The God of Israel?

whom the Lord of armies has blessed, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”  Isaiah 19:25  NASB

My people – “This remarkable prophecy has no equal in biblical literature; nowhere else is YHWH represented as calling a foreign nation ‘my people.’”[1]  Perhaps you need to read Kaufmann’s remark again.  Nowhere, not in a single verse of the Tanakh, does God call a foreign (and avowedly pagan) nation “My people.”  ʿammi – My people.  But this is miṣrayim—Egypt!  Egypt—the enemy of Israel, the oppressor, the symbol of all that stands in the way of Israel’s God.  How is this possible?

First, we need to recall the midrash about God’s reprimand to the angels at the crossing of the Sea of Reeds.  “On seeing the drowning Egyptians the angels were about to break into song when God silenced them declaring, ‘How dare you sing for joy when My creatures are dying’ (Talmud, Megillah 10b and Sanhedrin 39b).”[2]  God is responsible for the creation of all living beings, especially Man.  The death and destruction of any one of these is a great agony and terrible pain to the Creator.  Necessary, perhaps, but joyful, never!  The Jewish view is morally dichotomous:

King Solomon himself wrote in his book of Proverbs, “When the wicked perish there is singing” (11:10), but later remarked, “When your enemy falls, do not rejoice” (24:17).

We have to live with this dichotomy. If we are not happy that evil has been punished, then we do not care enough, but if we are not sad at the loss of life, then our humanity is weakened, “As I live, says God, I do not wish for the death of the wicked, but for the wicked to repent of their way, so that they may live” (Ezekiel 33:11).[3]

Second, we should be exceedingly careful about subsequent Christian theological claims that God has rejected Israel in favor of the Church.  If God calls Egypt “My people,” how much more must Israel hold that title?  Where in Scripture, including the apostolic writings, does it ever say that God rejected Israel?  Even Paul’s often misunderstood passages in Romans 11:25-32 (partial hardening, fulness of Gentiles, election) never make the claim that Israel has been abandoned.  All the Church can claim (even if misdirected) is the temporary elevated status of the Gentiles, and this semi-replacement claim is fraught with textual and theological difficulties, not to mention it is completely self-serving.  Listen, if Egypt is “My people,” then Israel certainly is!  Of course, the Christian Church made accepting Jesus as Savior and God the fulcrum point of their exegesis of Paul, but we know that Paul is not a Christian, that he does not share the views of Justin Martyr, Augustine, and Luther, and that his concern is not for “ethical” Jews alone.  Boyarin must enter the mix here.  Paul is arguing for the primacy of the Way, a particular point of view of a Galilean group in the multiplicity of Jewish ways of living in the first century.  He bemoans the fact that those brothers who don’t join him have missed out on something vitally important in God’s engineering.  But he absolutely doesn’t say that they are lost!  They might be somewhere between Egypt and Antioch, but they certainly are not outside the fold.  If Egypt is in, so is everyone else.  The only question left to answer is this: What must I do to experience the fullness of His purposes?  When the jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” he isn’t asking an evangelical question.  He’s asking a practical political question.  “I work for Rome.  They will come for me as a result of this event.  What should I do now?”  Paul’s answer is just as non-evangelical.  “Come over to our community.  Live as we live.  And you and your household will find a new life with us.”

Topical Index: Egypt, ʿammi, My people, Isaiah 19:25

BTW, this evening begins Rosh Hashanah.  There is no Today’s Word on Shabbat and this time especially since it begins a new year.  So reflect . . . and I will be back on the 17^th.

[1] Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, pp. 391-392.

[2] https://www.thejc.com/judaism/features/why-did-we-sing-when-the-egyptians-drowned-1.54039

[3] Ibid.