I’ve always wondered why God, if real, would give so little land to His chosen people. Or to look at it another way, why He would give so much more to everyone else.
I’m not saying Israel isn’t a nice little country, just that if you were God, and you had the choice between giving a bunch of land to your chosen people or to a bunch of schmucks, who would you choose?
Additionally, if you were going to make your chosen people’s descendants as many as the stars in the sky (Genesis 26:4), wouldn’t you want to make room for them all?
Why didn’t God just direct them to build a boat and sail west to claim North and South America? Or why not just conquer Egypt? It’s bigger, better, and they were already there!
Abraham: Worst… Jewish… negotiator… ever.
What would Abraham say if he saw a map of the world today? I imagine he would say:
“Oh you can’t be serious. What the hell sheol, God? Here I thought I could trust you to give me a good deal, and it turns out all you were promising me was .01% of the world’s land!? And what did you give our enemies? The other 99.99% of the world! Who do you really love here? And you didn’t even hand the land over to us, we literally had to kill for it, only to lose it again and again! Yes, yes, it is ours again, but have you seen our neighbors? Why they’re just… just… DREADFUL! They never mow their lawn, their dogs are constantly barking, and — oh ya –they’re ALWAYS TRYING TO KILL US! Heck, even the lousy Mormon’s got 10 TIMES the land that we did. I would gladly trade Israel for Utah, at least their Colorado neighbors keep their shootings confined to their schools. Oh, and by the way, what’s with half the world being Asian??? I thought my descendents were supposed to be as the stars in the sky? Did you make a separate deal with some Asian guy?”
If God were real, we might expect Him to:
-
- Clear out the land for His chosen people to acquire.
- Bless them with a much larger country.
- Make it rich with oil, gold, diamonds, fertile soil and plenty of parking.
- Fill the land with more offspring than any other people.
- Protect them from invasions.
But in looking at Israel, I can’t see why this small country is “flowing with milk and honey,” or more valuable than any other country.
As I Christian, I do remember one story about how Israel had some of the best olives in the world. Yes, olives — the other oil. Like that’s enough to make us cry “Surely these are God’s chosen people! God wouldn’t entrust olives like these to just anybody!”
If God isn’t real, then we might expect:
- The Jews would only be able to conquer as much land as their armies could overthrow.
- They would have to slaughter (or exile) the existing residents (God wouldn’t do it for them).
- Other, more powerful, armies would eventually come along and slaughter or exile the Jews; not because their gods were more powerful, or because God was mad at the Jews, but because humans make up gods, fight over land, and make excuses for gods that fail to respond.
- Other healthy human populations would multiply faster than the Jews if placed in an ideal environment.
- Religious believers and Holocaust sympathizers might one day come to the aid of the Jews to help them re-acquire their land.
Couldn’t we expect such events to happen, even without a God?
500 Questions about God & Christianity 
Damn. That’s a good point, in favor of the “tribal religious belief” over “one true God over the whole world belief”, that is, the tiny god of a tribe of people in a small area of the world that took over a small spit of land through conquest, and only later spread over the rest of the world as time passed.
That’s a tiny smidgen of land.
He did send Jews to live in America and multiply like rabbits. That is what the Book of Mormon is all about. Lol.
Interesting point! Unfortunately they must’ve all died out, as modern American Indians show no trace of Jewish mitochondrial DNA. (The LDS church has since recanted and said that not all Indians are of Jewish decent.)
The answer lies in the fact that not all Israelite s
are Jews
Yes, but they all have certain DNA markers since they are from a limited number of tribes, and none of those show up in the Amerind population.
All good points. But the fundamentalists keep on telling us that God (if a god exists at all) loves us in a very special way, much different from how we understand “love”. An example: A mother discovers the dismembered body parts of her little child in a filthy public toilet. The child was also savegely raped (based on a real case). Well, is that God’s special way of loving the child? (Bear in mind, God witnesses everything, loves us, is full of compassion, all powerful … or so they say) So how are we to understand His method of REWARD in dishing out LAND. We can equally say God rewards in a very special way, much different from how we understand the word “reward”. Just thinking about this makes my head spin…. If a God exists at all, I would think He will be “impersonal” and will not get involved in rewarding and punishing, protecting or harming, loving or hating… exactly as “nature” operates. This will be consistent with the reality of things in our world. So, no need to worship God unless you believe there’s a heaven reserved for believers and a hell for non-believers.
