Whose Land? Whose Promise?, by author and professor Gary M. Burge, questions the legitimacy of American evangelicals’ unwavering and unexamined support of a nation he describes as secular, aggressive, and unbiblical. That nation, according to Burge, is Israel.

For his efforts Burge, who is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College & Graduate School, has been labeled anti-Semitic by Jews and Christians alike. His book, at times unclear and generally unbalanced, nevertheless makes some important points that we evangelicals ignore to our own shame.

Overall, Whose Land? Whose Promise is one chapter short of being a great book. Burge, who has spent a considerable amount of time living, visiting, and studying in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, chronicles the problems of the land with tremendous compassion and insight – for the Palestinians. His love for the Palestinian people is to be commended; his failure to empathize with Israel to the same extent is not.

There are some important observations made by Burge, and he draws attention to a variety of policies and attitudes that need to be reconsidered and viewed by evangelicals through a biblical, New Testament lens. It should be required reading for any evangelical who has an opinion about the Israeli/Palestinian struggle.

Whose Land? Whose Promise? is critical of Israel policy, politics, and practices – but rarely, if ever, critical of Palestine. Such criticism is necessary: read any of the prophets in the Old Testament and you will find language that today would be denounced as anti-Semitic. It is not necessarily that Burge says too much, but that he says too little.

As alluded to previously, however, a chapter detailing the atrocities of the Palestinians is sorely lacking. There is no mention of Palestinians terrorists’ attacks on innocent people – Jews, Muslims, and Christians – and Burge seems to want to justify Palestinian violence as retaliatory, defensive, or provoked. But in truth, neither Israeli nor Palestinian hands are clean: there may be genuine explanations for violence and injustice on both sides, but there is never a viable excuse.

It is hard to read Whose Land? Whose Promise? and not be reminded of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which is a great book. What made the latter a great book was its insightful and balanced account of the good and bad behavior by Native Americans and the pioneers and soldiers alike. Burge’s book, however, causes a thoughtful reader to be a least mildly suspicious of some of his claims and to wonder about what fuels his one-sided passion.

What is currently happening in Israel/Palestine parallels what events in North America hundreds of years ago, albeit on a smaller scale geographically. The mistakes and tragedies that mark America’s early years in dealing with the resident Native Americans are being replicated in the Middle East today – by both Israels and Palestinians.

As evangelicals, Burge pleades, we need to examine our role in the situation prayerfully and carefully.

After an important introduction, the Burge’s book is divided into three sections: a background on the land and its history, the Old Testament presentation of the land, and the New Testament perspective on the land. This review will follow Burge’s outline.

Introduction

Burge states that the path to resolution in Israel/Palestine leads through at least three hazards: Israeli need for security, return and reparations for Palestinians, and legitimate criticism of Israel. He validates the first two needs and attempts to ward off additional charges of anti-Semiticism by justifying the need for fair criticism of Israel. His criticisms are usually legitimate but, due to the absence of corresponding criticism of the Palestinians, come across as unfair most of the time.

Burge believes there are numerous factors at play that make perspective difficult for American evangelicals:


(1) guilt for the holocaust, (2) a sense of shared spiritual identity and destiny with the Jews, (3) the belief that the Israel’s rebirth as a nation in 1948 was a miracle, and (4) a belief that prophecy is being fulfilled today by Israel’s presence in the land originally promised to Abraham and his descendants.

The key, Burge argues, is this: “If Israel makes a biblical claim to the Holy Land, then Israel must adhere to biblical standards of national righteousness.” Believing that national Israel falls short by this standard of measure, he concludes that “Christians must look more closely at their commitments” to the policies and practices of Israel (p. 13) .

strong>Geography and History

The first of the three major divisions of the book is entitled “The Background to the Problem.” For those of us who have not traveled to the Middle East and have little understanding of the conditions and challenges there, this section alone is worth the price of the book.

Burge provides geographic and demographic information on the Arab nations encircling the small nation of Israel. More importantly, he explains the value in the region of land (not much is arable) and water (it is scarce).< In his discussion of Israel/Palestine’s history, Burge traces the people and the land through biblical, medieval, and modern times. In each period of time, he says, it is the topography of the land that has been determinative in the struggles and conflicts that have characterized the area.

The Voice of Old Testament

The second division of Whose Land? Whose Promise? examines the Old Testament’s view and value of the land. He especially focuses on the Abrahamic Covenant (AC) since it, he says, is the foundational covenant for the land (Gen 15)

There are three aspects to the AC: (1) Abraham was to be personally blessed with many children (the meaning of his new name, even though he was still childless at the time – part of the ironic humor of the Bible), (2) a great nation would emerge from his line, and (3) all the nations of the world would be blessed through him. Included in the second of these items is the promise of the land.

