The Torah: Divinely-Inspired or Man-Made?
Overview: A clear pattern in Jewish history following the biblical theme of the Covenant and its predictions which played out surprisingly accurately against all odds.
The Covenant Argument
First and foremost, the Covenant argument must be noted for what it is – only an argument. Meaning, it’s not absolute proof or anything resembling that. Its flaws are self-evident as are its merits. See “Can Judaism be Proven” for a discussion on whether or not Judaism can be proven and a form of Pascal’s Wager. It’s an argument that will demonstrate a strong possibility for there being a divine, supernatural being that plays a role in the Jewish nation’s destiny. It will also demonstrate the strong possibility for a Covenant made between God and His people centered around Torah Law. This argument does not advocate for a word-for-word divine writing of Torah that many people believe in; that fundamentalist view is easily refuted by biblical academia. The only argument being presented here is that there’s some level of divinity in Torah as well as a Covenant between God and His nation Israel, as we shall soon discuss.
The argument begins with the uniqueness of Jewish history and how that unique phenomenon was predicted in the Torah. That prediction in the form of a Covenant serves as explanation for why the Jews have experienced a national history unparalleled by other nations.
But every nation has its unique experiences, no? The Muslim rapid conquest of the Middle East and beyond, the influence of Christianity worldwide, etc. But there’s something different about the Jewish experience. It is unparalleled. True, the Christians have almost 2.5 billion adherents worldwide, but the Muslims have almost as much with 2 billion. Just as the Muslims conquered so much land in 100-year span, so has Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great in much less time. But the Jewish experience is truly unparalleled in scope. No other nation in the history of mankind has been exiled, dispersed, persecuted, as much as the Jews and yet retained their cultural and religious identity without their homeland (more on this later). Additionally, this unique experience has happened to the Jews twice! (more on this later.) In addition, these experiences were predicted in the Jewish sacred book, as we shall soon see.
A brief Jewish history
Jewish history spanned more than 2,500 years so recapping it into just a few sentences serves it no justice. We will therefore emphasize the key elements related to our discussion and leave out the rest. The Jews (i.e. kingdom of Judah) were exiled from their land in the 6th-century BCE by Nebuchadnezzar and brought to Babylon.[1] They were there for some time until returning to the Land of Israel.[2] They were dispersed around the world by that time and it took many years until Israel got back its large Jewish populations that it had before the exile. Then again in the first-century, after an unsuccessful revolt by the Jews against Rome, another exile began to unfold for the unlucky Jews. The Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and took thousands of captives to Rome and elsewhere. Israel still maintained a Jewish majority for another 200 years or so, a period of time in which Jews were leaving Israel due to Roman oppression and religious persecution. A few hundred years after the Romans sent out the first exiles and destroyed the Temple, Israel was a barren land with only a scarce population most of which weren’t Jewish. The Jews were to remain in exile, a diaspora, till the 18th-century in which Jews began to migrate back to Israel and after the Holocaust the State of Israel was established in 1948.
Before this return to Israel, Jews were spread around the world with no homeland. They lived in Europe, Yemen, Russia, Iran, and almost everywhere around the globe had Jewish communities. They were heavily persecuted for the most part and were constantly on the run (especially in Europe).
The Jews have had a profound impact on the world in many ways. It taught the world monotheism and the service of the One True invisible God. It taught the world much of its morality and advanced the world in the sciences.[3] It also created the idea of a day of rest at the end of the week and basic Western notions like “all men were created equal” or “in the Image of God.” The Jewish sacred book, the Torah, also became the staple book of authority and even the New Testament and Quran draw from the Torah. The Jewish contributions to society are well documented.
This is the relevant history in a nut-shell.
The prediction
The history is fascinating on its own (more on that later), but even more interesting is the fact that the Torah predicts this history before it even happened. Let’s go through some interesting passages from Deuteronomy 28 and other biblical passages from the Pentateuch and see how they unfolded in the past 2,000 years to the Jews.[4]
(1) DESTRUCTION OF THE LAND:[i] It indeed came about in the year 69 A.C.E. when the Romans invaded the land. Josephus, among other contemporary historians, describes this invasion and destruction at length. It was a ruthless one, killing scores of thousands of men, women, and children living in Israel. This is no amusement of a prophecy on its own but it is a lead-up to the upcoming surprises. Each prophecy, one coming after the next, become less and less likely to have happened by mere chance.
(2) NATIONAL EXILE:[ii] Destruction is natural and has happened all throughout human history. What about exile? Exile is somewhat common. How about a national exile? Now, that’s rare. It has only happened to a handful of nations, in which a majority of the population was exiled into a foreign land. [5] [iii] Surprisingly, one of these rare nations were the Jews, and the Torah predicted it much before it happened!
But let’s take this even further:
(3) DISPERSION: [iv] Whenever people are exiled, they almost always settle in one place.[6] The Jews, however, have an interesting one; they are dispersed in the four corners of the earth, to the point that Jews have historically been in almost every country in the world.
(4) CONSTANT PERSECUTION:[v] The Torah describes our troubles in exile. There’s no need to bring examples here, just open any Jewish history book and you will see how clearly this sad prophecy was fulfilled.[7] In fact the persecution of Jews was and is so unique that a special term—anti-Semitism—was established for its uniqueness.
(5) RETAINING THEIR IDENTITY:[vi] Whenever people are exiled, it is likely for them to assimilate. After all, it’s only natural to want to blend into one’s society.[vii] Something very strange was predicted and indeed happened to the Jews—they kept their Jewish identity for over 2,000 years![8] This happened as they were being exiled (prediction 2)! As they are dispersed throughout the world (prediction 3)! As they are under constant persecution (prediction 4)!
(6) PRESERVING THE TORAH:[viii] The Torah was indeed preserved—to the exact version—throughout the Jews’ exile. Each Jewish community, from all corners of the world, all came out with the same Torah. Our Torah is practically the same as the one found in the Dead Sea Scrolls dated 2,000 years ago (see here). Our Torah survived the 2,000 years of persecution! How can an exiled nation, which is dispersed, and is under constant persecution preserve its writings, especially with such accuracy? In fact, Judaism is from the world’s oldest religions and the only religion to have survived exile, dispersion, and persecution, yet alone for 2,000 years!
(7) RETURN TO THE LAND:[ix] After all these years in exile and dispersion, the Jews are prophesied to eventually return to the Promised Land of Israel. Indeed after 2,000 years of exile from the Land, the Jews returned to establish a Jewish State in the Holy Land. No such event happened in the past 2,000 years. The Jews alone were nationally exiled and survived 2,000 years of persecution and dispersion to ultimately return to their ancestral land.[9]
(8) JEWISH CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIETY: Another possible prediction is the contribution of Jews to mankind. This one is much more questionable than the others but we will bring it either way and allow the reader to make the judgment.
