For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 117,
which is the shortest Psalm (and, if I'm not mistaken, the shortest
chapter in the entire Bible). Psalm 117 states the following, in the
King James Version:
"1. O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise
him, all ye people. 2. For his merciful kindness is great toward us:
and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD."
A
question that is asked within the Jewish sources that I read is this:
Why would the other nations praise the LORD for his kindness towards
Israel, the presumed "us" of v 2?
The Jewish exegete Radak
said that, in the times of the Messiah, the nations will praise God for
delivering Israel from their control and for God's faithfulness to
Israel throughout the Diaspora. I do not know why Radak thinks
that the nations would praise God for these things. Perhaps the
nations admire God for sticking by his people through thick and thin,
the same way that many of us may emotionally respond to examples of love
and faithfulness that are for the benefit of others besides
ourselves----examples in stories and in real life. Many of us also like
a good underdog story, and God, in exalting Israel, has lifted up a
people that was despised for many years in the eyes of many. Maybe the
nations are impressed that the God of Israel was powerful enough to
deliver Israel from their hands.
The thing is, although God in
Psalm 117 may have a special love for Israel, there is a sense in which
certain Jewish interpreters may hold that God's exaltation of Israel
benefits the nations as well. According to Artscroll, Radak said that
the reason that Psalm 117 is so short is that it is about the
"simplicity of the world order" that will exist under the reign of the
Messiah. Even the Gentile nations would benefit from an era of
simplicity----of peace and righteousness! Moreover, the Artscroll cites
Yaavetz Hadoresh, which suggested that Israel will merit God's
deliverance of her on account of her service to God, and the nations
will recognize this and will actually be happy that they will be
subservient to God's chosen people. Many would probably like the
concept of people being rewarded for their devotion, and they would
prefer to be ruled by those who are good rather than by those who are
bad.
Christianity, and I here think specifically of the Epistles
of Paul, appeared to have a different idea, however. It did not seem to
envision the Messianic age as a time when the Gentiles would be
subordinate to the Jews. Rather, its idea was that the Gentiles would
join the community of God and there they would be equal with the Jews,
without having to be circumcised and keep the Torah. Was this idea
faithful to the Hebrew Bible? Well, Isaiah 56 does, in some sense,
portray Gentiles joining the people of Israel, taking hold of God's
covenant, and keeping the Sabbath; I don't think that this goes as far
as what Paul advocated, but it's sort of a step in that direction. But,
overall, when the Hebrew Bible talks about the Gentiles praising God,
it does not seem to suggest that the Gentiles would do so as co-equals
with Jews in God's covenant community, Israel. Rather, Israel is God's
chosen people, and the nations praise her God because they recognize his
divine power as a result of his activity on Israel's behalf.
At
the Bible study that I attend, I recently made the statement that there
really is no evidence that the Bible is true. Someone then responded
that we can look at fulfilled prophecy and see that the Bible is
divinely-inspired. He referred to Hosea, which (according to him) says
that Gentiles would become a part of God's people. He noted that Hosea
made this prophecy back when God's covenant was with Israel alone, and
that the prophecy came true with the church. He may have been implying
that Hosea was ahead of his own time----that Hosea had to have gotten
his vision from divine revelation because he by himself, within his own
historical context, would not have come up with the idea that God would
include the Gentiles in God's covenant people, for at that time the
Israelites were God's covenant people. And the fact that this prophecy
was fulfilled, in his mind, is evidence that the Bible is God's word.
I
did not entirely agree with this gentleman, but I did not argue with
him, for I try not to be argumentative in my Bible study group. The
reason that I said that there is no evidence that the Bible is true was
because people in the group were saying that we're saved by faith, and
they were talking about how that's so much easier than salvation by
works. But I, and someone else in the group, was doubtful that even
faith is all that easy!
I disagree with this gentleman for two
reasons. First of all, the passage in Hosea that is supposedly about
the Gentiles becoming part of God's people----which Paul in Romans
9:25-26 cites as having this message----actually in its original context
says no such thing. Rather, the point of Hosea 1:9-10 and 2:23 is that
God will re-embrace Israel after a period of rejecting her. According
to Hosea, God had called Israel "not my people" on account of her sins,
but God will restore Israel and she will be God's people once again.
Second, I don't think that it would be a stretch within the time periods
in which the Hebrew Bible was composed that an Israelite writer would
have a favorable view towards Gentiles----that he would conclude that
God is concerned for the Gentiles, as well as Israel. Maybe he wouldn't
go so far as to say that the Gentiles would join Israel and be
co-equals with the Jews, without having to be circumcised or keep the
law. But he could arrive at the conclusion that Israel had some sort of
mission to the Gentiles, and that Israel should welcome Gentiles who
want to worship the LORD. Within the Hebrew Bible, there are
exclusivist voices, and there are inclusivist voices. How did the
inclusivist voices originate? That's a good question. Perhaps it
occurred within exile, as Israelites were seeking an identity and
encountered a variety of different peoples, and they concluded that they
had a mission to the nations. In any case, I don't see the inclusion
of the Gentiles within the early Christian church to be solid evidence
of fulfilled prophecy, as if that proves that God inspired the Bible;
rather, I see it as taking a trend that had already existed within the
Hebrew Bible a step further.