Why do the nations rage against Israel?
This verse in our parashah, Haazinu, stood out to me: “When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the division of humanity, God fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers.” Deut. 32:8. I’ve read this before, but this time, in light of all that is happening in the world today, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Throughout human history, one nation after another has gone to war to capture territory and people, in order to expand its own, some for practical reasons, and others for mere power. However, the wars that have been waged time and again against a people called Israel have never been for territory or adding people to their numbers; rather, it has been about annihilating this people. Today, they may protest that it is over land that they insist belongs to them, but the facts paint quite a different picture.
What does it mean, “…God fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers.”? One opinion I read states: “As it stands, this verse implies that God divided all of humanity into a certain number of nations according to the number of Israelites. Many interpreters assume this means that God established 70 nations (Genesis 10) to match Jacob’s 70 offspring” (Exodus 1:5). And another view was “…that Israel is a microcosm of the world; Just as there is diversity within Israel, so there is diversity in the world.” This last view, to me, was an extraordinary revelation and shows just how important Israel is in God’s eye; in fact, Scriptures call us “the apple or the pupil of God’s eye. Do we realize our importance? I tremble at the understanding that we are the microcosm of the world, because it reveals to us just how responsible we are for the status quo of the nations of the world, and perhaps this demonstrates why things happen to us the way they do. On October 7, 2023, there was such a virulent attack upon Israel since the Holocaust that the people there and around the world are still reeling from it. Did it have anything to do with land? Absolutely not. PM Ariel Sharon made sure that every last Jew was removed from Gaza, leaving thriving businesses and homes behind. Not one Israeli was left in Gaza. That attack goes much deeper than land.
The Middle East has been a hotbed of jealousy and rivalry since biblical times, when Israel was first established as a nation by God Himself.
The Hebrew Scriptures are replete with stories of how jealousy sparked violence. It began with the first two sons of Adam and Eve…Cain and Abel. What happened? Out of sheer gratitude, and taught well by his parents who knew the results of disobeying the warnings of their God, Abel brought the best of his flock to honour Him. It says that Cain, however, just brought “an offering.” Cain’s was rejected because of his intentions. Did he think he could fool God? Cain was so angry that in a fit of jealousy, he murdered his brother. Circumstances may change over the millennia, but the principles remain the same. The nations may rage over why Israel was chosen and accepted by God, believing that they were not. Yet this verse…” God fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers…” tells a different story; that God loves all His creation and that there is a relationship that He established between us.
In the same way that God asked Cain, “Why are you so angry?”, the psalmist in Psalm 2:1 asks: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together, against the LORD and His Anointed:” Christians may use this to point to Jesus Christ, but the kings of the earth never took their stand against Rabbi Yeshua, whose name and character they later changed. They have always fought against God’s Chosen People, out of jealousy and thinking that they have not been chosen. This is the furthest thing from the truth, for their boundaries were also fixed by God, and each one is special in God’s sight; they simply did not have Israel’s role.
Jealousy drove Joseph’s brothers to plot against him, but instead of murdering him, they sold him to Midianite slave traders. God used this for good, for in the end, he was able to save his family as well as all the other nations in the region at the time of the great famine. Psalm 2 continues in verse 10: “Now therefore, O you kings, be wise; be admonished, you judges of the earth. 11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Do homage in purity, lest He be angry, and you perish on the way, when suddenly His wrath is kindled. Happy (Ashrei) are all who take refuge in Him.” In Rabbi Yeshua’s Sermon on the Mount, he quoted the Hebrew Scriptures, using “Ashrei, happy are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, etc., exhorting his people to return to the Torah.
Our prophet Isaiah told us in 52:7, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger bringing good news, announcing peace, the harbinger of good tidings announcing salvation; that says to Zion: ‘Your God reigns!’” Israel was chosen to be that messenger of good news first to its own people…that says to Zion, your God reigns, and then to the rest of the world. But how many people want to hear this today?
