Question

"Come," they say, "let us destroy them as a nation,

that the name of Israel be remembered no more" (Ps. 83:4).

Psalm 83 is a prayer for God to rise up and destroy those who are seeking to destroy Israel -- to wipe the nation of Israel off the face of the earth.  It was written by David, or in the time of David, and sung as a hymn in the Temple, around the year 1000 BCE.  In the Psalm, the nations of the world surrounding Israel are enumerated and named:  With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you [God].

Why is it that the nations of the earth have always been trying to destroy Israel?  Is there any other nation that has throughout history been so frequently and deliberately attacked, that other nations have always wanted to destroy?  What is it about Israel that draws such hatred?

There is a story that once Queen Victoria asked her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli to give her one proof for the existence of God.  "The Jew, your majesty," was Disraeli's reply.   There is no explanation for the continued existence of the Jewish nation and of the Jewish race except that God Himself has preserved them, in spite of every effort of man to destroy them. 

In the 27th Chapter of Genesis, we find a clue:  Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him.  He said to himself: "The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob."

In the beginning (Gen. 12), God had selected Abraham as His vehicle of blessing for all nations:  all nations shall bless themselves through you.  Those who bless you, I will bless; those who curse you, I will curse.  The nation of Israel was "chosen" to represent God on earth:  those who hate God will hate Israel also; those who love God will love Israel. 

"Why was Israel chosen?  What about the rest of us?"  a student of comparative religions once asked the teacher.  The teacher, who was Jewish, had no good answer for the class.  But the answer can be found in Scripture:  it was not enough for Abram to be "exalted father" (of the Jewish nation). God changed his name to Abraham -- father of many nations. God chose one man, one family, one tribe, one nation, through whom He could bless the entire world. By our relationship with Abraham, we bless or we curse ourselves.

In the story of Esau and Jacob, Esau hated his brother, who had received his father's blessing, but later, Esau was to receive the same blessing through the hands of Jacob, who had been blessed by God.  In the same way, Joseph was also hated by his brothers because he had received from their father a blessing.  The brothers "buried" Joseph and sold him into slavery to a foreign nation, thinking to forever wipe him off the face of the earth.  But Joseph, by the power and preservation of God, "resurrected" to become a blessing to all of his brothers.  The entire history of the world down to our own times can be written in fraternal love or hatred toward the nation of Israel.

And Jesus, the fruit of Israel, was also "hated without cause" (Jn 15).  At the last supper, Jesus was referring to Psalm 35:

Let not those gloat over me

who were my enemies without cause;

they do  not speak peaceably,

but devise false accusations...

They gape at me and say, "Aha! Aha!

With our own eyes, we have seen it."

Jesus clearly told His disciples that if the world hated Him, it would also hate them, for "no servant is above his master." 

We live in a time when the entire world is aligning itself for or against Israel; my guess is that whatever happens to Israel now will also happen to the Christian people.  We may be facing Armeggedon, but the nation of Israel will continue.  If we read the Book of Revelation, we can see "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say.