How God Came to Hate Israel!
Short Short: How God Came to Hate Israel!
In the Evangelical world, the title of this short article may seem shocking and unworthy of consideration.. After all, did not YHVH say to Israel: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you” (Jeremiah 31:3)? And did not YHVH affirm His love Israel above all nations (Amos 3:1f)? How then could it be suggested that God could ever come to hate Israel? (I am sure that this article will be labelled as anti-semitic but I hope that the reader will conssider the facts carefully. Consider two facts.
First, there were times in Israel’s history that she actually became the enemy of God. How could that happen? Very simply, when Israel abandoned Torah and began worshiping other gods, she became God’s enemy. Consider this list of OT passages that inform us how and when Israel did become the enemy of God:
Isaiah 59:17-19 – “He put on the garments of vengeance, Surely I will repay, fury to my Adversaries.”
Isaiah 63:10 – “But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; So He turned Himself against them as an enemy, And He fought against them.”
Isaiah 66:3f– Those who thought they were doing a service for God, would persecute the faithful by “putting them out” of the temple. In so doing, they became the enemy of God, and God would “fully repay His enemies.” 66:6– The sound of noise from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the Lord, Who fully repays His enemies!”
Micah 2:8 – “Lately My people have risen up as an enemy — You pull off the robe with the garment
From those who trust you, as they pass by, Like men returned from war.”
Micah 7:10 – Then she who is my enemy will see, And shame will cover her who said to me, “Where is the Lord your God?” My eyes will see her; Now she will be trampled down Like mud in the streets.
Later, even Judah and Benjamin became God’s enemy in the same way that the northern tribes had.
Jeremiah 30:14 – “All your lovers have forgotten you; They do not seek you; For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, With the chastisement of a cruel one, For the multitude of your iniquities, Because your sins have increased.”
Lamentations 2:4 – “Standing as an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel, He has swallowed up all her palaces, He has destroyed her strongholds”
See my more in-depth discussion of how Israel became the enemy of God– even in the NT- and the consequences of that in my book, Who Is This Babylon?
So, simply stated, Israel and then Judah became the enemy of God by abandoning the Law of Moses, by worshiping other gods. And we can add to that the sin of killing the prophets sent to them to call them to repentance. Not only did Israel become the enemy of God, but, their sin was so egregious, so horrible, that the Lord said He came to hate them!
Notice Amos 4:4-5 –
Come to Bethel and transgress, At Gilgal multiply transgression; Bring your sacrifices every morning, Your tithes every three days. Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, Proclaim and announce the freewill offerings; For this you love, You children of Israel!” Says the Lord God.
The situation described here was speaking of the ten northern tribes, and their worship centers of Bethel (which meant, ironically, “house of God”) and Gilgal. The Lord was saying that when they gathered to worship Him they were actually zealously assembling to sin!
In the parallel book of Hosea we then find this:
All their wickedness is in Gilgal, For there I hated them. Because of the evil of their deeds I will drive them from My house; I will love them no more. All their princes are rebellious. 16 Ephraim is stricken, Their root is dried up; They shall bear no fruit. Yes, were they to bear children, I would kill the darlings of their womb. (Hosea 9:15 – My emphasis).
What we find here is the out-working of the Law of Blessings and Cursings of Deuteronomy 28-30 and Leviticus 26. In both of those passages the Lord warned the nation that if they forsook Him and abandoned His laws, that He would destroy them. He would remove them from the Land that He had given them.
In spite of these dire warnings, amazingly, the people whom the Lord had created, nurtured, protected and blessed as His chosen people became so morally corrupt, so religiously perverted, that their Maker came to hate them! He grew to hate even their feast days:
I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream (Amos 5:21ff).
It is a powerful testament to the ability of man to corrupt that which was intended to glorify God and turn it into an abomination! When Israel lost her respect and awe of her Creator and His Law, and became obsessed with money, power, greed, sensuality, they turned that which was holy into a means to oppress the poor and the innocent. Thus, God came to “hate” those sacred times of the feast days. Israel turned from being God’s chosen into God’s enemy. And the result of that would not be good.
Amos 8:7-10 describes those consequences:
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall the land not tremble for this, And everyone mourn who dwells in it? All of it shall swell like the River, Heave and subside Like the River of Egypt. “And it shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord God, “That I will make the sun go down at noon, And I will darken the earth in broad daylight; I will turn your feasts into mourning, And all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist, And baldness on every head; I will make it like mourning for an only son, And its end like a bitter day.
In my youth I heard preachers apply this text to the events of Jesus’ crucifixion when the sun was darkened and there was an earthquake. That is an unfortunate interpretation, however. This language is the language of the Day of the Lord when He was to judge His rebellious people. Amos 5:18f gives this:
Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! For what good is the day of the Lord to you? It will be darkness, and not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion, And a bear met him! Or as though he went into the house, Leaned his hand on the wall, And a serpent bit him! Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light? Is it not very dark, with no brightness in it?
