The Jews as a Chosen People

Tradition and transformation

S. Leyla Gurkan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134037063
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

The concept of the Jews as a chosen people is a key element of the Jewish faith and identity. This book explores the idea of chosenness from the ancient world, through modernity and into the Post-Holocaust era.

Analysing a vast corpus of biblical, ancient, rabbinic and modern Jewish literature, the author seeks to give a better understanding of this central doctrine of the Jewish religion. She shows that although the idea of chosenness has been central to Judaism and Jewish self-definition, it has not been carried to the present day in the same form. Instead it has gone through constant change, depending on who is employing it, against what sort of background, and for what purpose. Surveying the different and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the doctrine of chosenness that appear in Ancient, Modern, and Post-Holocaust periods, the dominant themes of 'Holiness', 'Mission', and 'Survival' are identified in each respective period. The theological, philosophical, and sociological dimensions of the question of Jewish chosenness are thus examined in their historical context, as responses to the challenges of Christianity, Modernity, and the Holocaust in particular.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Jewish Studies, the Holocaust, religion and theology.

Part I

Chosenness as ‘holiness’

1 The biblical language of chosenness

The expression ‘the chosen people’ (‘am hanivhar), which has been employed more than any other term to designate the Jewish people by both Jewish and non-Jewish scholars in the modern period, is found almost nowhere in the Hebrew Bible.¹ Instead, in the Torah, the term ‘holy people’ (‘am qadosh—Dt. 7:6; 14:2, etc.) or ‘holy nation’ (goy qadosh—Ex. 19:6), among others, is often used in association with the people of Israel. The Hebrew word qadosh, translated into English as ‘holy’, comes from the root qdsh, which means in its precise sense ‘to separate or set apart from common use to the divine purpose’,² as it is written: ‘You shall be holy (qedushim) to me; for I the Lord am holy (qadosh), and I have separated (havdil) you from the other peoples to be mine’ (Lev. 20:26).³ The expression ‘You shall be holy for I the Lord am holy’ is repeated several times in the book of Leviticus, with some little nuances. And most of the repetition takes place between chapters 17 and 26, what is known as the Holiness Code (11:44–5; 19:2; 20:7; 20:26). A similar expression such as ‘You shall be/are a people holy to your God’ is also used in several passages throughout Jewish Scripture (Num. 15:40; Dt. 7:6; 2 Chr. 35:3). In this way, Israel’s holiness consists in her being set apart for a specific purpose, i.e. the service of God, according to which Israel’s entire life is directly regulated by God.⁴ In fact, ‘holiness’ is one of the most distinctive attributes of God in the Hebrew Bible, as it refers to an ultimate separation of God from all other beings: ‘Who is like you O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness’ (Ex. 15:11; also 1 Sam. 2:2; Ps. 29:2). In the same way, the holiness of the people of Israel above other peoples denotes a fundamental separation between Israel and other peoples: ‘Who is like your people Israel, one nation on earth’ (1 Chr. 17:21; also 2 Sam. 7:23). The meaning of ‘chosenness’ is also included in the word qadosh for ‘separation to be holy’, when attributed to creatures, is understood to be tantamount to election.

Apart from the ‘holy people’ some other phrases used in the Hebrew Bible in relation to Israel are the ‘treasured possession’ (‘am segullah—Ex. 19:5; Dt. 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps. 135:4), ‘God’s own portion’ (heleq YHWH—Dt. 4:20; 9:26; 32:9), and ‘a people of inheritance’ (‘am nahalah—Dt. 4:20; Ex. 34:9). The expression ‘kingdom of priests’ (mamlekhet qohanim—Ex. 19:6), on the other hand, appears in one place making a pair with the ‘holy nation’, which points to the people of Israel as both a political and religious entity.⁵ Again, expressions like the ‘children of God’ (banim la YHWH—Dt. 14:1; Ezk. 36:20), ‘my people’ (‘ammi—Ex. 3:7, 10; Isa. 1:3; 3:12; Jer. 30:22; Ezk. 37:27; Hos. 11:7; Joel 2:26; Amos 9:14, etc.), ‘my servant’ (‘avadai—Lev. 25:55; Isa. 41:8; 42:1, etc.), ‘my witnesses’ (edai—Isa. 43:10; 44:8) and also ‘my beloved’ (didi—Jer. 11:15) are found especially in the prophetic books. Moreover, in the book of Isaiah, there is a unique depiction of Israel as a people created to be a ‘covenant people’ (berit ‘am—42:6) and a ‘light of the nations’ (or goyim/‘amim—42:6; 49:6; 51:4), which would give rise to the idea of a Jewish mission later in Jewish thought.