Jewish contribution to society is more than any other nation – despite being such a tiny percentage of the world. No nation can be said to have had such effects on mankind.[10] This may have been predicted in the Torah in which God tells Abraham, the father of the Jews, that his descendants will bring blessing to the world.[11]
It is truly fascinating how Torah was able to predict all these things which happened to the Jews in the past 2,000 years – although Torah was written at least 2,500 years ago.
But wasn’t it written after the Babylonian exile?
According to bible scholars, these biblical texts were written after the Assyrian exile or after the Babylonian exile. They say so mostly because they cannot, as secularists, view these texts as accurate divine prophetic predictions of the future.[12] They say that these texts were written as theological explanations for the Jewish exiles and how these atrocities were somehow connected to their sinning. And there’s good merit to that suspicion of theirs – had Jewish history been different the past 2,000 years.
Something astounding occurred since these texts were written. The Jews returned to their land again, only to be exiled once again, dispersed universally, persecuted, keep their identity for 2,000 years and eventually return to their ancestral land. This is a repeat of the Covenant phenomenon which predicts exactly these rare things among its curses.
What’s ironic is that this Covenant paradigm – national exile, universal dispersion, persecution, identity, and return – played out for the Jews in a time where no other nation had a national exile.[13] Even those who were exiled (i.e. groups from within a larger nation), the vast majority haven’t survived by keeping their religious or cultural identity to this day. None have survived 2,000 years of exile as the Jews. Those that did survive hundreds of years haven’t retained their religious identity.[14] Either way, it’s an extremely rare phenomenon – yet it happened to the Jews. So the question now becomes: what are the odds of this rare phenomenon happening exclusively to the Jews, out of thousands of nations/tribes in the past 2,000 years, yet it having nothing to do with the Covenant laid out in the Torah which predicts exactly this phenomenon?! Was this merely a crazy coincidence? How far are we willing to scream “coincidence” just in order to avoid the possibility for a supernatural power out there?
For this reason, it may make more sense that the Covenant has a divine element to it, with the ability to predict the rare history of the Jews over the past 2,000 years. Therefore, in all likelihood it preceded the Babylonian and Assyrian exiles as well and predicted those just as it was able to predict the Roman exile.
The dual factor
As briefly expressed earlier, an interesting aspect of the Covenant paradigm is the Dual Factor. The Dual Factor is the fact that this Covenant paradigm repeated itself twice. It happened to the Jews in the Babylonian/Assyrian exile[15] and again by the Roman exile. I don’t know of any other nation which had the Covenant paradigm occur to them twice (and only very few even had it once[16]). It’s really ironic how, in the secular view, the Jews just happened to re-experience the Covenant paradigm a second time after the Babylonian exile. This is truly exclusive to the Jews – whom the Covenant predictions concern. What’s more is that the second time around – the Roman era and the subsequent 2,000 years – there were no other examples of national exiles with universal dispersions (yet alone return to ancestral lands). This happened to the Jews alone. The Jews also survived 2,000 years of persecutions in exile to be from the oldest religions around today. All the religions that pre-date Judaism haven’t gone through an exile, yet alone for 2,000 years. This makes the Covenant paradigm for the Jews truly unique in so many different ways.
The uniqueness of Jewish survival
Besides for Dual Factor mentioned earlier, there’s the rarity of the Covenant phenomenon in the past 2,000 years. As said earlier, there’s no other example of national exile and universal dispersion as with the Jews in the past 2,000 years. Yet equally as fascinating is the survival of the Jewish communities over the past 2,000 years – despite their exile from their homeland, the universal dispersion, and constant persecution.
Nations aren’t naturally to survive in such harsh environments. The vast majority of nations subdue to persecution or assimilate into a newer emerging dominant culture. Let’s take just a few examples of known cultures of the Ancient Near East famous from biblical literature. Let us then see which of those nations are still around as a culture/religion and which not: we have the Israelites, Canaanites, Midianites, Edomites, Amorites, Ammonites, Philistines, Phoenicians, Amalekites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Armenian, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Girgashites, Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, Perizzites, Hittites, Tyrians, Sumerians, etc. These are from the more famous biblical nations. These nations of old are all extinct. Some exist as a people till this day but their religion is entirely different and their culture resembling nothing of its early days. There is only one exception. This exception is spoken of as an eternal people in the Torah and indeed more than 2,500 years still exists as a culture/religion/ethnicity of its own. It survived while all its historical neighbors assimilated one into another, changed from one religion to another, and one culture to another.
“And I will establish My covenant between Me and between you and between your seed after you throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant, to be to you for a God and to your seed after you.”
(Genesis 17:7)
After describing the calamities of exile, dispersion, persecution, etc. the Torah goes on to warn:
“But despite all this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not despise them nor will I reject them to annihilate them, thereby breaking My covenant that is with them, for I am the Lord their God.”
(Leviticus 26:44)
The Jewish people are promised that despite their exile, dispersion, and persecution (not to mention for 2,000 years!) they will survive as a people and eventually return to their ancestral Land (as discussed in Deuteronomy 30). Indeed, against all odds, the Jews survived not only one national exile but a second as well. They survived 2,000 years of constant forced conversions and attempts to assimilate them. 99% of religions/cultures from 2,500 years ago no longer in existence. Yet the Jews survived all their oppressors and outlived them to read of them in the annals of ancient history.
The Torah had this phenomenal insight that the Jewish people would survive, while also predicting that this would be despite a national exile, universal dispersion, persecution, and ultimately return to their land. Indeed secular writers as well have marveled at the wonderous Jewish phenomenon.
Mark Twain (a non-Jew and self-proclaimed agnostic) famously wrote:
“If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptian, Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away. The Greek and Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
(“Concerning the Jews”, Harper’s Magazine, 1899)
King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great Christian philosopher, to provide him proof of God’s existence. Pascal replied with just one sentence: “Why the Jews, your Majesty, the Jews!”
In attempt to explain away the Jewish survival wonder, some will point to other nations who have survived and others will propose natural explanations for why the Jews had survived so long. We will address these now.
First let’s start with the first issue: other nations said to have long survivals like the Jews or national exiles. There are a number of nations/religions often cited. These are Armenians, Romani (or Gypsies), Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism.
