Act III: Israel

Israel's wilderness camp

God could have dealt with the problem of evil in the same way he created the world, by his own word; yet he chose to work through human beings, and we must ask, Why? The answer, I think, lies back in Genesis 1: it was God’s desire from the start to create a creature who would be the agent of his kingdom. It is out of God’s desire to work alongside his creation that he spawns a rescue operation centering on his fallen image-bearers. God wants his image-bearers to do their duty, to be his agents in the midst of a fallen world, for the purpose of rescue and renewal. The people he chooses (the people of Israel) are chosen as an act of God’s love. There’s nothing innately special about the Jews; they themselves declared early on that their election by God to be his peculiar and special people wasn’t something they deserved but a gift of God’s love. God chose them not because they were better than all the other pagan nations but simply because he wanted to. God chose to deal with the problem of evil in the world through a people whom he called out of his own good will, not because they deserved to be chosen. His choosing began with the calling of a Sumerian pagan named Abram (whose name would be changed to Abraham; we’ll call him “Abraham” for clarity). 

In Genesis 12 God calls Abraham to follow him. Abraham abandons his home in the ancient civilization of Ur and travels south into what will later be known as the Promised Land. There he dwells with his barren wife and according to the promise of God she bears a son. His son Isaac is the second son, but he’s the 'Son of Promise'; an earlier son, Ishmael, was born between Abraham and his slave girl Hagar, and God wasn’t too appreciative of this sort of manipulation. Isaac is the first step in the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham. In Genesis 12.2-3, God made a covenant (or promise) with Abraham: 

I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. God promised that through Abraham, rescue and healing would come to the nations of the world. 

This promise remained prominent in the minds of his descendants, the people of Israel, who boasted of being 'guides for the blind' and 'lights for those who are in the dark.' (Rom 2.19) Thus through Abraham God promised to spread blessings upon all the nations; he promised that through Abraham’s descendants, his rescue operation would be launched. In Genesis 15.7, God made another promise to Abraham: 'I am YHWH, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.' God promised Abraham a nation through whom blessings would flow to all nations, and then He promised Abraham a tract of land, the Promised Land (also known as the Land of Canaan). This promise to inherit land is built so strongly into Jewish thought that one of the great pillars of the current political atmosphere in Israel today is the Jews’ knowledge of God’s promise to them to have a specific tract of land. This promise for land, however, was but a shadow and signpost to God’s ultimate promise: he would give Abraham’s descendants not just a tract of land along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean but the entire world. Despite what talking heads may tell you, the Fertile Crescent is not the covenant property of today's Jews (but that's another story for another time!). 

At the end of Abraham’s life, we have a two-fold promise given to him: he will have descendants who will be a blessing to all the nations, and his descendants will inherit the Land of Canaan (albeit after a 400-year period of enslavement; Gen 15.13-15). The story of Abraham’s descendants is a long one filled with all sorts of grand narratives, twists and turns, wacky characters, turncoats and penitents. Abraham’s descendants entered into slavery for four centuries under an oppressive Egyptian regime, and then through Moses and the Exodus God led them into the Promised Land. There they encountered all the wicked, detestable people-groups that had settled the land, and they eradicated them. They put up stakes in the land and adopted a theocracy with 'judges' who worked to settle disputes among the people and to lead military campaigns against their pagan neighbors. The people weren’t happy with a theocracy so they begged God for a monarchy. God gave them Saul, who turned out to be a not-so-good-king, and then came King David. David was a very good king, at least prior to his 'falling out' with a beautiful married woman whom he saw bathing naked on a rooftop (murder turns out to be a less-than-optimal solution to his adultery). David’s son Solomon took the throne, and he was very wise but loved riches and women more than he loved God, and he came to ruin and the kingdom went through a civil war. The united monarchy of Israel was divided into two: Northern Israel (known simply as Israel) to the north and Southern Israel (known as Judah) to the south. 

