If you ask those who advocate “blessing Israel” where this principle is taught in the Bible, they will not be able to tell you. That is understandable, since it is not taught in the Bible. In the New Testament epistles, for example—all written during a time when a nation called “Israel” existed—there is not a single admonition by Paul, Peter, John, James, or Jude for Christians to bless or support the nation of Israel or stand with it against their enemies and so on. That was not a facet of following Christ in the early church. Christians outside of Israel did indeed raise money for poor, persecuted Jewish Christians living in Jerusalem, but that was something entirely different, similar to helping starving Malawian Christians today. It was caring for the “least of these” (Matt. 25:31-46). It had nothing to do with supporting a geopolitical nation because of its “prophetic significance.”

In addition, there is nothing in the New Testament epistles that even hints about “Israel’s sovereign right to their ancient homeland given to them by God that is now unlawfully occupied and controlled by a foreign power.” That, too, was not on any Christian’s radar.

Recall also that God Himself visited the nation of Israel for 33 years in the form of a man and spent more than three of those years in a public ministry. He never said a word about “blessing the nation of Israel” or “Israel’s right to their ancient homeland.”

Should not all of this give us pause and cause us to ask if all the modern evangelical focus on Israel is a little misguided? Do we have right what Jesus and apostles had wrong?

The “Biblical” Defense

On occasion, some will point to Genesis 12:3 to defend the idea of blessing the nation and people of Israel. There we find a promise God made to Abram before He renamed him Abraham:

And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

If we are honest, we must admit that these promises were given to a single person, Abram. The promise expressed in the final clause could also be viewed as a promise given to “all the families of the earth.” Genesis 12:3 not about the nation of Israel, ancient or modern, other than the fact that people descended from Jacob/Israel are part of “all the families of the earth” who would be blessed through Abram. That’s it.

This becomes even clearer when we consider the full context of Genesis 12:3. Here is God’s entire promise to Abram recorded in Genesis 12:1-3:

¹ Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;

² And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;

³ And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (emphasis added).

Note in verse 1 that the Lord was speaking to Abram. God used the word “you” seven times and the word “your” four times in all three verses. So verse 3 had direct application to anyone who blessed or cursed Abram personally—a man who lived about 4,000 years ago. To claim that God was speaking about blessing or cursing a small, select minority of Abram’s descendants 4,000 years later is a stretch, to say the least.

In addition, nowhere in the New Testament is it stated or implied that Genesis 12:3 applies to blessing or cursing the nation of Israel. In fact, nowhere in the New Testament is God’s promise to “bless those who bless you” and “curse those who curse you” quoted or even mentioned. This common evangelical idea isn’t New Testament theology.

Taken together, all of this stands in contrast to the idea that God’s promise to Abram to “bless those who bless you” and “curse those who curse you” has application to the nation of Israel, either ancient or modern.

The final sentence of God’s promise to Abram, however, does receive attention in the New Testament as having application—to everyone in the world. God said to Abram, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). God repeated that promise to Abraham in a more specific way at least 25 years later: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 22:18).

So Genesis 12:3 and 22:18 revealed that all the families/nations of the earth would be blessed through Abraham’s seed. As God made His promise to Abraham, He was thinking about everyone in the world, not just one small group of his descendants.

But was God saying—as is sometimes claimed—that the “seed” of Abraham is the modern nation of Israel that has somehow blessed the entire world through the work of its fourteen Nobel laureates? For reference, the U.S. has produced about 425 Nobel laureates. No, not if we believe the New Testament. There, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul emphatically declared that “Abraham’s seed” mentioned in God’s promise to Abraham refers to Christ:

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ (Gal. 3:16).

Indisputably, the “seed” God was referring to in Genesis 22:18—and alluded to in Genesis 12:3—is Jesus. For that reason, God’s promise could be paraphrased, “In your descendant, Christ, will all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

The Modern Descendants of Abraham

Today there are hundreds of millions of physical descendants of Abraham. They include not only Jews, descended from Abraham’s grandson Jacob/Israel, but also Arabs descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. Among the modern descendants of Abraham, only a small minority are Jews. The majority are Arabs.

Mathematical genealogy models also suggest that anyone living 3,000–4,000 years ago who has any living descendants today is likely an ancestor of most or all modern humans. This would make virtually the entire world population genealogical descendants of Abraham.

As Paul pointed out, in Genesis 22:18 God was thinking of a single descendant of Abraham. That singular seed would bring God’s blessing not just to one group of people, but to all the world’s people. So, God is not a racist—as it seems He is so often portrayed. He loves the world. Jesus is the Savior of all. That was God’s plan since at least Genesis 12:3!

By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul referred to Genesis 12:3 and 22:18 as “the gospel” preached beforehand to Abraham—a gospel for Gentiles as well as descendants of Jacob/Israel:

The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you” (Gal. 3:8, emphasis added).

The gospel is a message of God’s blessing for anyone and everyone. That blessing hinges on believing in the Lord Jesus—for both Jews and Gentiles. There is no other way to have a relationship with God. This is why Peter referenced the same promise when preaching to a Jewish audience in Acts 3:

It is you [Jews] who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, “And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways (Acts 3:25-26, emphasis added).

A Few More Proof Texts

On rare occasions, advocates of “blessing Israel” appeal to Isaac’s prayer over Jacob—whom he thought was Esau:

May peoples serve you,
And nations bow down to you;
Be master of your brothers,
And may your mother’s sons bow down to you.
Cursed be those who curse you,
And blessed be those who bless you (Gen. 27:29).

Clearly, this was a prayer for a single person, not for his future descendants. The words “you” and “your” appear seven times in that verse. Isaac’s prayer for Jacob was not a divine declaration that, from that time forward, everyone who blesses that nation or people of Jacob/Israel, will be blessed. And of course, such an idea is taught nowhere in the New Testament.

There is also Balaam’s prophecy regarding Israel in Numbers 24:9:

Blessed is everyone who blesses you,
And cursed is everyone who curses you” (Num. 24:9).

From this verse, should we conclude that God’s attitude toward a group of people remains constant regardless of their behavior? If you don’t know the answer, read Deuteronomy 28, in which God enumerates the blessings of obedience and the curses of disobedience. Actually, read just about any chapter in the Bible.

Balaam, of course, was prophesying specifically about the second generation of Israelites—the generation whose parents had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years because of their disobedience. Were the first generation—who all perished in the wilderness—blessed or cursed?

Should we conclude that, because God’s blessing was temporarily upon the descendants of Israel/Jacob more than 3,400 years ago, that guarantees His blessing on all of their future descendants who have at least a tiny fraction of their DNA, regardless of their behavior? Does God have different standards for different people? Is He actually “a respecter of persons,” even though the Bible says He is not (see Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11; Eph. 6:9)?

There is much more that could be said, but I hope I have provided some food for thought for those Christians who believe they have a biblical duty to support modern political Israel because they’ve heard that the Bible says they will be blessed if they do and cursed if they don’t. I sometimes refer to those who are championing the “bless Israel” idea as “believers in Replacement Theology,” not because they believe the church has somehow replaced Israel—of which they sometimes accuse me—but because they have replaced the church with Israel. Caring for well-off Jews in Israel is immensely more important to them than caring for suffering Arab Christians or starving African Christians. If that isn’t replacing the church with Israel, what is?

Worse, some accuse me of being antisemitic because I do not support every policy of Israel’s current administration. If that makes me antisemitic, it makes more than half the Jews living in Israel antisemitic.

This all reminds me that the word “Semitic” actually means “descended from Shem,” not “descended from Jacob/Israel.” Arabs are Semitic people, just as Jews are. Both are descended from Abraham, who was descended from Noah’s son Shem. The irony is striking when professing Christians call those of us who do not support every policy of the current Israeli administration “antisemites,” while cheering on the death of Arab Semites—including Arab Christians. If cheering on the deaths of innocent Arab Semites doesn’t make you antisemitic, what does?

All of this is not to say that God does not have a plan for a future spiritual awakening among those who identify as Jews. But that has nothing to do with the subject of this article. God also has plans for a future spiritual awakening among Egyptians and Syrians. It is just as certain as the future spiritual awakening in Israel. God said through Isaiah:

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

But that doesn’t mean Christians have a sacred duty to economically, politically and militarily support modern Egypt or Syria.

When the church began it was comprised 100% of descendants of Jacob/Israel. Since about AD 36-40, it has included believing Gentiles, and the door has been open ever since to anyone from either group—if they will believe. Unbelieving Jews are outside the church and the new covenant just as much as unbelieving Gentiles. There is no salvation for them outside of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, their Messiah. The old covenant is now obsolete (Heb. 8:13) and all Christian believers, both Jew and Gentile, comprise a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” and “a people for God’s own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9). Together they are “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). Paul wrote, “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God” (Rom. 2:28-29). Jesus Himself referred to first-century Jews who were persecuting Christians as a “synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9; 3:9). Was Jewish Jesus antisemitic? Gentile believers have not only been grafted in to the olive tree of faith whose roots are in Judaism (Rom. 11:17-24), they have also become “Abraham’s descendants” (Gal. 3:29) by virtue of them becoming one with Christ. All these truths are in your New Testament!

Food for thought!