The Sneaky Ways of Man
During the 22-year-long Jewish exile in Babylon,1 Ezekiel ben-Buzi lifted the spirits of his fellow exiles by recalling to them God’s promise to provide them with their own homeland. Ezekiel concluded with God’s curious admonishment, which a few may have received darkly:2
So shall ye divide this land unto you according to the tribes of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance.
Some are skeptical of old-fashioned English. For exactly those readers, the New American Standard Bible was produced — first published in full in 1971 — to provide a literal and accurate English translation with focus on readability for modern audiences.3 Thus does the NASB translate these words of God as conveyed by Ezekiel in Ezekiel 47: 21-23:
So you shall divide this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You shall divide it by lot for an inheritance among yourselves and among the aliens who stay in your midst, who bring forth sons in your midst. And they shall be to you as the native-born among the sons of Israel; they shall be allotted an inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel. And in the tribe with which the alien stays, there you shall give him his inheritance.
Apparently there was no question about it. The people God promised land to — them — were to share it. Except. One had to hesitate. In deference to God, they were duty-bound to ponder deeply the multitude of questions that arose, important questions, legal questions, moral and ethical questions, questions of semantics and intention that could not, the chosen people realized, be ignored. Not if God were to be obeyed, the is, correctly obeyed. They had to consider all the angles and all the nuances that pertained to and dimpled, so to speak, God’s real meaning, which maybe God didn’t actually say — for He was a deep God; He was a wise God, far too wise for them to just plain understand; and He could get very Angry — everyone knew that. So they had to figure out what the important, mysterious, real meaning was behind what He seemed to say. Yes, a whole slew of squirmy questions sprang to life, vermiculate doubts that took legions of scholars centuries to pin down, anesthetize, study, rephrase, refine, and resolve, before they could take God’s suggestion — nothing more than a suggestion if they didn’t know what He was talking about — seriously, let alone, act upon it.
For example, just what was a sojourner anyway? Did the sojourner first have to conform to the laws and customs of their land and be a constructive member of their society? That is to say, didn’t sojourners have to assimilate themselves to be considered sojourners?
That argument fell kind of flat, somehow. But “stranger.” What did “stranger” actually mean? Did that mean they could admit entrance only to those who were completely unknown to them and exclude non-strangers, that is to say, friends? That would smack of perversion, and God was not a God of perversion, leastwise He never told any prophet who wrote down what He said that He was. And that’s all they had to go on, what those prophets wrote down, and they couldn’t figure that out. So what about that stranger? What about strangers who wanted to annihilate them? Were they obliged to let them in, too? If they were strangers, how would they even know? Couldn’t be. Surely God meant for them to screen strangers before letting them sojourn in, especially if they were supposed to share anything with those strangers. They could work up a “stranger profile” to accelerate the process. That sounded doable, reasonable, quite acceptable. God hadn’t specified it, but he had something like that in mind, no doubt.
The Arabs had to go, didn’t they? Because the longer they stayed, the more they used up of what God had promised to someone else, namely them.
So what about the aliens the NASB brought up? They sounded even worse. It was one thing to tolerate this policy of radical inclusion God laid on them, forcing them to share what He hadn’t even given them yet with any old alien. But what about all those Arabs already there? They had been there for quite some time. They weren’t strangers. They weren’t sojourners. They weren’t aliens. Obviously God didn’t intend His chosen people to share their promised anything with them. Which meant the Arabs had to go, didn’t it? Because the longer they stayed, the more they used up of what God had promised to someone else, namely them. And there’d be little left if they waited any longer. Because the huge embarrassment in all this was that it had taken their scholars two and a half thousand years to work all this out. It wasn’t until the late 18th century that they realized what they had to do. And by that time they had to get cracking or there would be nothing left of God’s promised land. Those nobodies there were acting like it belonged to them and their goats and their olives trees and their bees and their stinky sheep.
The first order of business, of course, was to get over there themselves on the double and in sufficient numbers to do the job. Decade after decade, they pulled in God’s chosen people from all over. Once collected in strength, they started right in on working God’s will by clearing the area of those Arabs. Arabs, they found out, are very hard to get rid of.
But there was something at stake here. God’s people were on Earth for one purpose: to reveal God’s glory by demonstrating the truth of His word, and this was the biggest test because it was God’s biggest promise, and it was up to them to make it come true by getting rid of the wrong people using up all that land God had manifestly promised to them.
Despite working with devotion, determination, focus, and vigor, it’s been a long, messy haul. Thankfully, the task is very near completion. God will soon have reason to be very pleased with His chosen people, who finally fulfilled His promise to them for Him. And God’s people will be able to relax and watch with tired, but tranquil eyes as peace settles over their promised land.
- Between 593 BCE and 571 BCE. ↩︎
- Ezekiel 47: 21-23, King James Bible. ↩︎
- Should the New American Standard Bible not appeal to you, there are other Bible translations on offer that might better suit your tastes, to wit: “The NASB 1995, NASB 2020, and LSB Bibles are all accurate, clear, and readable translations that complement each other by providing a well-rounded Bible translation family. These translations offer a spectrum of biblical language style for readers to choose from according to their personal preferences. Each can be read with equal confidence because they follow the formal equivalence translation approach that is accurate and precise.” https://www.lockman.org/new-american-standard-bible-nasb/ ↩︎