Jerusalem Watchman

Category

Lest we forget [who owns] Jerusalem

It is not all that unusual for an Israeli politician to garnish his or her speeches with a verse or even two from the Bible (the Tanach or “Old Testament.”) Religious and non-religious Jew alike will dip into the most famous and cherished Hebrew-language original to underscore a message to their people.
Prime ministers have also [...]

That His name may be declared in all the earth

Jews prepared this week to celebrate their forefathers’ escape from forced submission to an ancient superpower that was once their friend and ally.
As they did, reports from Washington warned of the imminent mounting of an extraordinary effort to coerce Israel into compliance with the dictate of the modern superpower the Jewish state has long regarded [...]

Genesis Five - The First Millennium

After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he begot sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died. (Genesis 5:4-5)
We have no idea how long Adam and Eve enjoyed life in Eden - how many years, centuries, millennia even, [...]

Of genealogies and lists

[Reminder: "The Bible on Israel" articles are meant to comprise, over time, a protracted study that seeks specifically to understand more about Israel's place in God's plan for the world. We are not parsing Scripture verse by verse, or even chapter by chapter, but are specifically looking for instances that directly deal with the People, [...]

Book of the Ages - Perspectives

Two things before moving on in Genesis…
First: A note to my Jewish readers. As many of you know, I am unapologetically and unashamedly, a Christian, a follower of the way lived and taught by the most wonderful and influential Jew ever to walk this earth. I am deeply ashamed of a great deal of what has [...]

God hides His face

The story of Cain and Abel appears, on the face of it, to be simply the report of the first murder in history, which of course it is. But as with all Scripture, there are many things to be discovered in the text itself - not least the start of the line that would lead [...]

In the beginning…

Note: I am no theologian, not a qualified Bible teacher, not even a student of biblical studies (at least not since 10th Grade). Like millions of “ordinary” Christians, I imbibe Scripture because I believe it to be the inerrant Word of God; I read it repeatedly, receiving and absorbing it prayerfully into my mind because I want [...]

So you know where I stand…

The Bible I am reading through for this purpose of “discovering what it says about Israel” is “The Holman Ultrathin Bible - Classic Edition.” It is the New King James Version published by Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, Copyright 1988 Thomas Nelson, Inc. This is not a Study Bible. Apart from a not very [...]

The Bible on Israel

The Bible – Hebrew Scriptures (“Old” Testament) and the New Testament – is the most widely-read, most published, most venerated book of all time.
With translations of the complete Bible in nearly 440 languages, one of the two testaments translated into 1,168 additional languages, and portions of the text in 848 additional languages, we can say [...]