Are Israel’s Enemies Also God’s Enemies?
When we speak about the rise of anti-Semitism and hate against Israel, people sometimes say: ‘They cannot capture God, so they capture His people Israel, the pupil of His eye’. I have always had a mixed feeling about that statement. It certainly applies to people who consciously turn against Jews and Israel with violence. However, there are countless Christians around the world who assert that they want to have nothing to do with Israel and who oppose any Israel-theology that advocates Israel’s permanent place in God’s plan of salvation. These are often very faithful people with love for God and His Son Jesus Christ. Can you then immediately call them enemies of God? That seems a bit extreme to me.
“The prophet Zechariah already wrote that whoever touches Israel touches the pupil of God’s eye.”
Hiding Israel
My attention, however, was attracted by Psalm 83 regarding my mixed feeling. That Psalm speaks about people who turn against Israel: ‘They have said, ‘Come let us wipe them out as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more’. The Hebrew word translated here as ‘wipe out’ can also be translated as ‘hide’ or ‘disappear out of sight’. The same word also appears in Hosea 5:3 ‘I know Ephraim and Israel is not hidden from Me’. The Lord God here wants to make clear that He is watching His people and that His people are not hidden from Him. Also, in Psalm 69:5, we come across this same word: ‘O God, it is You who knows my folly, and my wrongs are not hidden from you’. Here again, it is not about wiping out, but about being hidden or not hidden from God. God sees and knows the guilt of the writer of the psalm. The attempt to ‘wipe out’ the people of Israel as described in Psalm 83 can therefore indicate both a violent attempt to exterminate the Jewish people and the denial and disappearance, concealment, of Israel. Could we, therefore, also think here of Christians? They are endeavouring to deny every significance of Israel and to make Israel’s significance disappear from the Church and theology, so that ‘Israel’s name is remembered no more’. Remarkably, such an attitude towards Israel is described three times in Psalm 83 as enmity against God Himself. Thus the Psalm poet says in verse 2: ‘For behold, Your enemies make an uproar, and those who hate You have exalted themselves’.
“We turn directly against God Himself when we try to make Israel, in whatever way, disappear from the attention of the Church and of the nations.”
Your ‘enemies’ and ‘those who hate you’ is like repetition using different words. And in verse 5, he says: ‘Against You, they make a covenant’. In every instance, the psalm poet emphasises that the destruction or concealment of Israel is also inevitably a form of enmity against God. This conclusion sounds harsh, but it is almost inevitable. The prophet Zechariah already wrote that whoever touches Israel touches the pupil of God’s eye. God remains eternally faithful to his people and has a great plan for the future with Israel. And so we turn directly against God Himself when we try to make Israel, in whatever way, disappear from the attention of the Church and of the nations.