After WW2, England and France didn’t understand the consequences of their interference with the “boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers”. The Arabs were also unaware of the Sykes-Picot Agreement that the British and French had secretly made. Through this agreement, Britain and France divided the Middle East between themselves into areas of direct or indirect control. Britain did everything it could to keep Jews from returning to their ancestral home, and I believe that the problems they are having today are a direct consequence of this Antisemitic behaviour. On October 7th, two years ago, on what, this year, will be the first day of Sukkoth, Hamas raged and plotted against God’s people; they couldn’t know the fury this would release upon their own people.
Moses’ song in Haazinu is a two-sided coin: On one hand, in verse 14, he sings: “Yeshurun grew fat and kicked—you grew fat and gross and coarse —They forsook the God who made them and spurned the Rock of their support.” Yeshua, too, was angry with his own people because he loved them. He knew the consequences of adding to and taking away from God’s Torah, and he wanted us to return to it — to do teshuva. Yochanan ben Zechariah, later renamed John the Baptist, was immersing people in the Jordan River before Yom Kippur. He had left the Temple in Jerusalem in disgust. He moved out into the desert with a group of priests who called themselves the Essenes, disgusted by the corruption that was taking place at the hands of the Pharisees and Sadducees. These men had bought their positions and were controlled by Rome. These religious elite didn’t want to “rock the boat: filled with power and money, and finally gave up our rebellious Rabbi Yeshua to Rome, accusing him of being a political agitator. The general population loved him and followed him wherever he went. Who are these Pharisees and Sadducees of today? Who amongst our people has grown fat (i.e., prosperous), gross and coarse? Who has forsaken the GOD who made them? At one point, every one of us…until we do teshuva.
Verse 17 sings out that: “They sacrificed to false gods, gods they had never known, new ones, who came later….” What is the First Commandment? “Have no other gods than the GOD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery.” Again, how many want to hear that today, even in our own families?
Verse 20 of this last song of Moses to his people sings out to us: “[God] said: I will hide My countenance from them, and see how they fare in the end. For they are a treacherous breed, children with no loyalty in them.” I know what it is like to have God hide His face from me. It is the most desolate feeling imaginable. In the morning, I wished it were the night, and at night, I wished it were morning. There was nowhere to find peace. These words of Moses sound harsh, but he was a desperate father singing them out to his people so that they could go through life with hope and peace, no matter how hard their enemies came at them. They also apply to us today.
In verses 29-30, God is basically calling us a bunch of dummies: “If they were wise, they would think about this and gain insight into their future: ‘How could one have routed a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them,יהוה had given them up?’ This is also a two-sided coin; on one hand, how could only a few Nazi guards in the camps control thousands of Jews? Why didn’t they fight back? Why were they like lambs to the slaughter? And how, on the other hand, can one small army, the IDF, of a nation with fewer than 10 million people, win a war against so many surrounding enemy nations with significantly more people?
Then verse 36 shines out like a light in a dark room: “For יהוה will vindicate God’s people and take revenge for God’s servants, upon seeing that their might is gone, and neither slave nor free is left.” And verse 39: “See, then, that I, I am the One; There is no god beside Me. I deal death and give life; I wound and I will heal: None can deliver from My hand.” Now, instead of “Why do the nations rage?” Moses ends his song with: “O nations, acclaim God’s people! For He’ll avenge the blood of His servants, wreak vengeance on His foes, and cleanse His people’s land.”
Back to the beginning of the song in Deut. 32:8: “When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the division of humanity, God fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers.” Do we realize how awesome a statement this is? No nation, like England, France, Germany or the USA, can divide up the world as they see fit, for only the God of Israel holds the final map of the world in His hands, and He fixes the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel’s numbers.
I’ll end with Isaiah 52:10 “The LORD has made bare His holy arm in the sight of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” The worse the world gets, the more I look forward to seeing this come to pass, for it may happen in not my lifetime, but perhaps then in the generations to come!
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo