IT’S NOT ABOUT ETHNICITY OR GEOGRAPHY
Bible readers are always challenged to understand the spiritual meaning of biblical people, places and objects. Most bible readers err by assuming that biblical references to Israel, Jews and Jerusalem are to real places and physical people. This page corrects those errors and provides clues to the spiritual meanings of Israel, Jews and Jerusalem.
Religious bible readers err in their interpretation of the bible because they do not understand the “first the natural, then the spiritual” principal which says that we should always look for the spiritual meanings of scripture and not be satisfied with literal interpretations. They also do not understand that the bible is full of Symbols, Signs, Types, Parables, Allegories, Copies, and Shadows.
It is extremely hard to adopt these principles to bible study because we are trained in schools, synagogues and churches to interpret what we read literally. Because Israel, Jews and Jerusalem appear throughout the bible so frequently, it is critical to understand the spiritual meanings of these places and people. Bible readers who do not learn these principle will never understand God or religion.
STUDY TIP: See Land, Earth and the Promised Land for understanding of the symbolism of physical places. Also see Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 1 of 3, Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 2 of 3 and Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 3 of 3.
Israel is a good place to begin because it appears in the bible 1,700 times. Jerusalem is mentioned 767 times. Jews are mentioned 67 times in the Old Testament and 129 times in the New Testament. When we compare these numbers to mentions of Jesus (925), we conclude that these are very important terms to understand.
The state of Israel is a real, geographic place that can be found on maps. Biblical Israel, however does not appear on maps because biblical Israel is people — not a geographic place.
STUDY TIP: See People for understanding of how to interpret biblical characters.
Thinking of Israel as an ethnic tribe, a religious group or legal government is not the correct interpretation of Israel. We must always think in terms of the hearts of people — not just physical people because encounters with God always and only occur in the hearts of people. Religions teach that encounters with God occur in physical places like the Holy Land, temples and churches, but this is only one example of religious lies.
The fact that Israel is a spiritual place begins to explain why it is mentioned so often. This is exactly what we would expect from a spiritual book for which the goal is to train us in righteousness. If we read the bible to be entertained, to memorize scripture so we can memorize it or recite it to our religious friends, we are reading with the wrong motives. If we read to learn historical facts and geography, we have chosen a poor resource to study.
Jerusalem, like Israel, is also a real geographic place, but biblical Jerusalem does not appear on maps because it too is a spiritual place. Similarly, ethnic Jews are real people who live throughout the world, but spiritual Jews are not easily identifiable because true Jews (i.e. spiritual Jews) are not the same as ethnic Jews.
It is extremely hard to adopt these principles to bible study because we are trained in schools and in church to interpret what we read literally. People who do not learn this principle will never understand God or religion. Because Israel, Jews and Jerusalem appear throughout the bible, it is critical to understand the spiritual meanings of these places.
It impossible to comprehend the spiritual nature of Israel, Jerusalem, Jews and Gentiles while thinking of these well-known places and people in terms of ethnicity and geography. Getting to the spiritual understanding is difficult because of the Strongholds of thinking we learn during our associations with Old/First Covenant religions and because of our training in the natural world.
In religion, school and the news we have been trained to believe that the Bible’s representation of Israelites and Jews as God’s chosen people, as possessors of the Promised Land and citizens of Jerusalem where God has chosen to place his name in the Temple must be interpreted in literal terms. Coming to the symbolic understanding of these people and places requires nothing less than renewal of the mind.
In the Bible, the picture we get is that the citizens of Israel and Jerusalem are all righteous, religious Jews who have an unconditional right to occupy the Promised Land because God promised it to Abraham and his seed (i.e. descendants). We also get the picture that there is something especially holy about the physical city of Jerusalem and the various temples and altars that were built there. People who have been trained in religion don’t understand that these images of natural people, places and structures are all symbolic pictures of spiritual truths. These physical places have no value to God except to represent spiritual truth. The places never were holy and will never be holy. Israel and Jerusalem have no spiritual value for God except for training in righteousness. Therefore, religionists err when they assign spiritual value to these places.