But what these critics fail to mention are the thousands of religions that are now long extinct. 99% of ancient religions are extinct and only a select few still survive. Judaism is one of them. What’s the significance of that? Not much in of its own, but there’s the Covenant paradigm that was predicted along with survival and the Dual Factor plus the rarity of this Covenant paradigm actually materializing to the very nation it is said to happen to. Had the Covenant been said about 99% of nations, it would have fell flat on its face.[17]
Even the nations that have been exiled and later returned in the days of Cyrus the Great – are now all extinct. They have assimilated into other cultures and religions. Ironically, the only nation alive today (to the best of my knowledge) that can be said to have fulfilled all the Covenant criteria are the Jews. It’s important for them to still be alive as a culture/religion nowadays since the Covenant predicts the survival of the nation for eternity.[18]
More on a sidenote, the Armenians and Romani have long survival records (almost as much as the Jews), but they haven’t had a national exile.[19] Zoroastrianism and Hinduism have ancient roots and have survived to this day. However, they have not been exiled from their land, dispersed around the world or persecuted. The novelty about Jewish survival is that it was achieved in unsustainable environments where natural forces should have caused Judaism to assimilate like it did with 99% of other nations/religions, especially nations who went through persecutions and converted to their oppressors’ religion (e.g. Christianity and Islam).
Different explanations have been put forth in attempt to explain Jewish survival. Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb deals with these at length in his book titled Reason to Believe. In short, what these explanations fail to take into account is that these “explanations” didn’t work for the hundreds of nations/religions that haven’t survived the 2,500+ years that Judaism did. But either way, even if there are possible post-facto explanations for Jewish survival, it doesn’t explain how the Covenant was to predict it with the exact circumstances of exile that accompanied the survival. These explanations also cannot account for the Dual Factor discussed earlier.
The parable
I will bring a parable to better illustrate the Covenant paradigm and its implications. Excuse the lack of creativity in the gloomy parable.
A man who claims to have supernatural powers gets into a fight with you. He then curses you and says that tomorrow you will spill your cup of coffee in the morning, you will not find a matching pair of socks, your tires will pop while on the road to work, your boss will get really mad at you for not doing enough work, your favorite lunch store across the street from work will shut down, and you will stub your toe on the way back from work.
Naturally, you laugh at the guy and move on. But the next day, loe and behold, one event after the next unfolds in front of your eyes. You spill your coffee, you can’t find a matching pair of socks, your tires smash etc etc. Coincidence? These things happen to people all the time (that is, each individually). Maybe even the guy who cursed you didn’t even mean what he said – he was just spurting out curses that come to his head. But then the question becomes, did all these events happen to you by chance – nothing to do with the curses of the man the day earlier detailing exactly these events to unfold?! If you believe this is still a coincidence, then the prophecies will be of no avail. If one is determined to find a natural explanation for this (no matter how far-fetched the “explanation”) then there’s not a proof in the world that can convince them out of it.
Let’s take this parable a step further. This spat with this man occurred over the mail. On Wednesday you get a letter saying these curses will fall upon you again and again until you apologize to him. You read the letter and suddenly you remember that this exact thing happened on Tuesday – the day before! Did he know these events happened to you and therefore write them to you? You try to check when the letter was written but there’s no date on it. So you day goes on and the next day, Thursday – loe and behold – the exact same occurrences happen to you again! Are we to assume that he wrote the letter after seeing the events happen to you on Tuesday and by mere chance the same exact events repeated themselves on Thursday? Or are we to consider the possibility that this man actually has the power to curse you and he wrote these curses before they happened to you on Tuesday and Thursday?
The connection to the Covenant is obvious. There’s the rarity of these predictions plus the Dual Factor that make it very likely that the author of the Covenant was on to something.
CLICK THE “READ MORE” TAB FOR THE IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF THIS COVENANT ARGUMENT AND FOR THE FOOTNOTES AND SOURCES
Verses by verse analysis
Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman exile, or all?
Exaggerated prophecies
Divine knowledge or supernatural powers?
The return to Israel and the American prosperity
Have the Jews done T’shuvah?
Partial or national exile predicted?
The statistical odds of prophecy fulfillment
Other Ancient Near East documents similar to Deut. 28
What does this all prove?
Which parts of Judaism or Torah do the prophecies validate?
Verse by verse
The chapter foretells the destruction, exile, and dispersion of the Jews that has occurred by both the Babylonians and 500(+) years later by the Romans (and maybe even the exile of the Ten Tribes by Assyria). The chapter seems to be describing both exiles, since they share a common theme: punishment for disobedience to the Covenant by the Jewish nation. (More on this concept soon under the headline “Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman exile, or all?”)
The astonishment of the prophecies aren’t concerning the Babylonian exile, because it can be argued that the prophecies were written post-fulfillment. But this cannot be said about the Roman exile, since the Torah was written well before then, according to all historians.
We will now go through the chapter verse by verse.
Where I find relevant, I put a “fulfilled” by the prophecy, and “neutral” wherever we cannot prove whether it was fulfilled or not. Wherever the prophecy was clearly not fulfilled, I put a “not fulfilled”… oh wait, there’s no such prophecy here…
| “And it will be, if you do not obey the Lord, your God, to observe to fulfill all His commandments and statutes which I am commanding you this day, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. |
| 16 You shall be cursed in the city, and you shall be cursed in the field. |
| 17 Cursed will be your [food] basket and your kneading bowl. |
| 18 Cursed will be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your soil, the fruit of your livestock, those born from your cattle and the flock of your sheep. |
| 19 You shall be cursed when you come, and you shall be cursed when you depart. |
| 20 The Lord will send the curse of shortages, confusion, and turmoil upon you, in every one of your endeavors which you undertake, until it destroys you and until you quickly vanish, because of your evil deeds in forsaking Me.
These very general curses describe a general lack of success and shortages in food, relative to the more prosperous times that the Jews had (e.g. the days of King David and King Solomon as well as the early Hasmonaean dynasty). |
| 21 The Lord will make pestilence cleave to you, until it has exterminated you from upon the land, to which you are coming, to possess it.
This seems to be referring to the chaos of pestilence caused during wars and sieges. As we shall later see, the Jews were to be expelled from their land by the tip of the sword of an invading army. Neutral. |
| 22 The Lord will strike you with consumption, fever, illnesses with burning fevers, a disease which causes unquenchable thirst, with the sword, with blast, and with yellowing, and they will pursue you until you perish. |
| 23 And your skies above you will be [like] copper, and the earth below you [like] iron. |
| 24 The Lord will turn the rain of your land into powder and dust, raining down upon you from the heavens until you are destroyed.
These are expressions of the infertility of the Land. There’s no evidence for or against this (by both the Babylonian and Roman exiles) so we’ll leave it at neutral. |
| 25 The Lord will cause you to be broken before your enemy: you will come out against them in one direction, but you will flee from them in seven directions. And you will become a terrifying [example] to all the kingdoms on earth.
This is exactly what happened with the Roman (and Babylonian) invasion. In fact, the Romans made a point to make an example of the Jewish rebels to send a statement to the rest of the world. Fulfilled |
| 26 Your corpse will be food for all birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them [away].
Josephus, in his history work The War of the Jew, describes the massacre in the North and in Jerusalem in similar terms. (the prophet Jeremiah describes the same about the fall of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.) |
| 27 The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with hemorrhoids, with oozing sores, and with dry lesions, from which you will be unable to be cured.