The Hebrew root bhr, which means ‘to choose’, is also mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in relation to the people of Israel as well as the land of Israel, the Patriarchs, and some other biblical figures. It is used mostly in a verb form, as in the case of ‘the Lord your God has chosen (bahar) you out of all the peoples’ (Dt. 7:6; also 4:37; 10:15; 14:2; Gen. 18:19; Isa. 41:8; 44:1; Ps. 33:12). It appears approximately 39 times in the book of Deuteronomy, and a third of these references is applied to the people of Israel. According to E.W. Nicholson, the deuteronomic use of the verb bahar to define God’s action on Israel’s behalf in history is of a distinctive nature as it is with this usage that ‘the doctrine of Yahweh’s election of Israel to be his people, though implied in Israel’s faith from the beginning, is first defined in Deuteronomy’.⁶ Robert H. Pfeiffer, on the other hand, maintains that ‘It was ultimately from J the Deuteronomist derived the daring notion that Israel was the chosen people of God’.⁷

As regards the vocabulary of chosenness, Arnold Eisen draws attention to the fact that whereas the term

‘chosen people’ makes chosenness an ascriptive status, a quality inherent in the people as such, the Hebrew reliance on active verbs, such as ‘God chose,’ ‘God loved,’ ‘God knew,’ or ‘God called,’ describes only what God did and indicates what Israel must to do in response.

Eisen also hastens to add that the biblical expressions such as ‘am segullah and ‘am qadosh place ‘chosenness in passive, adjectival voice comparable to “chosen people”, thus making of election a status’.⁸ In fact, alongside the above-mentioned receptive expressions, there are some other examples in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the book of Isaiah, in which Israel is referred to as ‘my chosen/ elected people’ (‘ami behiri—Isa. 43:20) once, and as ‘my chosen/elected ones’ (behiri/behirai—Isa. 42:1; 43:20; 45:5, etc.) or ‘his chosen/elected ones’ (behirav—Ps. 105:6; I Chr. 16:13) several times, with an apparent parallel with the term ‘chosen people’ (‘am hanivhar). In addition to this, the original Hebrew vocabulary of chosenness, as used in the Jewish Scripture as well as in rabbinic literature, incorporates a tension between quality-based (receptive) and duty-based (responsive) formulations of chosenness. A statement like ‘you are a people holy to your God’ (Dt. 7:6; cf. 28:9), which suggests a status and quality on the part of Israel, makes an obvious contrast with ‘you shall be holy, for I am holy’ (Lev. 11:45; Num. 15:40–1), for the latter does not denote a status of holiness but instead, requires the people of Israel to act in a holy way, by imposing on them a privileged responsibility. As with this, Ronald Clements rightly asserts that in the deuteronomic statement (‘you are a people holy’), the holiness of Israel is presented as an ‘established fact’ instead of a ‘spiritual ambition’, which is rather indicated in the statement of Leviticus and Numbers (‘you shall be holy’).⁹ Again, as we have seen, the biblical terminology in respect of God’s relation to Israel mostly consists of terms that connote an ownership and sovereignty on God’s part and a status on Israel’s part, such as ‘special possession’ (segullah), ‘portion’ (heleq), and ‘inheritance/heritage’ (nahala). This vocabulary, which implies a natural bond between God and Israel, draws a contrast, on the surface, with the verbal use mentioned above, i.e. ‘God chose’. However, the reason why ‘God has chosen’ Israel is also given as that they are ‘to be his people, his treasured possession’ (Dt. 7:6; 14:2; Ps. 135:4) or ‘to be his inheritance’ (Ps. 33:12), which refers to an apparent association of an active usage with a passive status.¹⁰ The special relationship between Israel and God is also strengthened by another expression which depicts God as the portion of Israel this time: ‘The Lord is my allotted portion [heleqi]‘¹¹ (Ps. 16:5; also 73:26; Lam. 3:24—JPS translation).