These are the verses that lead directly into the dire threat of God turning their feast days into mourning. At a later period of time, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were the prophets to Judah and Israel. They warned Jerusalem to turn from the same sins that the ten tribes had committed. Instead, they continued in their sensuality, their cruelty, their social injustices (cf. Jeremiah 7). And thus, just as God threatened the ten tribes with national destruction at the Day of the Lord (cf. Micah 1:2ff), in Jeremiah 4 we find the prediction of the impending Day of the Lord against Jerusalem in language that sounded like the destruction of creation:
I beheld, and indeed there was no man, And all the birds of the heavens had fled. I beheld, and indeed the fruitful land was a wilderness, And all its cities were broken down At the presence of the Lord, By His fierce anger. For thus says the Lord: “The whole land shall be desolate; Yet I will not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, And the heavens above be black, Because I have spoken. I have purposed and will not relent, Nor will I turn back from it (Jeremiah 4:25-28 / See also Zephaniah 1).
Ezekiel 13:5-6 likewise spoke of Israel’s sin and her blindness to the fate that was coming, as she was pre-occupied with their own lawlessness:
You have not gone up into the gaps to build a wall for the house of Israel to stand in battle on the day of the Lord. They have envisioned futility and false divination, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord!’ But the Lord has not sent them; yet they hope that the word may be confirmed.
I think it goes without saying that it would do no good to build any kind of wall that would stand up against the Day of the Lord as traditionally imagined and described! We thus have God threatening to bring national judgment, in this case at the hands of the Babylonians, on the city. That national destruction, which occurred in BC 586, was one of the crushing points in all of Israel’s history. It came about because, as Lamentations cited above shows, Judah had become the enemy of YHVH, and through her perverse immorality, injustice, and cruelty, God came to hate her, just as He came to hate her “elder sister.”
So, what do Amos and Hosea and these other texts teach us? They show that no matter how beloved Israel was, when she turned her back on God and His law, she became the enemy of God. And more, God grew to “hate her.” This completely flies in the face of modern Dispensational thought that teaches that God’s love for Israel, often expressed in their possession of the land, was unconditional. That Biblical fact is that Israel’s relationship with the Lord, expressed in her dwelling in the land, was strictly conditional.
All of this brings us to consider the modern state of “Israel.” We are told in the most ardent of terms and claims that “Israel” – God’s chosen people – was restored in 1948 in fulfillment of prophecy. Yet, as I document in my book, Israel 1948: Countdown to No Where, over 80 percent of those claiming to be Jews who returned to the land, were in fact atheists, agnostics and unbelievers! (And that is still, for all practical purposes, still true today). This is a historical fact.
So, in Scripture, when Israel was in sin, she was cast out of the land, punished with national “death” and exile (See especially Hosea 13:6ff). . She was NEVER blessed while in a state of rebellion against God– much less being atheists! – by being returned to the land. When Israel was in massive disobedience, massive rebellion, massive sin, God came to hate her!
Are we supposed to believe that the modern state of “Israel” that is comprised of a majority of:
Atheists
Agnostics
Unbelievers
Those who literally hate the very name of Jesus, the Son of God.
That is a hotbed of sexual immorality….
We are supposed to believe that this nation is beloved by God and not – as always in the past when she was so sinful- hated by YHVH? We are supposed to believe that God blessed that nation of rebels, of those who hate His son, by restoring them to the land, when in all past history, He removed them from the land due to sins not as heinous as killing His Son???
The very idea that God would bless and restore a nation of ungodly rebels in 1948 flies in the face of the righteousness of God. Since when did (does) God not hate sin, sins as grievous and egregious as those of modern “Israel”? When did He not Hate those sins?
It has to be kept in mind that the singular unexceptional condition for Israel’s possession of the land, or her return to it after exile, was repentance and a return to obedience of the Law of Moses. See Deuteronomy 30 for definitive proof. And for an in-depth study of Israel and the Land see my DVD presentation on Israel and the Land.
So, the reader must ask themselves the following questions:
Was the “nation of Israel” in a state of repentance in 1948? The answer is that no one, literally no one claims that they were! As noted above, the vast majority of those who returned were atheists, agnostics and unbelievers.
Second, a self answering question directly related to the first is: Did “Israel” that returned in 1948 begin obeying the Law of Moses? Had they begun to obey it as a pre-condition for the return? Again, the answer is self evident. It can hardly be suggested much less argued, that a nation comprised in the vast majority of atheists and unbelievers were or are being obedient to the Law!
The final consideration is the question of whether those who returned in 1948 were in fact genealogically confirmed Israelites. Recent DNA testing belies that claim. Not only that, but there are no genealogical records in existence today to confirm the “Israelite” identity of anyone–much less a Levite! Even anthropological studies confirm that there is no homogeneous nation of people today that is descended by blood from Abraham! See my 1948 book for full documentation.
When one considers the Christ hating, non-Torah observant, morally bankrupt nature of modern Israel, it is a true challenge to ask, why would God ever bless that nation?