A critical question concerns the nature of the AC: is it conditional or unconditional? Burge seems to waffle on this point at times. He repeatedly implies that national Israel has forfeited its claim to the land. Scripture however, is clear that possession or living in the land was conditioned on obedience, but the right to the land was an unconditional promise made by God. The nature of the “cutting” of the covenant makes obvious that the fulfillment of this promise dependent totally on God, not Abraham or his descendants (Gen 15.12-17).

Burge does not discuss the Palestinian Covenant (PC) of Deu 30.1-10, perhaps feeling that it is secondary to the AC or is tangential. This is a curious oversight since the PC reaffirmed the unconditional nature of the AC but also made realization of it at any given time contingent on obedience and faithfulness.

Burge is correct in his assessment of present-day Israel’s unbelief (unbelief being defined as a lack of conversion to Christianity). That Israel is in the land in unbelief is without question from a Christian perspective – or even a Jewish one, as Burge argues. But he seems to condemn the Jews for their unbelief while absolving the Arabs of the same, thereby implying that either the Jews should be judged more harshly or the Palestinians more leniently.

“The Bible teaches that the nation of Israel does not own the land,” Burge rightly asserts, “God does.” (p. 75). This is no less true for the Palestinians, although he does not make this point. If it is truly holy ground, it matters little whether the dirty feet that trample upon it are Israeli or Palestinian.

Again, Burge’s compassion for Israel is largely missing in the book. He fails to note that, while the Israelis seek a place to live and security, militant Arabs seek a place to live and the genocide of Israelis. Burge makes no distinction between Palestinian extremists and those who seek to live harmoniously with and within Israel. He paints the Palestinians with a broad brush and the brush has been dipped in whitewash. One is left wondering at times whether his politics shaped by his theology, or his theology by his politics.

Historically, he seems to make room for non-Jews (not just non-Israelis) living in the land as far back as the Book of Joshua and the original conquest. “To sum up, the portrait given in Joshua is not as uniform as we might think. City-fortresses hostile to Joshua suffer a devastating defeat, but not every Canaanite life is expunged from the land” (p. 84).

It is true that Canaanites remained in the land, but the author does not ask if this was God’s original intent. Clearly it was not: “There is no Canaanite Holocaust,” Burge declares (p. 83). What, then, of Moses’ orders to the Israelites as they prepared to enter Canaan?

“Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you” (Deu 20.16-17, emphasis mine; cf. Jos 6.2110.28, 10.39, 11.14).

If this is not “holocaustic,” one wonders, then what is? Certainly not as many Canaanites died then as did Jews in Nazi Germany, but the intent was total eradication, not a specific elimination of military targets. There were no “smart” spears or arrows in that time.

The reality of Israel’s situation, whether during the times of Joshua or now, is that there are “aliens” living in the land. Burge is just in citing and seeking to apply the standards and protections that God made for non-Israelites among His people. Here are the Old Testament provisions for resident aliens in Israel:

1. “Religious Privileges: Non-Israelites were included in religious ceremony and worship.”

(Burge overlooks the fact that non-Israelite does not equal non-Jew or, at the very least, non-God-fearers. Non-Israelites were in the land, but were they allowed to practice their own religion [as is the case today]? The sin of Jeroboam was nothing if it was not allowing people in the land to worship other gods and idols.)

2. “Social Privileges: Non-Israelites were cared for in ‘social programs’ that assisted the needy.”

3. “Legal Privileges: Non-Israelites were to have access to the same system of justice enjoyed by the Israelites” (pp. 89-90).

Thus, regardless of Israel’s spiritual condition from a New Testament vantage point, the Old Testament gave clear directions on how foreigners were to be treated. It is the power of the land, says Burge, that causes problems: “The land tempts the corrupt while it encourages the righteous,” he insightfully observes. “The corrupt want to consume more land for more power and wealth. The righteous employ its bounty to build a better place for all” (98-99).

A recurring theme throughout Whose Land? Whose Promise? is Burge’s insistence that Israel has lost its claim to the land.

“Judgment fell upon the southern kingdom in the same manner that it fell upon those in the north . . . The inheritance of Abraham was lost” (p. 103, emphases mine).

This is not correct; the judgment was different, and there was a good reason why God used the Assyrians to remove the northern kingdom but the Babylonians to judge Judah. The Assyrians post-war policy was to scatter the conquered peoples and to bring others into the land; this policy resulted in the much-hated Samaritans. The Babylonians, however, relocated the people groups en masse, allowing them to retain their religious practices and “ethnic purity.” Additionally, God divorced Israel (Jer 3.6-8) but not Judah. The deed to the land was never lost but was suspended due to unbelief (idolatry), as the Palestinian Covenant had warned.