Election and covenant

Israel is designated in the Hebrew Bible as a people ‘established’ or ‘formed’ by God for himself (2 Sam. 7:24; Isa. 43:1, 21), which might point to two different meanings: either that Israel as a nation is uniquely formed by God right at the beginning (eternal election) or that only after entering into a covenant with God at Sinai the tribes of Israel were made into a holy people (historical election). In fact, one can find evidence of both formulations in the Hebrew Bible.

In the book of Deuteronomy we are told that Israel is God’s portion right from the beginning:

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance (nehel) … He set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. For the portion (heleq) of the Lord is His people, Jacob the lot (hebel) of His inheritance (nahalah).¹²

(Dt. 32:8–9—Soncino Chumash translation)

Again, Jeremiah 2:3, where Israel is declared as ‘holy to the Lord, the first fruits (reshith) of his harvest’, implies a primordial existence on the part of Israel and this is the way that the passage has been interpreted in rabbinic literature (Lev. R. 36:4). In a parallel passage, in the book of Isaiah, Israel is also designated as the one who is ‘chosen’ and ‘formed in the womb’ by God (44:1–2). According to this, some later actions in the history of Israel (i.e. the Exodus and Sinai) are not so much to establish but more to express this already-existing holiness or chosenness of Israel.

On the other hand, the chosenness of Israel is frequently associated with an historical event, namely God’s delivering the tribes of Israel from Egyptian bondage in order to make them his own people (Dt. 4:20, 32–4; 9:26–7; Lev. 11:45; 22:33, etc.). It is also written that if only the people of Israel ‘keep the commandments of the Lord’ God will establish them as ‘his holy people’ (Dt. 28:9; 29:13). In Amos, in particular, the notion of an innate or substantial separation of Israel from other peoples is explicitly repudiated, as it is written: ‘Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?’ (9:7).

In parallel to this, it is emphasized that the people of Israel, as a people chosen by God, are charged with greater responsibilities: ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities’ (3:2). Here the only difference between Israel and other peoples is suggested to be the religious—ethical responsibilities imposed on the former,¹³ namely that a proper response was expected from the people of Israel in response to God’s choosing them.

In this way, chosenness or holiness of Israel, as an eternal quality, seems to make a contrast with the obligations of the covenant. There are, in fact, three major covenants mentioned in the Torah, namely Noahide, Abrahamic and Sinaitic covenants, of which the last two are particularly essential to the concept of chosenness. The Abrahamic or Patriarchal covenant, being personal and intimate in nature, is formulated as an unconditional ‘promise’ through which God chooses and blesses Abraham and grants him many children and the possession of the land of Canaan (Gen. 12:1–3; 17:2–14.). The Sinaitic covenant, on the other hand, which is public and formal in nature, is set up as a ‘contract’ agreement between God and the people of Israel, requiring mutual obligations from both parties (Ex. 19:5–8; Dt. 26:16–19). As a matter of fact, there is quite a complicated relation between the two: one referring to an everlasting promise and a privilege (‘I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant’) and the other referring to a set of obligations (‘the Lord your God is commanding you to observe these statutes and ordinances’). On the one hand, the chosenness of Israel is justified as going back to the unconditional promise made to Abraham and later repeated with Isaac and Jacob (Dt. 4:37; 7:8; 10:15) as well as to God’s love for the Patriarchs, which renders election an eternal one (Dt. 4:31). On the other hand, the covenant of contract made at Sinai binds Israel to full obedience to God and his commandments (Torah), as a condition for the continuity of the promises of the covenant, if not the covenant itself (Dt. 8:1; 11:22; 26:16; 28:9). According to some, the covenant made at Sinai indicates that God was not related to Israel by ‘physical’ or ‘natural’ ties, like other gods were to their peoples, but, instead, with a ‘free act of will’ in which both parties, God as an initiator and Israel as a responder, had taken part,¹⁴ as it is written: ‘So Moses came and summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. The people all answered as one: “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do”’ (Ex. 19:7–8).

However, in the renewed covenant agreement at Moab the people of Israel are described as left with no choice but to accept the agreement:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him…

(Dt. 30:19)

According to the passage, the Torah looks not like something given to Israel, but rather as something forced upon her. Nevertheless, in the time of Joshua the covenant between God and Israel was renewed on the basis of the people’s choosing to serve God alone through their own free will (Jos. 24:16–27). Another such renewal of the covenant was also made with later generations under the leadership of David (2 Sam. 7–8) and Ezra (ch. 9). In this way, the apparent arbitrariness of God’s election of Israel through Abraham and the imposition of the covenant decrees on the people of Israel are combined with human free will.

Yet chosenness overall retains its eternal and conditional dimensions, on the one hand, and the absolute will of God and human free will, on the other. In this context, it is interesting to point to the metaphors of ‘husband and wife’ (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 31:31–3; Hos. 2:19–20) and ‘father and child’ (Dt. 1:31; 8:5; 14:1; Hos. 11:1; Ps. 2:7), as employed in the Hebrew Bible as well as in rabbinic literature in respect to the special relationship between God and Israel.¹⁵ These metaphors draw a parallel with the above-mentioned twofold aspects of Israel’s relationship with God, one representing the conditional (the marriage metaphor) and the other the unconditional nature of such a relationship (the fatherhood metaphor). The act of marriage, being of a legal nature, can be nullified due to the disloyalty of either party, as it is written: ‘a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband’ (Jer. 31:32). Yet the relation between father and child, which is purely organic, lasts forever even when the latter is disobedient and unworthy: ‘A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he; yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him … Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?’ (Dt. 32:4–6). Despite their iniquities Israelites are still called God’s ‘children’, and God their ‘father’: ‘in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “children of the living God”’ (Hos. 1:10). In the same way, the metaphor of father and child which symbolizes an everlasting relationship is employed in 2 Samuel in relation to the King David: ‘I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use. But I will not take my steadfast love from him…’ (7:14–16).

So, while Israel, as a disloyal wife or a disobedient child, is condemned, chastised, and even abandoned by God (God’s hiding his face—Isa. 54:8; 59:2), God’s love for Israel as that of a father/mother for his/her child renders the covenantal connection between God and Israel an eternal one. For the tie between God and Israel is depicted not merely as a legal but also an emotional one: ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you’ (Isa. 49:15). Though this love of God is expressed in different ways and with different terms in the Hebrew Bible, the idea of love itself remains permanent. This is why the Sinai covenant, especially as depicted in the book of Deuteronomy, is regarded by some as an ‘affair of ritual’ or ‘kinship’, instead of a ‘contract’ or ‘agreement’.¹⁶ In fact, in the deuteronomic account of the election of Israel, there is a constant reference to God’s promise to the Patriarchs (29:13; 4:37; also 1:8; 6:10; 9:5, 27; 30:20; 34:4). In this way, the covenant at Sinai works as a medium through which the family union built between God and the Patriarchs is re-established between God and the descendants in terms of the marriage of love with law.¹⁷ Due to this previous union, God calls Israel ‘his people’ (Ex. 3:7–10; Hos. 11:1) even before the Exodus and covenant takes place. The theme of love is, therefore, understood to change the tone of the relationship between God and Israel from a legal to a moral and emotional union, ‘marked by...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I Chosenness as ‘holiness’
• PART II Chosenness as ‘mission’
• PART III Chosenness as ‘survival’
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography