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Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?
Sometimes
you will encounter the assertion that the New
Testament is anti-Semitic, and therefore invalid.
Of course, this assertion is not true. The authors
of the New Testament, who wrote under the inspiration
of the Spirit of the God of Israel, were faithful
and loyal Jews who loved their own people. These
great Jewish men were no more anti-Semitic than
the prophet Isaiah, who 700 years earlier wrote
in the most scathing terms about our people. Consider
the opening words of his book: “Listen
O Heavens and hear O Earth; for Adonai speaks:
'Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have
revolted against Me. An ox knows its owner, and
a donkey its master's manger, but Israel does
not know, My people do not understand.' Alas,
sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers, sons who act corruptly!"
(Isaiah 1:2-4).
Isaiah
told us that the Jewish people, whom the Lord
lovingly took care of, and to whom He gave tremendous
opportunities, revolted against our Heavenly Father.
This made us appear more stupid than the ox or
donkey, who at least know who their owners are,
and where the feeding trough is. These beasts
are grateful to their masters for their loving
care, but God's sons were less intelligent than
these dumb animals. We no longer knew who our
Father was, were far from God, and we refused
to return to Him!
Isaiah
called the nation of Israel a "goy chotay"
- a sinful nation that missed the mark. Of all
the nations on Earth, the Creator intended Israel
to know Him best of all; to love and obey Him,
so that we could bring the knowledge of God, salvation,
atonement, the Messiah and eternal life to the
other nations of the world, who had strayed so
far from the Lord. But the Chosen People were
no longer fulfilling His purposes for our nation!
We were
weighed down with "avon" - iniquity.
Our nation was not straight and upright, but had
become bent, crooked, twisted, perverted.
We were
described as the offspring of "ray-eem"
- evildoers. We consistently failed to do what
was good and desirable and beneficial, but were
singularly skilled at doing what was harmful and
injurious.
We were
called "banim mash-chee-teem" - corrupt
sons. We had become spoiled. We were marred, destroyed,
ruined, like a rotten piece of fruit or a bad
piece of meat, which is no longer edible.
We were
compared to vile Sodom and corrupt Gomorrah, deserving
precisely the same fate as those wicked cities
(see 1:9-10). Once we had been like a delightful,
beautiful, faithful wife, sharing closeness and
intimacy with God, but now were called a "zonah"
- a prostitute, a common whore, adulterous and
unfaithful to the One we were supposed to be united
to. Can you imagine marrying a beautiful young
lady, who appears to be virtuous, good, noble,
kind, generous and loving, only later to discover
that she has been engaging in prostitution? Adonai
must have felt hurt, betrayed and angry when His
beloved nation became unfaithful to Him, rejecting
our covenant with Him, betraying our special relationship
to Him (see 1:21). We were once like silver -
rare, precious, valuable, beautiful and useful,
but we became dross - those worthless metals and
impurities that are scraped off in the refining
process and are thrown away. Once we were like
delicious wine, but we became like cheap wine
diluted with water - weak, tasteless and disappointing
(see 1:22).
Meanwhile,
we were very religious, and assumed that we were
completely acceptable to the Almighty! We regularly
went to the Temple in Jerusalem and prayed there,
making all the various sacrifices that the Torah
prescribed, and observing all the holidays and
the Sabbath. But in reality we were hypocrites
who abandoned the Lord, despised the Holy One
of Israel, and turned away from Him (see 1:4,
11-15).
Even though
we were engaged in all kinds of religious activities,
nevertheless from the Divine perspective we were
full of tzo-ah (from "ya-tza" - to go
out, to go forth, and so it means that which goes
out of the human body - in other words - excrement)
that needed to be washed away. From God's perspective,
we desperately needed to be washed from our moral
and spiritual filthiness (see 4:4).
Therefore,
God Himself would become our adversary, and fight
against us, raising up terrible enemies who would
defeat us. Many Jewish people would be killed.
Our magnificent city of Jerusalem would be destroyed
and turned into an abandoned field (see 1:24-25,
5:14-17).
Isaiah
spelled out the nation's sins in vivid detail,
called us insulting names, made graphic and crude
references to us, made unflattering and insulting
comparisons, and threatened that God Himself would
bring upon us the severest punishments, judgments,
destruction and death.
Was Isaiah
an anti-Semite? Of course not! He was a faithful
son of Israel who wanted what was best for his
nation. And not surprisingly, interspersed with
the insults and judgments, Isaiah also communicated
God's continuing love for His sinful nation, His
commitment to His people's ultimate well-being,
and the glorious future that awaits us.
In their
New Testament writings, Paul and Yochanan (John)
are usually singled out for alleged anti-Semitism,
but the desire of Rabbi Paul's heart was for the
salvation of the Jewish people. He was the one
who had "great sorrow and unending grief"
in his heart for the people whom he loved; so
much so, that he would willingly have been separated
from God for eternity, if that could have brought
about the salvation of Israel. Is that the heart
of an anti-Semite? Yochanan was the one who recorded
the vision he was shown of eternity, of the glorious
New Jerusalem, whose gates are written with the
names of the twelve tribes of Israel. Are we to
believe this is a Jew-hater? No!
We should
learn from both Israel’s prophets and Messiah's
emissaries that sometimes love must be blunt,
unflattering, even seemingly cruel. There are
times when the doctor must inject poisons into
the body of his cancer patient for him to live.
The surgeon must sometimes employ highly invasive
procedures to cut out the cancer if the patient
is to survive. The physician must amputate the
leg that is full of gangrene for the life of his
patient to be sustained. It was the Great Physician
who inspired men such as Isaiah, Paul and Yochanan
with these very hard words in order to restore
us to health and bring about our healing.
I only wish that there were more Isaiahs, Pauls and Yochanans among
us, with the love, the courage and the chutzpah to tell us the truth
that would turn the United States, and my Jewish people, back to the
Holy One of Israel, whom we have likewise abandoned.
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