of chosenness from Israel to the poor, but that interpretive move is in many cases made, objections notwithstanding.

It is the case that in the Bible and in derivative interpretation, chosenness is decisive, variously decisive for Israel, for the church, and for the United States; but it is also problematic. It is decisive in generating a peculiar permit and assurance to Israel. It is problematic because the deep mystery of God cannot be contained in the peculiar claims of a special people, anymore than the grace of God can be contained in church administration of divine grace, anymore than legitimacy in the world can be monopolized by the USA, anymore than white society can fully have its way among and over other peoples. It turns out, in every case, that the excluded “other” has large claims to make concerning the truth of God’s rule. From such an unexpected source as Vladimir Putin, we get this thoughtful critique of exceptionalism:

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessing, we must not forget that God created us equal. (The New York Times, September 12, 2013)

The Holy Land

There is no doubt that the land of promise is of elemental importance for contemporary Israel’s claim to chosenness; there is no doubt, moreover, that land is the pivotal core of contemporary conflict. Thus thinking well and critically about the land of promise in the biblical tradition is urgent and care must be taken.

The land is gift to Israel from God. The promise is made to Abraham and reiterated to the next generations, to Isaac and to Jacob. The land promise is made without conditions, and YHWH is the subject of the verbs that matter in the promise.

While the verb “give” persists in the text of Joshua, in the plot line there is not “give” but “take.” The “taking” conquest of the land is, to be sure, done with divine legitimacy. But the narrative concerns military strategy and violent action that is ruthless and without restraint. Thus the play of “give … take” requires more nuance than simply the claim that the land is a gift from God. In the Joshua tradition, moreover, unlike the Genesis promises, the land is held conditionally depending on Torah obedience. Thus at the outset,

This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful. (Josh 1:8)

As James Sanders (Torah & Canon) has noticed, the five books of the Torah (Pentateuch), Israel’s most authoritative scripture, ends without fulfillment of the land promise. The promise is indeed fulfilled by the end of the book of Joshua (Joshua 21:43–45). That statement, however, belongs to a second layer of authoritative text. In Israel’s most normative text the land is only anticipated. So the book of Deuteronomy, the most rigorous statement about the land, is at the brink of the land, but not in it. Thus normatively Israel tells it narrative with the land in prospect, but not in hand.

That same anticipatory factor is operative in the great land promises of the exilic prophets. Thus Jeremiah can anticipate the land with great specificity (31:38–40; 32:15, 25). Ezekiel, in perhaps an echo of Joshua 13–19, can imagine neatly drawn boundary markers for time to come that will be done in perfect symmetry (47:13–48:35). And Isaiah in the exile can anticipate a new Exodus, this time from Babylon (Isa 43:16–19; 52:11–2). In that horizon Israel will again follow the new exodus by a new wilderness journey and a new land entry after expulsion. But it is all anticipation. Israel is a community of hope.

The reason this is definitively important is that as soon as Israel is in possession of the land, it begins to lose the land. Thus possession of the land is seen in the biblical tradition to be endlessly problematic. In the stylized rhetoric of the Deuteronomist, Israel in the book of Judges already jeopardizes the land. In the more readily historical sequence of the books of Kings, Israel-Judah progressively loses the land. At the death of Solomon, David’s kingdom loses the northern territories (I Kgs 12:1–24). Subsequently the northern enemy of Syria regularly encroaches on the land, and finally the superpower, Babylon, will prevail. Thus the “give–take” rhetoric of the land promise is much more at risk than any simplistic rhetoric would suggest. Land loss looms large in Hebrew scripture.

That land loss, moreover, is accomplished by “double agency.” The land loss is accomplished by military means, the same military means whereby Israel first occupied the land. In terms of military realism there is nothing spiritual about either Israel’s taking of the land or Israel’s losing of the land, because Israel had to live in the real world. But alongside such historical-military threats, Israel’s text asserts that the land loss, accomplished by human agents, is the work and will of YHWH. Thus Jeremiah can, no doubt notoriously in context, have YHWH identify King Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, as “my servant” who will perform the divine will (Jer 25:9; 27:6). And Ezra later on can acknowledge that the land was loss because of Torah disobedience:

From the days of our ancestors to this day we have been deep in guilt, and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been handed over to the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as is now the case. (Ezra 9:7; see Neh 9:26–32)

Zionism late and early

The contemporary state of Israel is dominated by the mantras of “Zionism” that amount in practice to unqualified, uncritical support for the state of Israel. It is important that we consider most carefully the meaning of “Zion” and the deep space between ancient “Zion” and contemporary “Zionism.” In the Bible itself the term “Zion” is largely confined to liturgical use in the book of Psalms and to poetic, polemical use in the prophetic literature. Only in 2 Sam 5:7 and 1 Kgs 8:1 is the term used precisely to refer to a part of David’s city of Jerusalem. In liturgic and poetic use the terms refers to the entire dynastic-temple establishment in Jerusalem together with all of the extravagant symbolic, metaphorical claims that are attached to it. “Zion” turned out to be a marker for a theological trajectory that saw all of God’s promises lodged in the Jerusalem establishment that lived in considerable tension with the Sinai tradition. That same tension is operative when the prophetic literature—an echo of Sinai—alludes to establishment ideology.