AUTHORS’ NOTE: See Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 1, Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 2 and Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 3 for understanding of how God uses natural people, places and objects to represent spiritual truth.
Also see Symbols, Signs, Types, Copies, Shadows and Patterns, Sacrifices, Tithes and Offerings and Tabernacles, Temples, Altars, High Places and Pilgrimages for other examples of natural things that are used by God to represent spiritual truth.
Also see this link for understanding of holiness.
Beyond the examples mentioned above, it must be said that all pages of Religion Detox Network contain examples of how God uses natural people, places and objects to represent spiritual truth.
Since God uses natural people and natural places to represent spiritual truth for training in righteousness, we must always be careful that we never apply spiritual value to natural things. Study of geography and history are interesting intellectual pursuits but they are not useful for training in righteousness.
Because the nature of spiritual things is that they cannot be seen, it is foolish, and even dangerous to say that things which can be seen are spiritual. Since faith is the conviction of things not seen, those who aspire to possess true faith must always be careful that they do not fall into the religious trap of putting faith in things they can see and touch. Religion is what happens when people do put their faith in things that they can see and touch.
One of the dangers of looking at Israel and Jerusalem as uniquely holy places is that this way of thinking ignores other Biblical facts that argue against the idea that they are holy. Specifically, while Israel was indeed the land promised to Abraham and Israel, it was always occupied by other non-Jewish nations (i.e. Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Per’izzites, Hivites, and Jeb’usites) who practiced their own unique brands of pagan religion. The indigenous occupants (i.e. Palestinians) of this so-called “holy land” have practiced the religion of Islam since 622 CE are considered to be spiritual brothers to Jews because of their biblical Abrahamic heritage.
It is difficult for Jews and Christians to reconcile their theology, religion and politics with the fact that the bible reports that Israelites lived as minority foreigners and strangers in the Promised Land. The bible also says that possession of the promised land is conditional on obedience to God’s laws and that disobedience leads to destruction of the land. These facts clearly deny theology that says that the state of Israel or heaven are the promised land.
Recorded history does agree with biblical reports that the physical land of Israel would suffered a long succession of invasions and occupations by a variety of warring, colonial interests. And history reports that Israel didn’t have any legal right to occupy and govern the land until 1947 when the United Nations partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states. However, these facts do not alter the spiritual meaning of Israel, Jews and Jerusalem in any way. Spiritual truths are timeless and transcend the arc of natural history.
Knowledge of the bible and recorded history should inhibit any tendency to call the physical land of Palestine/Israel holy. If holiness is equated with peace and tranquility, the land never was holy because it has never been peaceful for very long. Even in these modern times Israel and Jerusalem is a place of never ending violence and contention. This fact demands a new understanding of what it means to be holy. In particular, the facts should destroy the idea that the physical land of Israel/Palestine is the holy land promised by God. It makes no logical sense that God’s promises are fulfilled for ethnic Jews who are always on alert to secure the promise through military power and diplomacy. It does make sense, however, that God’s promise is conditional on obedience to his spiritual laws.
And what about Jews and Christians who do not live in Israel? How do they receive the benefits of the promised land if they do not live there? The clear message of the bible is that the Promised Land is accessible to everyone and anyone — no matter where they live, regardless of their ethnicity — if they obey God’s spiritual laws.
Cities, Kingdoms and Nations explains that the non-Jewish nations that occupied the Promised Land should be interpreted as religions that worshiped other gods — not as geopolitical nations. Therefore, the territories they occupy cannot be holy because physical things and places cannot be holy because they obey religious laws — not God’s spiritual laws. Pagan, religious nations can live in the physical land of Israel but they cannot possess the spiritual benefits of the spiritual promised land because they obey their own religious laws — not God’s spiritual laws.