PS: Hey, you’re talking about earth only, what about heaven. Maybe, the WHOLE of heaven is reserved for his chosen people. So they get a good deal in the “end”, me thinks 😉
“Why Did God Give His Chosen People So Little Land?”
I consider why there are “chosen people” at all..
Why is it religion in general is ethnocentric and sexist in origin?
Better yet, why do so few see or acknowledge this pattern- irrespective of whatever religion they may or may not subscribe to?
Interestingly, one of my earlier memories is being 4 years old going to my grandfather’s Sunday sermon being a white male and wondering to myself why Jesus was a white male. It simply would be more palatable that God be a black female or something that wouldn’t be respective of who was in power and yet- just like each nation’s version of Santa Claus- we have very ethnocentric and sexist origins to our modern deities.
It would’ve been one thing for it to be “The Mother, The Daughter and The Holy Spirit” to initiate males being the dominant force in the church and societal power structure; another for the “prophets” of all major monotheistic religions to have been female.
Yet we have:
Islam: Muhammad. Christianity: Jesus. Confucianism: Confucius. Buddhism, Buddha
Even lesser or older prophets Zoroaster, Joseph Smith… heck I’ll even throw in L. Ron Hubbard here for conversation sake…
Bless all for their beliefs and the wonderful diversity we have as a result- I wouldn’t want it any other way.
That said, when it comes down to government or positions of power that require some form of objectivity, it scares the hell out of me that some people don’t even “consider” seeing the forest for the trees.
Keyword: “consider”
This is an easy question to answer. The original land promise that God will make sure will eventually be established permanently is much larger than present Israel. Also, the Jews will rule the world under Yeshua the Jew of all Jews, and, when He returns and takes back His world from this evil sinful human race and Satan.
Also, here is a question for you: If God is NOT real how is it that the Jewish people have survived and thrived for all of these thousands of years when no other people group on the planet has gone through all they have gone through in the way they have gone through it, and, survived with such coherence? And how do you explain the fact of the Biblical prophecies related to Israel and the Jewish people such as the predictive prophecies that show they would be scattered two times and would return and always remain in the land? And then thirdly how do you explain the historical fact that the Middle east and the Israeli/Arab issue is constantly in the news and media? How come all these others such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Mayans, etc are gone and scattered and yet the Jews remain? Even Mark Twain whom you like to quote was amazed by the survival and thrival of the Jews and had no natural explanation for it.
Hi Mushet,
“If God is NOT real how is it that the Jewish people have survived and thrived for all of these thousands of years…”
One could just as easily say, “If the Hindu gods were NOT real, how is it that it has survived and thrived for all these thousands of years?” (It does predate Judaism, after all.) Just because religious traditions survive, it doesn’t follow that they are true.
“And how do you explain the fact of the Biblical prophecies related to Israel and the Jewish people such as the predictive prophecies that show they would be scattered two times and would return and always remain in the land?”
I’ve yet to investigate a prophecy that wasn’t full of holes. (And if I recall correctly, doesn’t the Bible say that ALL Jews would return to Israel?)
Judaism gave birth to Christianity, and Christianity gave birth to a world of Jewish sympathizers. Many Christians believe that the Jews must return to Israel and rebuild the temple so the end can be ushered in, and this has become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
“And then thirdly how do you explain the historical fact that the Middle east and the Israeli/Arab issue is constantly in the news and media?”
Same reason, Christians what to hear about it. But I would bet that Russia and the UK are also constantly in the news, but our “confirmation bias” ignores these “misses” and only pays attention to the “hits.”
“How come all these others such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Mayans, etc are gone and scattered and yet the Jews remain?”
Religion and tradition can be very unifying forces (especially when your gods insists you marry people from the same religious traditions). For almost 1,400 years, Muslims have made a pilgrimage to Mecca because their religion dictates it. How many more would move there if they believed God had ordered it?
500Q