Paul seeks to establish a narrow definition of Israel as a
remnant chosen according God's sovereign purpose. In the process
he makes some dubious distinctions (offspring vs. children, flesh
vs. promise) and fails to note the change from selection to
inclusion in God's formation of the covenant nation Israel.
6b For not all who are of Israel, are
Israel,
7 nor because they are offspring of Abraham are all children,
but: "In Isaac will your offspring be called." (Gen.
21:12b, LXX)
8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are
children of God, but the children of the promise are
counted for offspring.
9 For this is the word of promise: "According to this time
<I will come> and Sarah will have a son." (Gen
18:10,14, LXX except for <I will come>)
10 And not only so, but also Rebekah, having conceived by one,
Isaac our father,
11 (for though they were not yet born and had not done anything
good or bad, that the purpose of God, according to His choice,
would remain,
12 not of works, but of Him who calls), it was said to her:
"The older shall serve the younger." (Gen 25:23b, LXX).
13 according as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I
hated." (Mal. 1:2b-1:3a, LXX)
Now this is a clever argument, and for those reading Paul's words
from the perspective of Christian faith it may not be obvious
what is wrong with the argument. For when an argument supports
your point of view, the details don't matter. Speaking for
myself, when I was still a Christian who saw the Church as the
new "spiritual" Israel, this passage was very important
to my understanding. What I could not see before, as a Christian,
seems patently obvious to me now.
Paul begins with the claim: not all who are of (i.e., descended
from) Israel are Israel. Then he proceeds to recount how Isaac
and Jacob (Israel) were both chosen by God to continue the line
of Abraham's children even though by ordinary or natural
circumstances their older brothers would have been chosen: in the
case of Isaac, because his parents were too old to bear children;
in the case of Jacob, because his twin brother Esau was born
first.
All this is interesting, but irrelevant to the question of who is
Israel. For when Jacob (Israel) was chosen, so were all his
descendants; not just those by his favored wife Rachel, but by
both wives and by their maids too! In contrast to previous
generations, where the son favored by the father (Ishmael
initially by Abraham, Esau by Isaac) was rejected as the heir
through whom God's promise would be fulfilled, Jacob's favorite
son or sons (initially Joseph, perhaps at some point Judah)
became, along with all their brothers, part of the
"community of nations" (Gen. 35:11) which would make up
the one nation Israel. With the election of Israel, God's plan
for his chosen nation came to a turning point: all the sons of
Israel were loved by God, all were redeemed from Egypt, and all
entered God's covenant. So, with a few exceptions (e.g., those
cut off from Israel because they chose to disregard the
covenant), all who are descended from Israel are indeed Israel.
The pattern, the change from selection to inclusion, may be seen
in the daily morning blessings (Ribon kol ha olamim): "We
are Your people, children of Your covenant, children of
Your beloved Abraham...offspring of Isaac...the community
of Jacob, Your firstborn son whom You named Israel and Jeshuran,
because of Your love for him and Your delight in him." Children
of Abraham, offspring of Isaac, but the community
of Jacob, the whole people called by his name. By the way, the
identification of Israel (the whole people) as God's firstborn
son is from Exod. 4:22, "Israel is My firstborn son."
Furthermore, while not all of Abraham's offspring belong to
Israel, all who are of Israel are also the offspring and
children of Abraham, with one proviso: Israel counts
converts, those who freely choose to enter the covenant, among
their number; but converts are also counted (and named) as the
children of Abraham.
Paul seems to imply a distinction between the offspring
(lit., seed) of Abraham and his children. John's gospel
has Jesus make a similar distinction: offspring, John 8:33,37;
children, John 8:39. For John, the children of Abraham (and of
God) are those who do the works of their father. For Paul, the
children of Abraham (and of God) are presumably those who share
the faith of Abraham, which Paul elsewhere presumptuously
identifies with believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Son of God
(Romans 1:4, 3:22).
Again, just as there can be no difference between the children
of the flesh and the children of the promise (God
chose to covenant with all the descendants of Israel, born
according to the flesh), so this distinction contradicts the
stated facts of Scripture. The children of Abraham were not
selected according to their good behavior, certainly not
according to their anticipation of a coming Messiah, and not
according to God's mercy (cf. Rom. 9:15-18) either. Ishmael was
fully as much Abraham's son as Isaac, and God promised Abraham
that Ishmael would be blessed with increase and would become a
great nation (Gen. 17:20). The only distinction between Isaac and
Ishmael was that the covenant would be made with Isaac
and his offspring, not with Ishmael.
And it is the covenant that distinguishes and defines
Israel. In other words, Israel is indeed more than an ethnic
group, more than a nation or people. Israel is a people, holy,
chosen, treasured, affectionately loved, freed and rescued, kept
in covenant with a faithful and kind God, keeping His
commandments, through all generations (Deut. 7:6-9). Israel with
the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) but without the
covenant would not be Israel. To reinforce this point, here are
passages from Jacob Neusner's book, Children of the Flesh,
Children of the Promise: (1)
"Israel on its own bore no importance
whatsoever; Israel within God's plan, living in accord with that
plan, formed God's stake in this world." (p. 60)
"The ethnic formulation of matters becomes possible only
when Israel's Torah is disregarded [and] Israel's sanctity
reduced to its this-worldly trivialities of politics and ethnic
preferences. If Israel is elect, then God is the God of
Israel--and of all who come under the wings of God's presence by
entering into Israel." (p. 62)
"Israel remains Israel, the Jewish people, after the flesh,
not just because Israel today continues the family begun by
Abraham, Isaac [and] Jacob... and bears the heritage bequeathed
by them. Israel is what it is also because of Israel's character
as holy nation." (p. 65)
In other words, Israel is at the same time defined by promise and
by flesh, with converts representing the only apparent exception.
Again, on converts:
"In the Judaism set forth in the normative writings, the
outsider who accepts the Torah as given by God becomes fully
Israel. His or her offspring then take their place in Israel,
without differentiation in any material way from other
Israelites. True, they have no past, no genealogy except
that accorded to them by Abraham and Sarah. But they have the
same future as everyone in holy Israel: a portion in the
world to come.... By the normative Judaism... the children of the
flesh are the children of the promise." (p. 97)
A final point: Paul quotes the passage from Malachi which has God
choosing Jacob while rejecting Esau. A few verses later Malachi
also calls Edom, the descendants of Esau, "the people to
whom the LORD shows wrath forever." (Malachi 1:4) This
sounds pretty dismal for the Edomites, except that Malachi's
point is in answer to the question: How has God loved Israel? In
other words, Edom (hated, rejected) is used as the archetypical
counterpoint to God's great love shown to Israel.
The actual situation for Edomites was quite different.
Deuteronomy 23:8-9 (MT) tells us, "Do not abhor an Edomite,
for he is your brother; do not abhor an Egyptian, for you were an
alien in his land. The third generation of children born to them
may enter the assembly of the LORD." Here the move toward
inclusion is extended even beyond the natural boundaries of
Israel to allow for certain outsiders to join themselves to the
covenant nation. From early on, Israel had an immigration policy!
Once again, Paul's argument fails.
Notes
1. Jacob
Neusner, Children of the Flesh, Children of the Promise: A
Rabbi Talks with Paul (Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press,
1995), pages as noted in the text.
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© 2002 Charles F. Hudson