For the next several hundred years the two kingdoms forged alliances and warred against one another, adopted paganism and embraced revival and then slipped into paganism all over again. Eventually the wickedness of Israel made God want to vomit, so he sent judgment upon them in the shape of an Assyrian army. The Assyrians wiped out Israel in its entirety and then camped outside the great city of Jerusalem to do the same to Judah. The King of Judah repented and God destroyed the Assyrian army. The repentance didn’t last very long, however, and when the peoples’ idolatry became 'just too much,' God judged them with a Babylonian army under an upstart king named Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonians had their way with Jerusalem, destroying the city and ransacking the sacred Temple before burning it to the ground. 

The Judeans who had repented of their paganism prior to the national catastrophe found themselves exiled in Babylon, and they dwelt in that land for a long time. Many of them missed their homeland, but others settled in nicely, working decent jobs and making good pay and raising their families. A power struggle between Persia and the Babylonians resulted in a quick Babylonian defeat, and the ruler-ship over the Jews exiled in Babylon transferred to the newly-enthroned Persians. The Persian king Cyrus let any Jews who desired to do so to return home to Palestine. Not all went, since many came to prefer life in the wondrous and well-watered city of Babylon, but those who returned rebuilt the Temple, even though it was just a shadow of what it had been before (the old men who had seen the Temple of Solomon as little boys wept when they saw the shabby rebuilt Temple). Those who returned to Jerusalem got caught up in paganism all over again, and they became consumerist Jews. They didn’t experience the autonomy they enjoyed prior to their Babylonian overlords, for the Persians still ruled over them; and after the Persians came the Greeks, and after the Greeks came the Romans. 

This brief sketch of Israel’s history, from their enslavement to Egypt to their subjection under Rome, paints a portrait of a people who were supposed to be God’s answer to the problem of evil in the world but who, in actuality, didn’t get things right and were, instead, a major part of the problem. All throughout their history, the Jewish people knew they were chosen by God and that God would work through them to deliver justice and peace to the world. Several strands of thought, evolving throughout the history of the Jewish people and capitalizing upon the Babylonian exile, came together to form a loosely-conjoined future hope. The spine of this Jewish hope centered on what the prophets called 'The Day of the Lord.' Three primary strands came together to create this hope: (1) the hope for the Coming King, (2) the hope for the vindication of Israel and the overthrow of her pagan oppressors, and (3) the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. Arching over all these hopes was the penultimate hope, that of New Creation. 

Strand #1: The Hope for The King. God made a promise to King David that his royal house would endure forever, and that he would always have a descendant on the throne (2 Samuel 7). David was a great king (at least for a while), and his son Solomon definitely had his highwater marks. But after Solomon the kingdom split down the middle. All the kings of Judah following the split were downright awful at worst and weak at best. Even the best kings (Hezekiah and Josiah) couldn’t keep God’s coming judgment at bay. On one hand is God’s promise that the Davidic line would endure forever, and on the other hand was the stark reality of it all: David’s line of kings came to a brutal end with the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. As the Jewish people wrestled with this paradox, a hope emerged that there would come a True King, a new sort of king, a king who would be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David. This king would do what all the other kings, including David himself, had failed to do: he would flood the earth with justice and peace (Ps 72.1-4). This new king would be anointed with God’s own spirit; the Hebrew word for 'anointed one' is messiah, and the Greek word for the Hebrew messiah is christ. This Messiah, this Christ, would be the one who would put everything to rights.

Strand #2: The Hope for Vindication. This True King would do many things, not least overthrow the oppressive pagan empires that had enslaved and mistreated the Jewish people throughout their various exiles. The Jewish people experienced slavery under the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and on down the line: the Persians, the Greeks, and then (in due time) the Romans. The Jewish people yearned for the day when the True King would take up sword and shield and lead the great revolt. He would set up a Jewish government and would be King, establishing Israel as the dominating and enduring world power. A holy war would take place under Messiah, the pagans would be ground to powder under the feet of Jewish warriors, and the righteous Jews would win the absolute victory; through them God would reign over the pagan nations of the earth with the Jews being his co-regents.