This seems to be referring to the chaos of pestilence caused during wars and sieges. As we shall later see, the Jews were to be expelled from their land by the tip of the sword of an invading army. Because these are specific examples of diseases and perhaps the verse meant it literally and not as an expression of pestilence, we’ll regard this as neutral since we don’t know if this happened or not. |
| 28 The Lord will strike you with insanity, with blindness, and with bewilderment.
These are all phrases describing confusion, as evident from the next verse. |
| 29 You will grope at midday, as the blind man gropes in the dark, and you will be unsuccessful in your ways. You will be only oppressed and robbed all the days, and no one will save [you].
These are all phrases describing the devastation brought by Rome (and Babylon) and the plunder that they did. |
| 30 You will betroth a woman, but another man will lie with her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not redeem it[s fruits]. |
| 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat from it. Your donkey will be snatched right in front of you, and it will not return to you. Your flock will be given over to your enemies, and you will have no savior.
These are all the consequences of being crushed by an occupying army. |
| 32 Your sons and daughters will be given over to another people, and your eyes will see [this] and long for them all day long, but you will be powerless.
This is a reference to the thousands of captives taken from the Jews by the Roman (and Babylonian[x]) army. Fulfilled |
| 33 A people unknown to you will eat up the fruit of your soil and [the result of] all your toil. You will be only wronged and crushed all the days.
Again a reference to the Roman (and Babylonian) occupation and plunder of Israel. |
| 34 You will go insane from the vision before your eyes that you will behold. |
| 35 The Lord will strike you on the knees and on the legs with a terrible skin eruption from which you will be unable to be cured; [it will eventually cover you] from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
Again a reference to the diseases caused by famine and war that occurred at the Roman invasion of Israel. |
| 36 The Lord will lead you and your king whom you will have established over you, to a nation unknown to you or your fathers; and there, you will serve other deities [made] of wood and stone.
A reference to the Babylonian exile (at which the time the Jews had a king) that happened before the Roman exile. Because the chapter’s theme is about the punishment of exile for sin, it shares both the story of the Roman exile and the Babylonian one. [This refers to the Babylonian one since in the Roman one, no gods of wood and stone were served to a large extend. See Ezekiel 8:12-17 where the Babylonian exiles serve idols.] Alternatively, this refers to the Roman exile (as well) and its merely a phrase to describe serving Christianity and Islam (mostly by forced conversions). I would further suggest that gods of wood and stone were likely served. The Romans had many of them and it wasn’t until Constantine, around 300 years later, that the Christianity became the official state religion of Rome. What’s more, the Christians had countless statutes made out of wood and stone of Jesus, Mary, the holy spirit, and saints which the Jews were often forced to worship in their exile. “A nation unknown to you or your fathers” seems to be a reference to a nation that doesn’t border you and hasn’t had interactions with you in the past. This would reference Rome much more than it would Babylon. Babylon is the very place from which Abraham was born (Ur-Kasdim) and migrated from. This is besides for the general knowledge people in the Ancient Near East had of Babylon. Thus hardly an accurate description and likely speaking of Rome. Rome was unheard of to the Jews leaving Egypt, the generation to whom the chapter is addressing. “Your king.” By the Babylonian exile, the king of Judea was exiled alongside his population. It can also perhaps be a reference to the Roman exile. I think you could argue that the Jews did have something of a king during the Roman revolt. According to Josephus, John of Giscala was the leader of much of the revolt. He had the support of the Sanhedrin. And Josephus describes how he set himself up as a king over Jerusalem. He was eventually captured and led through the streets of Rome, where he ultimately died. So although he doesn’t fit the technical criteria of a king, he was the Jewish leader of the rebellion against Rome but this is debatable. Alternatively, it may be going on King Aristobulus of the Hasmonaean dynasty who was paraded down to Rome in shackles (see commentary of Ramban on the verse). This was at the onset of the Roman occupation of Israel, some 100 years before the destruction of the Temple. This verse therefore speaks of either Babylon, Rome, or both. Fulfilled |
| 37 And you will become an [object of] astonishment, an example, and a topic of discussion, among all the peoples to whom the Lord will lead you.
The Jews have always been a big part of the world’s news despite taking up a tiny fraction of its population. The Wandering Jew was a big topic in Christianity and even in Islam to some degree. Fulfilled |
| 38 You will take much seed out to the field, yet you will gather in little, for the locusts will finish it.
Unverifiable (by both the Babylonian and Roman exiles) and thus neutral. |
| 39 You will plant vineyards and work [them], but you will neither drink of [their] wine, or gather [the grapes], because the worms will devour them.
Unverifiable and thus neutral. (This may also be an expression for general lack of wealth and abundance – not worm-devouring in particular.) Also see discussion on exaggerated prophecies to be discussed soon. |
| 40 You will have olive trees throughout all your boundaries, but you will not anoint with [their] oil, because your olive trees will drop off.
Unverifiable and thus neutral. (This may also be an expression for general lack of wealth and abundance.) Also see discussion on exaggerated prophecies to be discussed soon. |
| 41 You will bear sons and daughters, but you will not have them, because they will go into captivity.
Occurred at the Roman invasion where thousands of Jewish slaves were sent to Rome. Fulfilled. |
| 42 All your trees and all the fruit of your soil the cicada will make destitute.
Unverifiable and thus neutral. Also see discussion on exaggerated prophecies to be discussed soon. |
| 43 The stranger who is among you will arise above you, higher and higher, while you will descend lower and lower.
True with the non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel who were not punished by the Romans. Many of them ruled over Israel (as puppet kings to Rome). Fulfilled |
| 44 He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be at the head, while you will be at the tail.
A description of the economic ruins the Jews were in. |
| 45 All these curses will befall you, pursuing you and overtaking you to destroy you because you did not obey the Lord, your God, to observe His commandments and statutes which He commanded you.
The Jews have accumulated many sins over the generations (and God judges nations over a span of generations – see Genesis 15:16 among other verses). Moreover, that particular generation was especially sinful, with a large number of Sadducees, secularists, and heretical offshoots of Judaism like Christianity. Similarly, there were many large-scale criminal sects (e.g. the Sicarii murderers) at that time, especially in Jerusalem, as described by Josephus. (And in the Babylonian exile case, their sins are recorded in the books of the Prophets, especially Jeremiah). |
| 46 And they will be as a sign and a wonder, upon you and your offspring, forever,
The destruction of Israel and the Temple was always a part of the Jewish memory and Jews cried about it for generations to come. |
| 47 because you did not serve the Lord, your God, with happiness and with gladness of heart, when [you had an] abundance of everything.
(Besides for actually doing the physical Mitzvos, God also takes intentions into consideration.) |
| 48 Therefore, you will serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, [when you are] in famine, thirst, destitution, and lacking everything, and he will place an iron yoke upon your neck, until he has destroyed you.