With this understanding we see that the correct interpretation of Israel is of people — not as a physical place. And to be precise, Israel should be interpreted in terms of the hearts of people. But saying that Israel symbolically represents hearts doesn’t go deep enough because hearts can be either clean and pure or evil and impure. It is necessary, therefore, to know how to differentiate between clean pure hearts and evil, impure hearts. Only God has the ability to see into the hearts of man, but anyone can observe the lifegiving fruit or evil fruit that flows from hearts.
STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding of the characteristics of clean pure hearts and this link for understanding of the characteristics of evil, impure hearts.
The story of the bible is of the ongoing conflict between people with clean, pure hearts and people with evil, impure hearts. This story is presented in graphic terms of wars, intrigues, deceptions and murders that represent the efforts of people with evil, impure hearts to marginalize, murder, occupy and control the physical territory of people who have clean, pure hearts. These conflicts represent the battle between good and evil at the global, national, family and personal levels and are discussed in Religion is the Enemy, Gods at War and Sibling Conflict.
The story is difficult to follow and understand because the characters (e.g. Jews, Israel, Jerusalem, etc.) sometimes have clean pure hearts and sometimes have evil impure hearts. It is a mistake, therefore, to assume that the Jews and Israel are always righteous (i.e. they have clean, pure hearts). Sometimes they have clean hearts and other times they have evil, impure hearts. The only way to know is to evaluate them with respect to the characteristics of clean pure hearts and the characteristics of evil, impure hearts. These are not academic studies of history and geography.
When their hearts are clean and pure they are at war with surrounding nations/peoples/religions who have evil, impure hearts. These conflicts symbolically represents the battle between Old/First Covenant and New Covenant religion. When their hearts are evil and impure they are more or less assimilated into the religious cultures of their religious neighbors in an uneasy peace.
AUTHORS’ NOTE: See Religion is the Enemy, Religion is Injustice, Slavery and Oppression, Cities, Kingdoms and Nations, Egypt and Babylon, Gods at War and Strongholds for understanding of how to interpret the other nations that occupied the Promised Land and the nature of warfare with them.
Also see Warriors for spiritual understanding of warfare between Israel in the nations that occupied the land.
It is important to acknowledge that the land called Israel in the bible is a symbolic reference to the people who lived there — not to the physical land. See Land, Earth and the Promised Land for understanding of this symbolism.
It is also important to recognize that the Israelites in bible times were not always practitioners of pure, undefiled religion. It all depended on the hearts of their religious leaders/kings.
And it is even more important to recognize that the ethnic Jews who live in modern times are practitioners of defiled, Old Covenant religion like their Muslim neighbors who are descendants of the Canaanite tribes who occupied biblical Israel as neighbors to the tribe of Israel. The forms of their religions are different but they are all Old Covenant religions. In God’s eyes, Jews and Christians are no more righteous than Muslims because neither Jews, Christians or Muslims practice Pure, New Covenant religion. People who practice New Covenant religion do not identify with religious organizations because they have no need to make names for themselves.
When we have the right understanding of the symbolism of Israel and Jews we see that the wars reported in the bible preview the entire contentious natural history of wars between religious movements for control of the hearts and minds of people who are inclined to join one religion or another. These wars are found throughout the natural world, but the “holy land” that Palestinians and Jews fight for in the modern, legal state of Israel is not and never was holy because physical objects like land cannot be holy. The only places that qualify as holy are the clean, pure hearts of New Covenant disciples. But neither Jews, nor Christians, nor Muslims understand this because they all interpret the bible literally. And so the wars continue.
Jews and Christians who interpret the bible literally do not understand that Israel is a spiritual place — not a unique geographical place. Nor do they understand that biblical Jews/Israelites are not a unique ethnic people chosen by God. The biblical story of Jews, Israel and their Canaanite neighbors (i.e. modern day Palestinians) prophetically anticipates all religious conflicts in the world of religion — not just in the literal, legal state of Israel. However, since religion and politics are so closely integrated, the conflict is played out in political — not religious — terms.
AUTHORS’ NOTE: See World of Religion for more discussion of the symbolism of the world. Also see this link for understanding of the symbolism of holiness. Also see this link for understanding of the promised land.