Strand #3: The Hope for a Rebuilt Temple. King David laid the groundwork for the original Temple, and his son Solomon built it. The Jewish people understood the Temple to be the dwelling place of God, where Heaven and Earth collided. Solomon’s Temple was glorious, but it was destroyed by the Babylonians sometime around 586 BC. When the Persian king Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Palestine, they rebuilt the Temple, but it paled in comparison to Solomon’s. Later prophets such as Zechariah and Ezekiel prophesied of a coming Temple that would rival even the one Solomon built. The Jewish hope centered on Messiah also centered on Messiah’s rebuilding of the Temple. 

The Overarching Hope: New Creation. This hope finds its birth in the prophet Isaiah, who spoke of God’s intentions to restore Israel and to bring light to all the pagan nations. Isaiah weaves the three strands of the Jewish hope together into a masterpiece of worldwide peace and justice. Isaiah speaks of a replanting of the Garden of the Eden, of a 'new creation.' Isaiah 2.2-4 offers a vision of hope not just for Jews but for pagans as well: when God would finally act to deliver his people, when he would reestablish Jerusalem (or Zion) as the place where he lives and reigns, Israel alone wouldn’t share in the blessing. As God promised to Abraham from the beginning, through his descendants he would bring blessings to all the nations, not just his chosen people. In Isaiah 11.1-8, Isaiah asks, 'How will God accomplish this?' It will be accomplished through the coming of the ultimate King of Israel, the Davidic descendant, the 'Son of Jesse.' This king, possessing wisdom, would bring God’s justice to the whole world. The rule of this king, this Messiah, would flood all of creation with peace, justice, and harmony (cf. Isa 55.1, 3-5, 12-13). Isaiah 65.17-18 and verse 25 open a window into an entire universe renewed by God: heaven and earth would be wedded together, given in marriage, becoming one. This is a promise that the entire universe would be rescued and renewed. It is nothing short of new creation.

During the Babylonian exile, with these texts in the background, the Jewish people continued to rearticulate their hopes. All the exiles they experienced were but echoes of a greater exile. In a sense, all of Israel’s expulsions from the Promised Land (and their subsequent returns to the land) symbolized and enacted the original expulsion of mankind from the Garden. The ultimate return, over against expulsion from the Garden, would be a return to the Garden; and thus we have the hope of New Creation. And New Creation, according to a good number of Jewish folk, would happen when 'YHWH returns to Zion': when Messiah would come, lead a successful holy war against the pagans, exercise judgment over the defeated pagans, rebuild the Temple, and take his seat alongside God to rule over the world. When this happened, homecoming would happen: the problem of evil would be dealt with, and everything would be put to rights. The end of Babylonian exile found the Jews longing for YHWH’s return to Zion, the results of which would be nothing short of a genuine return from exile and new creation.

Much of this expectation is built upon the prophet Isaiah, and in the prophet Isaiah we find something cryptic and strange, something downright weird—and dark. We find that the coming king who would be pivotal in God’s return to Zion would be YHWH’s servant, and this servant would become Israel, being what Israel couldn’t be and doing what Israel couldn’t do, since Israel failed to be obedient to her vocation. Israel was just as shipwrecked as the rest of the world and was no better than the pagans. Isaiah 11 serves as the backbone to this strange image; here we find a sketch of the coming King, a sketch enhanced with more prophecies regarding him found in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 52-53. This servant, the coming King, would be expelled, like Israel in exile; drowned in shame, suffering, and death; and then, after death, he would be brought through to the other side. Jewish scholars sought to make sense of this strange text that put a 'chink in the armor' in the Jewish conceptions of this coming King. Even the most advanced and articulate of the Jewish scholars couldn’t grasp the simplest explanation: that this king would suffer, die, and rise again; and that through this king, through this dying and resurrecting Messiah, God would fulfill all of his promises to Israel beginning with his covenant to Abraham and stretching past David and into the exile. Through this Suffering Servant, YHWH would deal with the problem of evil, he would set everything right, and he would bring the world to its climax. The prophecies of the Suffering Servant stood as a strange signpost pointing ahead into a strange and dark fog interspersed with light, pointing to where all the snaking storylines of YHWH, Israel, and the universe would converge.