Definitely the reality during the Roman (and Babylonian) invasion. |
| 49 The Lord will bring upon you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops [or: flies] down, a nation whose language you will not understand,
Again a reference to the Roman Empire, which indeed came from a great distance (considering the smaller size of civilized world at the time). Seems to be more a reference to the Roman Empire that the Babylonian Empire since it describes the nation as coming from a great distance, from the end of the earth. However, it may just be a phrase to describe a great distance including Babylon which although wasn’t as far as the “end of the earth,” still was a considerable distance from Israel (see Jeremiah 5:15), especially in the ancient small world of civilization. But this is debatable. The language of the Romans, Latin, was only known to the very few elite in Israel. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek were far more widespread than Latin. (Also, prior the Roman occupation, some 100 years before the destruction of the Temple, Latin wasn’t at all around in Israel.) Fulfilled |
| 50 a brazen nation, which will not respect the elderly, nor show favor to the young.
Like many empires of the past, the Babylonian and Roman Empires were particularly ruthless in battle. The Romans killed thousands of innocent in the Galil in attempt to get Jerusalem to surrender, as recorded by Josephus. After conquering Jerusalem as well, the Roman army let all their anger out on its residents showing no mercy. Fulfilled. |
| 51 They will devour the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your soil, to destroy you. They will not leave over anything for you of the grain, wine, oil, offspring of your cattle or flocks of your sheep, until they annihilate you.
Occurred during the Roman (and perhaps Babylonian) invasion. [Especially around Jerusalem (the center of Israel) in which they destroyed every single tree as described in Josephus.] |
| 52 And they will besiege you in all your cities, until your high and fortified walls in which you trust come down, throughout all your land. And they will besiege you in all your cities throughout all your land, which the Lord, your God, has given you.
Occurred during the Roman and Babylonian invasions of Israel where they breached the fortified city walls. |
| 53 And during the siege and the desperation which your enemies will bring upon you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord, your God, gave you.
Again a description (perhaps an expression) of hunger and desperation. Josephus (as well as Jeremiah in the case of the Babylonian exile) describe actual cases of this. |
| 54 The most tender and delicate man among you, will begrudge his own brother and the wife of his embrace and the rest of his children, whom he will leave over,
Described by Josephus at length (and Jeremiah in the case of Babylonian invasion) during the siege of Jerusalem. |
| 55 of giving any one of them of the flesh of his children that he is eating, because not a thing will remain for him in the siege and in the desperation which your enemies will bring upon you, in all your cities. |
| 56 The most tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set her foot upon the ground, because of delicateness and tenderness, will begrudge the husband of her embrace and her own son and daughter, |
| 57 and the infants who emerge from between her legs, and her own children whom she will bear, for she will eat them in secret, in destitution, in the siege and the desperation which your enemies will inflict upon you, in your cities. |
| 58 If you do not observe to fulfill all the words of this Torah, which are written in this scroll, to fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord, your God, |
| 59 Then the Lord [will bring upon] you and your offspring uniquely [horrible] plagues, terrible and unyielding plagues, and evil and unyielding sicknesses.
Disease is a frequent aquatint of war and siege; we can thus assume this transpired. |
| 60 And He will bring back upon you all the diseases of Egypt which you dreaded, and they will cling to you.
Discussed in verse 27. |
| 61 Also, the Lord will bring upon you every disease and plague which is not written in this Torah scroll, to destroy you.
See discussion on exaggerated prophecies to be discussed soon. |
| 62 And you will remain few in number, whereas you were once as numerous as the stars of the heavens because you did not obey the Lord, your God.
A reference to the constant oppression of the Jews in almost every generation, causing their numbers to dwindle. During the Middle Ages, the Jews were less than 1 million according to many historians. At later times, even though they grew in number (to about 18 million in 1939 – right before the Nazis killed over 6 million Jews), this was tiny relative to the world population. In the first century, Jews are estimated to have an approximate 8 million out of the world’s estimated 250 million inhabitants. In 1939, they were about 18 million of the world’s 2 billion – thus a major downfall in the size of the nation in this sense. If not for the constant oppression of the Jews, they would have grown in population along with the rest of the world and would have been an approximate 65 million figure in 1939. This is all concerning the population at its height! The Jewish population within the Roman Empire (mostly in Judea, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Babylon, Iran, Yemen, and Ethiopia) was about 8 million, according to the Roman census in 48 A.C.E. Compare that with the estimated 14 million population of world Jewry some 2,000 years later when the world’s population has grown about 3,000% since (from an estimated 250 million to 8 billion). The number even dipped as low as a few hundred thousand during the Mediaeval Period. Thus, the prophecy may have been referring to those times in which the population was so small during the Medieval Period. Fulfilled |
| 63 And it will be, just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do good for you and to increase you, so will the Lord cause to rejoice over you to annihilate you and to destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land which you enter therein, to possess it.
An entirely new and unrelated discussion would be why God would “rejoice” when punishing the His Chosen Nation. We will avoid this discussion for now. |
| 64 And the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other deities unknown to you or your forefathers, [deities of] wood and stone.
Certainly happened with Jewish communities spreading all over the globe over the past 2,000 years. In fact, there is no other nation that has had a dispersal anywhere close to the level of dispersion of the Jewish people worldwide. Fulfilled See verse 36 for a discussion on “serving deities of wood and stone.” |
| 65 And among those nations, you will not be calm, nor will your foot find rest. There, the Lord will give you a trembling heart, dashed hopes, and a depressed soul.
Noting better to describe the history of the Jews over the past 2,000 years. Fulfilled |
| 66 And your life will hang in suspense before you. You will be in fear night and day, and you will not believe in your life. |
| 67 In the morning, you will say, “If only it were evening! ” and in the evening, you will say, “If only it were morning!” because of the fear in your heart which you will experience and because of the sights that you will behold. |
| 68 And the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, through the way about which I had said to you, You will never see it again. And there, you will [seek to] be sold to your enemies for slaves and handmaids, but there will be no buyer.
The Roman exile included a major event of slave-selling in Egypt at very low prices (and later there may have been too many Jewish slaves in the market for the Egyptians to buy more). Indeed, the transit of the slaves to Egypt was done through ships as the Torah describes in verse 68.[20] [xi] Similarly, many Jews fled to Egypt by the Babylonian exile[xii] where they perhaps were seeking employment in the markets there (and were perhaps unwanted by the Egyptian slave-owners). Neutral/Fulfilled |
| 69 These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. |
The prophecies continue at Ch. 30 verses 1 through 10.
1 When all these things befall you—the blessing and the curse that I have set before you—and you take them to heart amidst the various nations to which the Lord your God has banished you,
2 and you return to the Lord your God, and you and your children heed His command with all your heart and soul, just as I enjoin upon you this day,
We will address the idea of the Jews doing T’shuvah later on.
