There’s been a lot of talk about “standing with Israel” and “blessing Israel” according to Genesis 12:3, but is that right? Is Genesis 12:3 just about Israel? And what does it mean to “bless Israel” anyway?

First of all, what is blessing?

Perhaps the first thing to think about is what blessing actually is in the first place. People often think of blessing in purely financial terms, but that’s not really what it is. Let me illustrate. Psalm 133 is a powerful song about the blessing that comes with unity:

Behold, how good and pleasant it is
    when brothers dwell in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
    running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
    running down on the collar of his robes!
It is like the dew of Hermon,
    which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
    life forevermore.

When we live together in unity there God commands money? Clearly not! The blessing that flows from unity is way deeper than that. It’s often hard for human beings to get along with each other, and this is particularly evident here in the Middle East. But what a delight to our Heavenly Father it is when we fight through our own human agendas to love one another and live in peace! God pours out His blessing as a matter of command. His blessing is His goodness, His fruitfulness and His power to make us prosper in every way.

There’s an idea that speaking out blessing is to “send an agent forth”, like God sends His mighty ones mentioned in Psalm 103 to do His bidding. When God commands His rich, deep, profound blessing it encompasses all of our lives: emotionally (Psalm 29), spiritually (Ephesians 1:3), socially (Psalm 1), and yes, materially (Genesis 24:35)… but His ultimate blessing is life forevermore.

What Is Blessing, Exactly?

There are reasons people jump to the (false) conclusion that blessing=money. There is a law of nature established by God, hardwired into the fabric of reality, in which we are blessed when we give freely. Proverbs has a lot to say about the free flow of blessing and provision for those who are generous, and the opposite for those who are not. We also see in the Word that amount we give is not significant to God, but He sees our heart and our attitude. The principle of giving God a tenth of all we have, before we do anything, releases blessing as we see in this well known passage from Malachi:

“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.” (Malachi 3:10)

God has promised this and it’s a law of the universe. You cannot out-give God, as it’s rightly been said. However this verse has been used and abused to manipulate people to part with their hard-earned cash. Yes, blessing includes financial blessing, and yes generosity to God’s kingdom purposes brings those blessing your way. But blessing is far more than just money. Next time you are with a bunch of believers, ask them what blessings they have in their lives. You will find they speak of family, good friends, health, unexpectedly good outcomes, a job they appreciate, the view from their window, plenty to eat…

Blessings come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Life is much more than money. Our blessing, wellbeing, and shalom is far broader than that.

Given that fact, start thinking about blessing Israel in broader terms… and what it means to receive blessing in return for doing so. Because this is another law of the universe that God has hardwired into humanity.

It really does matter what we do with Israel.

There are real implications.

Who is really being blessed in Genesis 12:3?

“I don’t agree with the Israeli government,” my friend from Europe objected, spectacularly missing the point. God’s blessing is not contingent on Israel’s perfection, and never has been. If it was, Israel would not experience blessing at all. Israel has been sinful and flawed from the get-go, and today is no different. Israeli leaders get some things right and others wrong, as has always been the case. Not dissimilar to your own nation’s leaders, I’d venture. If this blessing Israel thing is not contingent on the righteousness of the nation, what’s it all about, and why did God even establish this mandate? Did He even really mean that we had to bless the nation of Israel in the first place, or did He mean something else? Have we misunderstood, or been interpreting it wrong?

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

“But surely it can’t mean all of Abraham’s children, can it?” Another Christian friend asked incredulously. If it did, he reasoned, then Ishmael would be in the same category, along with any other children Abraham had. “No, it must mean THE Seed of Abraham, Jesus. If we bless Jesus we’re blessed. If we curse Him, we’re cursed.” The matter was clear and settled in his mind. However, there is no “seed” mentioned in this passage, but rather God is talking to the person-formerly-known-as-Abram saying He would make of him a great nation, and bless him. Now that could, theoretically, still mean all of Abraham’s offspring. But the key is to ask what God was meaning when he talked about that “great nation”.

Is it ALL of Abraham’s descendants? Could it be the line of Jesus only? What does this promise refer to exactly?

The best way to interpret the Bible is with the Bible, and we find the answer to that question both throughout Genesis and also later in the book of Numbers.

In Genesis it becomes clear that the blessing is to flow through Isaac, rather than any of Abraham’s other children, and God’s promise is reiterated to Isaac in Genesis 26:3-5 and then Jacob in Genesis 28:12-15. Jacob, as you’ll remember, was renamed Israel and his twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel. The promise is through this line specifically, and is confirmed many generations later in Psalm 105:8-10:

He remembers his covenant forever,
    the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,
the covenant that he made with Abraham,
    his sworn promise to Isaac,
which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,
    to Israel as an everlasting covenant.