Burge aligns himself with “Post-Zionist” scholars rewriting the history of the Middle East: “Israel was no longer seen as a ‘victim’ of Arab aggression but, instead, Zionism was explained as a ‘victimizing’ colonial movement” (p. 108). But is it really so black and white? Does it have to be either/or? Is it not truly both/and? Israel is at once a perpetrator (at an official level) and a victim (i.e., the average citizen); the same is true of the Palestinians.

Two basic myths must be exploded, Burge argues,if evangelicals are to see the Middle East clearly:

“First, the account of 1948 had always been told as a story of ill-equipped Holocaust survivors facing a hostile British government and a united Arab world preparing to annihilate them . . . The second fundamental myth challenged by these scholars is the voluntary exodus of the Palestinians . . . Israeli historians now talk about the mass and planned expulsion of the Palestinians, an early form of ‘ethnic cleansing’” (pp. 108-109).

(The use of the phrase “ethnic cleansing” is a highly-charged and defamatory term. Burge later allows that the Israelis have never planned to kill all the Palestinians in order to put an end to them once and for all.)

Once the myths are eliminated, Burge believes the way is cleared for evangelicals to reconsider their commitment to national Israel.

“The first questions Christians have to answer is whether or not modern Israel corresponds to biblical Israel described in our Scriptures . . . The earliest Zionists (from Weizmann to Ben-Gurion to Meir) all interpreted their work as restoring a biblical tradition even though they had secularized that tradition completely” (p. 133).

In a footnote to the statement above, Burge adds:

“But we must be clear that in no way were the earliest Zionists ‘religious.’ The biblical traditions were mere metaphors. The ‘New Israel’ or ‘New Jew,’ as they called these early pioneers, was a secular, cultural Jew. On the final evening editing the constitution of the country, its writers debated if they should include the name of ‘God’ in its language” (p. 103, emphasis mine).

If true, this statement confirms the lack of faith – in either an Old or New Testament sense – on the part of Israeli founders and leaders.

Burge makes this very point. “Assuming for now that such continuity exists between the Old Testament and the twenty-first century,” he writes, “how does Israel’s national life compare with the life of God’s people outlined in the Bible? If Israel qualifies prophetically, does Israel also qualify ethically and morally to be God’s people in the land?” (p. 135, emphasis his).

Burge unquestionably believes Israel does not qualify. He lists the following problems with the nation’s claim to biblical nationhood: an exclusivist state, discrimination, official stealing of Palestinian land, stealing water, destruction of Palestinian villages, demolition of lawful Palestinian homes, human rights abuses (illegal arrests and detentions, torture, deportation, and sanctioned violence against Palestinians), and religious compromise (pp. 119-124).

Two of the many stories of Palestinians in the book reveal at an individual and personal level the injustice that appears to be common in Israel:

“On February 10, 1989, (four-year-old) Ali aimed his toy gun and made clicking noises at a passing Israeli patrol. He was playing near his house in Jabalya refugee camp (Gaza). Seeing this, three soldiers raced over. One grabbed to toy and stomped on it, and then grabbed Ali’s right hand as another soldier held the child from behind. The third soldier ‘began to pound Ali’s out-stretched arm with his wooden truncheon. The soldier holding Ali’s arm out slapped him hard across the face over and over again.’ Neighbors tried to intervene but were prevented by the rest of the patrol. The soldiers ‘continued slapping his face and pounding his arm with the truncheon until the arm broke.’ Then another solder ‘lifted Ali high into the air and dashed him to the pavement. Just as he hit the ground, the soldier who had been slapping his face struck him on the left should with the butt of his rife . . . When the three soldiers finished with Ali, they rejoined the patrol and continued down the street” (from the Swedish Save the Children Fund).

“Recently Bethlehem was under siege for weeks. A pastor in the Bethlehem Lutheran Christmas Church, Mitri Raheb, recently told me a typical story: A Christian family in his church was asleep when they were awakened by the thud of helicopter rotors. Suddenly a missile ripped through their home, and the family with their young children ran screaming into their olive orchards. A five-year-old girl named Alice hid behind olive trees as the Apache lifted over the burning house and chased the children with floodlights for ten minutes. Rev. Raheb that Alice’s trauma many never go away. She is haunted by nightmares. To date, four Christian families in Mitri’s church have lost their homes to Israeli terror” (pp. 160-161).

Burge ends his alarming and inflammatory section on the Old Testament evaluation by arguing that Israel is committing the sin of Ahab when the king of Israel coveted and stole the land of Naboth (1 Ki 21.1-16). This is a very familiar verse, he says, to Palestinian Christians living under Israeli rule.


2 Cor 1:13