3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. He will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.
In the years following the establishment of Israel in 1948, several million Jews – from all over the globe – have returned to their ancestral land. It was the biggest diaspora return ever in history and the only one to come after a national exile.
4 Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you.
5 And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers.
Israel is now an economic powerhouse, despite their very small population. Agriculturally, as well, the once desolate, brown land is now green.
6 Then the Lord your God will open up your heart and the hearts of your offspring to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live.
Since the establishment of Israel there has been a major Baal Tshuvah movement, on a scale unparalleled earlier. This is of course only the beginning of the slow process, not the completion of it. The process is a slow one as indicative in the fact that national exile and dispersion took several hundred years to happen. This is perhaps the area of the prophecies that we have now reached. Beyond this point, the prophecies are yet to come. Given the track-record of the previous prophecies, we can safely assume that the future prophecies are yet to come.
7 The Lord your God will inflict all those curses upon the enemies and foes who persecuted you.
This as well is yet to happen. Perhaps this is post-Gog Umagog war described in the Prophets.[xiii]
8 You, however, will again heed the Lord and obey all His commandments that I enjoin upon you this day.
9 And the Lord your God will grant you abounding prosperity in all your undertakings, in the issue of your womb, the offspring of your cattle, and the produce of your soil. For the Lord will again delight in your well-being, as He did in that of your fathers,
10 since you will be heeding the Lord your God and keeping His commandments and laws that are recorded in this book of the Teaching—once you return to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.
Assyrian, Babylonian, or Roman exile?
As stated earlier, the chapter foretells the destruction, exile, and dispersion of the Jews that has occurred by both the Babylonians and 500(+) years later by the Romans (and maybe even the exile of the Ten Tribes by Assyria).[21] The chapter seems to be describing both, since they share a common theme: punishment for sin by the Jewish Nation.
The astonishment of the prophecies isn’t concerning the Babylonian exile because it can be argued that the prophecies were written post-fulfillment. But this cannot be said about the Roman exile, since the Torah was written well before then, according to all historians.
The meat of the Covenant argument relies on the fact that the predictions aren’t merely concerning the Babylonian exile. Since if that were the case, as we said, it could be argued that it was post-diction rather than pre-diction. But on what basis can we assume that the Covenant intended the Roman exile as well? Here’s that argument:
What are the odds of this rare phenomena (of exile, dispersion, persecution, identity and religious preservation, and return to the Land) happening again to the Jewish nation, yet having nothing to do with the prophecies and Covenant God made with the Jewish People?! The phenomena are exclusive to the Jews – as evident from the fact that it hasn’t happened to any other nation. So did the author write about it after the Babylonian exile and then get lucky enough for it to happen again to the same nation – when it hasn’t happened to any other nation?! What’s the irony of that! The chances are one in several million.
The interesting thing about the Covenant paradigm is that we cannot know how many times it will repeat itself. So far it has happened twice (or three times if we include the Assyrian exile). Can it happen a fourth and fifth time? We cannot know. The Prophets spoke a Utopia Age, one in which the Messiah arrives, and peace reigns in the world. Ezekiel (37:21-28) speak of an eternal dwelling in the Land of Israel after the arrival of the Messiah. It’s impossible to measure the credibility of the Prophets so we cannot know for certain if there is merit to what they are claiming. The Deuteronomy Covenant predictions are ambiguous about this, leaving room for interpretation either way.
Note that some of the prophecies are written in an exaggerated form (see e.g. Deut. 29:22). This is not an issue since most ancient documents were written in exaggerative form and people were expected to realize that.[22] The exaggerated form of description is perhaps to scare the populace from sinning, or, was simply the writing style of the time. Some skeptics might question this. After all, doesn’t it seem that we’re painting the chapter to exactly fit the Jewish history in order to claim fulfilled prophecy?
Well, let’s consider two factors. First, there’s nothing wrong with how we interpret the chapter. It’s just that there are perhaps alternative explanations. While the details may have variable interpretations, there is a general theme in this chapter: destruction of the Land, exile, dispersion, persecution, retaining their identity, preserving the Torah. All of these happened specifically to the Jewish nation and not 99% of other nations.
Is it self-fulfilling prophecy?
Some claim that the predictions are self-fulfilling. Meaning, that there is no miraculous element in the prophecies since it’s the Jews attempting to fulfill prophecy. They use the return to the Land as an example. The Jews would – because of the scriptures – yearned for a return to their ancestral land. That’s why they would have retuned to their land in 1947.
The problem with this explanation is obvious. The “self-fulfilling prophecies” can only explain the return element. It cannot explain the national exile, universal dispersion, persecution, and keeping the identity.
Divine knowledge or supernatural powers?
“Maybe” you ask, “these prophecies were influenced from ancient stargazing?”
Legend indeed has it, that ancient stargazers can see the future. In the Midrash as well we read of the ancient stargazers in Egypt who saw a saviour for the Jews about to be born. But understandably this power was extremely limited; it can only see small things. For example, the Midrash tells us that the Egyptian stargazers saw blood in the desert, so they assumed the Jews died there; in reality, though, it was the blood of circumcision performed by the Israelites. Similarly, a Midrash recounts, when the stargazers saw that Moses was in the water (when he was actually in a basket), they thought he had drowned. These stories suggest that the ancient power of stargazing was limited in what it can see.
Stargazing was also limited in time; it cannot predict the future of civilizations. After all, there’s got to be a reason why only the Torah has prophecy. And not just near prophecy but predicting what will happen in thousands of years. And not just prophecies but real wild unlikely ones!
If stargazing was able to see the future so vividly, why then aren’t ancient Egyptian temples and Sumerian cuneiform writings filled with prophecies about the future similar to the Torah’s prophecies?! Perhaps it should mention the future world empires, such as Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome? Perhaps the Industrial Revolution? Technology? End of Days? etc. etc.—Yet nothing! This proves that ancient stargazing did not have the power to see the far future in a vivid manner.
It can also be suggested that there’s no real power of stargazing or any supernatural sorcery, as discussed at length here.
Another answer is that besides for the prediction aspect of it, the actual history of the Jewish Nation contains phenomena that are against the laws of nature. That is to say that even without the predictions laid out in Deuteronomy 28, the very history of the Jewish Nation suggests that a supernatural element is at play here. The world now astonishes about the nature of the Jewish history, not matched by any other nation as discussed at length above. In addition, the Jewish history phenomenon (of national exile, dispersion, keeping indemnity, return to the ancestral land) seems to repeat itself – once by the Babylonian exile and another by the Roman exile – suggesting that there’s a backstory here, most likely the Covenant. So even if, theoretically, ancient stargazers would have predicted the Jewish history phenomena, that wouldn’t rid the amusement of the unparalleled history, whether or not it has been predicted by whomever. Part of the amusement is the apparent repetition of the Jewish history phenomenon (the Dual Factor discussed earlier). The phenomenon includes a national exile, dispersion, persecution, retain their identity, and return to their ancestral Land. This happened twice to the Jews, while happening to only a handful of nations even once. This is not to mention that none of these other nations survived to this day, to the exception of the Jews.