In the book of Numbers, when the tribes of Israel were on their way to the Promised Land, they came to the land of Moab. God rescued them from slavery in Egypt and then given them victory over the Amalekites who attacked them, but they’d only survived with God’s help every step of the way. The king of Moab heard the Israelites tend to win by miracles, and was taking no chances. He hired a conjuror to work magic for him:

“Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.” (Numbers 22:6)

However, this is the thing with magic and witchcraft—it’s putting trust in one who cannot be trusted to have control and power that doesn’t really belong to them. It doesn’t go well. God is the One who has the final say, and He overrules Balaam’s oracle. This is what came out of Balaam’s mouth instead of a curse:

 He crouched, he lay down like a lion
    and like a lioness; who will rouse him up?
Blessed are those who bless you,
    and cursed are those who curse you.” (Numbers 24:9)

According to this oracle spoken by Balaam by the power of God, it’s the people of Israel, the physical, dusty, wandering tribes of Israel that are blessed and protected by God. The twelve tribes of Jacob.

Are we sure? Yes. Let’s look further up in the passage for context to see who is really being talked about:

How lovely are your tents, O Jacob,
    your encampments, O Israel! (Numbers 24:5)

It’s talking about the tents of Jacob. The twelve tribes of Israel. Not any of Abraham’s other children, but specifically the descendants of Isaac and Jacob. The encampments of Israelites moving around in tents. God really meant that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are supposed to be blessed and not cursed, and that our lives become blessed or cursed according to how we treat Israel.

Some object to God’s blessing of Jacob’s descendants given the fact that Israel has never had a spotless record of righteousness. But that’s not the point here. God’s choice is through grace and for the blessing of the nations, and His commitment is for His own name’s sake.

“For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.” (1 Samuel 12:22)

Just as God’s blessing does not hinge on Israel’s righteousness, neither should our agreement with it. God has His purposes that He is carrying out with, through, and in Israel.

Our willingness to bless Israel affirms and blesses the work of God in the world.

If Israel is blessed, why are they so few in number?

One of the aspects of blessing in almost any circumstance is fruitfulness and multiplication. Abraham is promised that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky. Certainly there are many millions that have come through his line, but there are a tiny number of Jewish people on the planet today in comparison with those descended from Ishmael. If they are really blessed, why is that?

God gives this blessing specifically for Ishmael’s descendants:

As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.” (Genesis 17:20-21)

Twelve princes would come from Ishmael and there would be great fruitfulness and multiplication. Certainly we can see this has happened. But what went so wrong with the descendants of Isaac? Are they not blessed after all?

The reason the Jewish people are so few in number is that that the enemy has relentlessly tried to destroy Israel from the moment God chose them. Starting with the babies thrown into the Nile by Pharaoh, swiftly followed by the Amalekite attack and numerous other existential battles, Haman’s genocidal plots in Persia and king Herod’s baby-killing spree in Bethlehem… and ever since biblical times there have been countless other massacres, genocides, and persecutions that drove the Jewish people to abandon their Jewishness and assimilate throughout the centuries. You may be horrified to hear that since the time of Jesus, this persecution has mostly been at the hands of so-called Christians.

In James Carroll’s book ‘Constantines Sword: The Church and the Jews’, he estimated that, based on the number of Jewish people at the time of Jesus, there should be at least 200 million Jews in the world today, but because of the constant persecution and murder there are less than 15 million.

That’s still less than the number of Jewish people before Hitler began his murderous campaign. If there were no Holocaust there’d be around 30 million today according to the Italian-Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola. This is what genocide really looks like.

Fortunately, Israel being few in number has never been a prerequisite for God’s love and choice. He tells His people,

“It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers.” (Deuteronomy 7:7-8a)

God has kept Israel against all odds, in line with His promises. It’s nothing short of miraculous. But yes, the low number of Jewish people on the planet testifies to the multitude of attempts to wipe them out. The fact that Israel is here today at all testifies to God’s saving power. His promises are still in effect.

The Holy Spirit Himself speaks through the Psalms (Hebrews 3:7), and here we see that a thousand years after Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant of land to the line of Isaac and Jacob is still considered true and valid. The promises still stand. Those who bless Israel are blessed, and those who do harm will find themselves in trouble with God.

The benefits of joining God in blessing Israel

Parallel to the promise in Genesis 12:3 is Psalm 122 which tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and gives this blessing for those who love God’s city:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
    “May they be secure who love you!” (Psalm 122:6)

The Hebrew word translated as “may they be secure” is יִשְׁלָיוּ, (ishlayu) can also be translated “may they prosper”. The word has connotations of peace, security, happiness, and safety. If you love Jerusalem, there’s a blessing of peace and prosperity. If you bless Israel, you will be blessed. Not necessary with money, but more than that. The blessing of God is more holistic than that. Equally the converse is true. These matters, like the principles of giving and tithing, are hardwired into the universe. God notices.

It can be extremely hard to stand up and speak up for Israel in the current climate. We’re seeing antisemitism spiral to levels that are making Jewish people realize their grandparents weren’t exaggerating when they talked about how society turned against them en masse. Israel needs friends now more than ever.

It might take courage, but when you seek to bless Israel, when you choose to love and pray for Israel, when you take a stand with Israel, then you are contributing to some of the most powerful passages of Scripture which have yet to be fulfilled.

The whole world will one day be blessed through Israel.

In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:24-25)

Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean! (Romans 11:12)

God’s plan is incredible. Taking a stand for Israel may be costly, but God will reward those who bless Israel and stand with His purposes in ways we cannot even imagine. And as we always say, the best way to bless Israel is with Jesus: Life forevermore!

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash