Hated (part 3)

It is always key to hold fast to the thought that the people to whom Jesus spoke, be it His disciples or fellow Israelites (though His wider audience also frequently included Gentiles), always thought of themselves as the people delivered from slavery in Egypt. Though they had been more recently been delivered from a Babylonian exile, which allowed a rebuilding of the Temple and a rebuilding of Jerusalem, this return from exile was always considered incomplete, so the more sure demonstration of the power and faithfulness of their God, which more readily identified Israel as His chosen and special people through which He desired to carry out His purposes in and for this world, was the deliverance from Egypt under Moses.

Exodus is what influences the soteriological terms that are encountered within the divine record, such as redemption, deliverance, rescue, and salvation. When such words are used, be it by a judge, a Psalmist, a prophet, a king, or by Jesus, their usage would generate a remembrance of the God that delivered from Egypt. In turn, this would stir a remembrance of the Sinai covenant, which should then remind the hearer (or the reader) of the Abrahamic covenant, thereby driving thoughts right back to that which the Abrahamic covenant was designed to correct, which was the world that was brought into existence by the fall of man. In a culture in which these stories were told and heard on a daily basis, and highlighted at the times of the festivals, we do not no strain to credulity to posit such a manner of contemplation.

This returns us, then, to what Jesus said in the thirteenth chapter of Mark (and elsewhere): “You will be hated by everyone because of My name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (13:13). We now key in on the second part of that statement, in which Jesus speaks of enduring to the end and being saved. This use of “saved” links Jesus’ words to Israel’s Egyptian exodus, as again, “salvation” expressions, for Israel, speak of God’s rescue from enemies or deliverance from oppressors. This would be easily picked up on by His hearers, and it would have been readily discerned by the first century readers of the Gospels, as they would also have been steeped within Israel’s history. When that is understood, and we pick up on the exodus context for the hatred of which Jesus speaks, and discard the idea that Jesus is talking about some ethereal, other-worldly notion of a paradise somewhere off in the sky to be enjoyed after death (a thoroughly un-Jewish notion) when He speaks of being saved, we will find ourselves better positioned to identify the reason for the hate.

So why in the world is this connected to Israel’s exodus? What is the reason that God gives for rescuing Israel (His covenant people through Abraham) from their Egyptian bondage? Essentially, it is the same reason He gives for rescuing the church (His covenant people through Jesus) from their bondage? We find the answer in Deuteronomy, where we read’s Moses report that “It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you---for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples. Rather it is because of His love for you and His faithfulness to the promises He solemnly vowed to your ancestors that the Lord brought you out with great power, redeeming you from the place of slavery” (7:7-8) Just before this, Moses reminds Israel that they “are a people holy to the Lord” (7:6a), and saying “He has chosen you to be His people, prized above all others on the face of the earth” (7:6b).

One of the Psalmists picks up on this, enabling us to catch yet another glimpse of that historical self-understanding out of and into which Jesus spoke, when the Psalmist wrote (in reference to Israel in Egypt), “The Lord made His people very fruitful, and made them more numerous than their enemies. He caused them to hate His people, and to mistreat His servants” (105:24-25). This gives us pause, so as to consider a question that is never asked, which is “what was Israel doing for Egypt when God made them fruitful in that land?” Were they being a blessing as Abraham had been? What caused Egypt to turn against Israel and to hate God’s covenant people? Were they serving those people well by sharing God’s blessings and revealing their God to them, or were they hoarding the blessing?