In the particular case of Jeremiah, moreover, he apparently had rootage in the ancient northern shrine of Shiloh that stood in opposition to Zion-Jerusalem. As a result when Jeremiah uttered hard judgment against the Jerusalem establishment, he is accused of treason for undermining the war effort (Jer 38:4). In a different text Jeremiah can imagine that the future of the Jerusalem establishment will be, in its disobedience, destruction not unlike that of ancient Shiloh that ended in ruins (7:12–15). Thus the claim of Zion, in prophetic imagination, provided no guarantees in the face of historical contingency or in the face of YHWH’s overriding will.

There is a long historical distance and a great hermeneutical leap to move from ancient Zion to contemporary Zionism that funds the state of Israel and its large claims from religious tradition. What is to be recognized is that a simple appeal by contemporary Zionism to the ancient reality of Zion is wholly reductionist and conceals both the historical distance that witnesses to discontinuity and the hermeneutical leap that is resolved much too facilely. Again we face the drawing of a straight line over a very complicated matter, a straight line that smacks of oversimplification in the interest of ideological claims.

While the state of Israel would want to claim all of the old tradition for itself, it is useful to recognize that the Zion-David tradition in the Hebrew Bible lives in deep tension with the Sinai tradition. Mutatis mutandis, that deep tension evokes questions about the relationship of Zionism to Judaism. There is surely overlap between Zionism and Judaism, but they are by no means identical. In recent exposition, David Novak (Zionism and Judaism) has argued the case that contemporary Zionism is a natural, necessary, and non-negotiable articulation of Judaism. From that premise, his argument leads to the highest claims the state of Israel can make for a right to all of the land that is theologically grounded. Against the equation of Judaism with Zionism, Michael Walzer (The Paradox of Liberation) has traced the initial deep antagonism between Zionism and Judaism, because the initial proponents of Zionism were secular Jews who had no interest in making theological claims for an anticipated homeland. The burden of Walzer’s argument is the belated discovery of the leaders of Zionism that their movement in the long run could not be sustained without the theological underpinning of Judaism. Adjustments were required in their visionary articulation in order to make room for the claims of Judaism in the fostering of the Zionist state.

This difference of perspective between Novak and Walzer is enough to make clear that it will not do, as the proponents of Zionism prefer to do, to make a simple equation of Judaism with Zionism without recognizing the distance of the state from the old tradition and the secular character of the state in its inception.

Conclusion

In this discussion I have focused exactly on the biblical tradition, its interpretation, and appeal to it in the contemporary conflict. I have no particular agenda here beyond that focus on the ancient tradition, and recognize that this troubled interface has multiple dimensions beyond appeal to the Bible. Nothing I have written in any way calls into question the existence of the state of Israel or the importance of its national security, both of which are matters for urgent attentive affirmation. My only work has been to reflect critically on the biblical tradition and the interpretive appeals that are made to it.

It is not my interest or my competence to address Jews or to seek to instruct them about their tradition. Rather, I have been preoccupied with Christian ways of thinking about the Bible in relationship to the current conflict. On the one hand, there is a strand of Christian interpretation that emphasizes a dispensational timeline wherein the state of Israel is crucial to a final good outcome for Christians. It hardly need be said that such an interpretation is absurd, even though this opinion continues to exercise enormous influence upon US policy toward Israel. On the other hand, more liberal Christians, characteristically capable of critical thinking about the Bible, tend to abandon such critical thinking on this issue. That happens, I judge, because there continues to be a romantic view of the state of Israel that is remote from political reality, and because liberal Christians, many of whom have treasured friendships with Jews, do not want to be or appear to be anti-Semitic. My own judgment is that Christians—either dispensationalist or liberal—do the state of Israel and the community of Judaism no service by such kneejerk commitments. Far better if Christians were to recognize the deep problem of a theological appeal by Zionism to the old tradition. Far better instead to reckon with the requirements and possibilities of international law whereby the state of Israel might take its place among the nations without this appeal to ancient tradition. Direct appeals to theological tradition on behalf of the state of Israel require a denial of critical awareness that in the end is not compelling. Far better to face the facts on the ground, the fact of two peoples finding a way to live together. Such a way will not be found by an ideology of exclusion or by an appeal to a theological tradition that has no currency with Israel’s inescapable partners.