Now, with these answers we have excluded the possibility for sorcery or stargazing to be the role-player in the Deuteronomy 28 predictions. However, perhaps we can suggest that a supernatural being, one unknown to us, was the one who knew the future of the Jewish People and told a man to write them down in the Torah. But the caveat is that this supernatural being isn’t an unlimited God but merely a force outside that of nature. Perhaps even, this supernatural being is the one that controls nature. How then can we conclude the existence of a God from the predictions of Deuteronomy 28?
As discussed here, logically we should conclude the existence of an Infinite Creator called God that in all likelihood isn’t merely a spiritual supernatural power. One can only assume that the probabilities are that this exclusive powerful spiritual being is God Himself whose existence we are already well aware of via philosophical arguments.
Secondly, this very supernatural being itself tells us His nature in the Torah; He told us He’s the infinite God. Why should we believe Him? Well, He has fairly good credentials that classify Him as trust-worthy; after all, all of His facts about the past and future (e.g. the Covenant) were reliable and accurate!
Thirdly, even if this supernatural Being isn’t necessarily infinite, who cares? The point is that this single Being controls nature and made a Covenant with the Jewish people. The exact character of this “God” is irrelevant. What matters is that this Being is divine (i.e. supernatural Being who has control over us) – no matter what form of divine.
Similarly, skeptics often object to the whole idea of prophecy or any supernatural element proving God’s existence, by the fact that we can get overwhelmed about something that is indeed natural but can be thought to be supernatural. An example being electricity which if shown to a man of 500 years-ago, he may have thought it was supernatural play. Same goes with magic that many people can mistake for supernatural abilities.
But there is a clear difference between electricity and magic to the prophecies of Deuteronomy 28. Precisely because electricity is a natural power it can be produced by so many people. Those people are called electricians. Similarly, precisely because magic is a natural power it can be performed by many people. Those people are called magicians. But the predictions of Deuteronomy 28 aren’t paralleled by any other person or document—proving that it is no natural power.
The Return to Israel and the American prosperity
The return to Israel was prophesied in Deut. 30:1-8. But there are a number of questions about that and the current era that we are in. The Zionist movement was largely a secular atheist initiative. So how does this fit with the prophecies which say that it’ll come to be when the Jews return to serving Hashem that they will return to the Land. Also, how do we understand the current American Jewry prosperity in light of the exile and persecutions described in Deut. 28?
To answer this, we must first realize that we have no way of knowing exactly how God judges the Jewish people. We can guess from various verses but we cannot make our own judgment and then expect God to use that same judgement. True, today there are many secular non-observant Jews, but that doesn’t mean that the return to Israel cannot happen yet in accordance with the prophecies of Deut. 30. What we do know from various verses is that God judges the Jewish People as a collective whole and takes the preceding generations into account as well. It’s an accumulative judgment based on the entire nation and spanning generations. See Gen. 15:16 about God judging a nation over a few generations’ span. Also, there are more refined considerations God may consider in His judgment of the nation. For example, He could consider the challenges faced by external forces and judge the nation more favorably if the challenges (e.g. Enlightenment) are overwhelming. This is especially so if a significant portion of the Jewish population remains religious despite the challenges that modern culture offers.
With that in mind, we can go to the next step which is that we are at the very end of the Exile that we have experienced over the past 2,000 years. The Redemption is imminent. This is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe has been saying for years and is seen visibly. So, just like the exile (both the Babylonian and certainly the Roman) was in phases, so too will the Redemption be in phases (as was the redemption from the Babylonian exile). At the time of writing, almost a majority of the Jewish people live in Israel. Those in the diaspora, especially America, are also experiencing a prosperity never seen before during exile. This indicates that we are beginning the Redemption process. The official process Redemption begins when the Messiah will take the rest of the Jews to Israel and restore the Temple, but we are certainly getting an early taste of the Redemption prophesied in Deut. 30.
What about the fact that Israel was mostly established by secular atheists?
The method of Return to the Land is irrelevant to the action itself. It makes no difference who started the Return to Israel. In fact, towards the end of the Babylonian exile, the one who initiated the return and sanctioned it was a pagan believer called Cyrus the Great. He is called the Messiah in Isa. 45:1. The ultimate redeemer is going to be the Messiah (just as the ultimate redeemer then was Ezra), but the initiators of this early stage were indeed mostly atheists.
Some question the fulfillment of the prophecy of return to the land by pointing out the religious state of being of the current generation. Deut 30:1-2 speaks of the Jews returning to God in teshuvah and keeping His Law. But the religious state of being now is actually less than it was in previous generations! So how does this work out?
What we do know from various verses is that God judges the Jewish People as a collective whole and takes the preceding generations into account as well. It’s an accumulative judgment based on the entire nation and spanning generations. See Gen. 15:16 about judging a nation over a few generations’ span.[23] Also, there are more refined considerations God may consider in His judgment of the nation. For example, He could consider the challenges faced by external forces and judge the nation more favorably if the challenges (e.g. Enlightenment) are overwhelming. This is especially so if a significant portion of the Jewish population remains religious despite the challenges that modern culture offers.
Of course this isn’t the first natural understanding of the verse but it certainly is a possibility. Now, why am I going to bet on this possibility? Because if everything else of a string of prophecies works out specifically to whom it was told – it makes sense that the author hasn’t gotten that last detail wrong. For example, if a psychic was to predict that tomorrow A, B, C, D E, F, G, and H is to happen to you – and against all odds it did – we can assume that even H, which is not so clear if it was fulfilled based on the natural understanding of it, was indeed fulfilled – in the unnatural sense – just like the rest of it. It is more likely that the psychic got H right (just as he got the rest of them right) than the psychic intending for the more literal understanding of H.
