“Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” (Ge 28:14)
Jacob’s flight from the Land to be with Laban for twenty years is a prophecy about the exile of the Jewish people among the nations for twenty centuries. At the beginning of the exile, God told Jacob that his descendants would be “like the dust of the earth”, i.e. trodden down under the feet of men.
And so it has been for the Jewish people for the past two thousand years. They have truly “spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south” to the four corners of the earth. And everywhere they have come they have sooner or later become persecuted and oppressed.
Indeed this oppression has still not ceased. Israel is today among the nations what the Jew has been in the nations. The state of Israel is unfairly treated by a different set of standards than all other nations. In the report from the horrific terror attacks in France this weekend, the AFP listed the most severe terror attacks in the world since 9-11. All of them were listed, except the ones committed in or against Israel. They don’t count. They are not considered terror attacks by the press because Israel is different.
The Church Father Augustine taught that the Jewish people are doomed to be exiles among the nations and oppressed forever as an warning example to what happens when you reject Christ. But he had not read his Bible correctly. God also promised Jacob:
“… and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (v. 14-15)
It is true that wherever the Jewish people have come they have always blessed the nations where they have lived. 22% of all Nobel Prices throughout history up to 2013 have been given to Jews even though they make up less than 0.2% of the global population. And today the state of Israel is a blessing for the entire world in so many ways.
Yet the greatest blessing is still in the future. God promised Jacob “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” He has not only promised to bring the Jewish people back again to their own Land. As unprecedented as that miracle is in the history of mankind, the Jewish people’s full restoration when they welcome their Messiah, will mean life from the dead for the whole world, as Paul wrote: “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” (Ro 11:15)
What an incredible blessing this will be! We must faithfully pray daily for the fulfillment of this promise. The downtrodden among the nations are destined to become the head of the nations. Jacob, “the heel”, will one day become Israel “the prince with God” and the ruler.