I would even suggest that the religious state of the Jews after the Holocaust was far superior than the nation at the destruction of the Second Temple. In that sense they have returned to God. People were civilly and morally corrupt with many splinter heretical groups (see Josephus for more on this). Over the generations in exile, the Jewish community as a whole became more and more moral. The religious segment became exceedingly more and more religious. Not that it is necessarily always a good thing, but the religious community takes almost every stringency in the Talmud and added hundreds of new stringencies to those. Just think of the laws of basar bechalav as they were in pre-talmudic times to the crazy strict chumros that people have today. Take mass-Torah education and Torah-study and three times a day prayer as other examples. These institutions weren’t around at the end of the Second Temple. True, a majority weren’t and aren’t from this extremely religious group – but even the Conservative movement and parts of the Reform movement are more religious than the average Second Temple era Jew. Reform and Conservative seem secularized compared to the extreme measures taken by the ultra-religious, but that doesn’t negate that these Reform and Conservative groups keep a majority of biblical law and much of rabbinic law. I don’t think this can be said about the average Second Temple era Jew. I’m not going to get into the history of the destruction of the Second Temple and the religious state of the Jews then, but I’d recommend you read Josephus on this if you haven’t yet (note that even though a majority were Pharisees, affiliation with Pharisees was limited to mostly giving your tithes to the Temple).
Therefore, besides for the accumulative judgment over the generations, the religious state of being of the collective whole of the Jewish people is arguably far superior to the collective state of religiosity in of the generation of the destruction of the Second Temple. Thus, indeed, the Jews have done teshuvah and have begun the return to the Land as a result.
Leviticus 26 (the sister-chapter of Deuteronomy 28, also discussing the Covenant Blessings and Curses), speaks of divine mercy instead of divine judgment.
“But despite all this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not despise them nor will I reject them to annihilate them, thereby breaking My covenant that is with them, for I am the Lord their God. I will remember for them the covenant [made with] the ancestors, whom I took out from the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be a God to them. I am the Lord.” (Lev. 26:44-45)
This raises the possibility that if after many years in exile, the Jews still haven’t accumulated enough merit to be redeemed, they will be redeemed in the merit of their ancestors – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – as these verses suggest. This is perhaps akin to a parent who wishes to discipline their child. They send him away from the computer to his room until he apologizes. But after several hours, he still is refusing to apologize. The parents then allow him to leave the room, since, well, the punishment just isn’t working and perhaps a little love will make him acknowledge his wrongdoing and apologize. After 2,000 years in exile and a horrible Holocaust, God may have had mercy on His nation and established for them the State of Israel – despite their lack of teshuvah.
Another possibility is that there are two stages in the return to the Land. Ezekiel 37-39 makes it pretty clear that there will be a first return in which seemingly not everyone is returned and then there is a war of with Gog and Magog (a multi-national war against Israel – also discussed in other Prophets such as Zachariah 12-14) after which the Jews repent to God, are gathered into Israel, defeat the enemy, and the Messianic age begins. If the Prophets have it right, then we are likely in the first stage of the return. The complete teshuvah will happen before the second stage.[24]
Ultimately, we would have to play God in order to make the sensitive judgment as to whether the Jews merited redemption or not. I am not ready to play that role. Instead, we can let the destiny of the Jews speak for itself. The fact that the State of Israel was established and exiles were collected from the end of the Earth, suggests that God decided to either have mercy on us or that we have accumulated enough merit. Could it have just been coincidence? Perhaps, but the fact that the Jews alone had this history, predicted in Deuteronomy, suggests that there’s no coincidence at hand.
Partial or national exile predicted?
Does the Covenant predict a national exile – defined by a majority of the nation being exiled – or a partial exile – defined by some captives going into exile while the majority remain in the homeland?
So, it is clear that the Covenant begins with only a partial exile in which many captives are taken into captivity to foreign lands.
“Your sons and daughters will be given over to another people, and your eyes will see [this] and long for them all day long, but you will be powerless.” (Deut. 28:32)
Indeed that is what happened in both the Babylonian and Roman exiles. First there was a wave of exile in which thousands of captives were taken into foreign lands. But then came a more full-scale exile. In the Babylonian case the remainder of the people left for Egypt after the assassination of Gedaliah, and in the Roman exile case it occurred over a 300-year span with mass emigration due to harsh conditions in the Land and Roman suppression, particularly religious suppression.
After the first wave of captives sent into slavery, the verses begin to allude to a national exile over and over again. It starts to speak to the Jewish nation from the perspective of them being in foreign lands and the land being desolate (see Deut. 28:63-68, 29:27 30:1, Lev. 26:33-45). It is therefore reasonable to assume that the Covenant predicted a national exile.
Could it be that if the Jews were only partially exiled, I would then argue that the Covenant intended exactly that? Perhaps, but then I wouldn’t be able to use the predictions as anything more than my post-facto interpretations. But the reality is that the verses seem to imply a national exile and ironically that’s exactly what happened to the Jews.
The statistical odds of prophecy fulfillment
In a world of 8 billion people, thousands of years of civilization – anything can happen. Crazy things should happen. Statistically speaking improbable events should happen. Can this be an explanation for the unlikely prophecy fulfillment? Maybe the Torah just got lucky to have its prophecy fulfilled?
If the prophecy were about an individual, maybe we could have said that. But what if we are not speaking of a single individual, for example, getting struck by lightning 20 times. Rather we are speaking of the destiny of a full nation. So instead of billions of candidates for the improbable to happen to, we have only a few hundred candidates. Therefore the chances of an odd happening are much less likely. Also, being that they’re a nation, the multitude of people within the nation all balance out the odds that may happen to one person within in the nation. (That is how surveys work. The more people added to the survey, the less chance of error.)
Moreover, what if in a New York Times op-ed, a writer was to predict that this particular individual would be struck by lightning 20 times over his lifetime – and he did. Are we still going to give natural statistical explanations for this foreknowledge?
Ultimately, we can all be skeptical about everything. The only question is how far we are willing to stretch our skepticism.
Imagine someone were to claim they were a prophet and would predict the news for the next week – which sports teams would win, what every dumb celebrity will say, every conflict worldwide and every scientific development – would we still refer to statistics as the answer?!
The point is, it’s extremely unlikely for a single book (which also happens to be the source for the main religions of the world – thus no typical book) to predict certain improbable events to happen to a nation. The irony is that it happens to that nation alone. Not a single other nation (i.e. no nation that still survives to this day – since survival is a criteria of the predictions). Are we still ready to reject at least the likelihood of there being a supernatural element at play here?
Other Ancient Near East documents similar to Deut. 28
Many Ancient Near East documents contain treaties similar to the treaty described in Deut. 28. Many phrases parallel those of Deut. 28 and the idea is the exact same: physical punishments of agriculture ruins and exile for disobedience. Deuteronomy 28 has parallels to the 13th century B.C.E. Hittites treaty and also to the Assyrian treaty of the 7th century B.C.E.[25] This has scholars debating when Deuteronomy would have been written. But we’ll leave that discussion aside.
The striking parallels between the documents leave many people concluding that Deut. 28 is a human invention inspired by the works of other Ancient Near East cultures. But this isn’t necessarily the case. It is possible that God gave the treaty since a treaty was the way people would relate to this new relationship with God. These treaties or covenants were common practice in those[26] times and therefore an appropriate element of the new relationship between God and His Chosen Nation. Perhaps if God was giving the Torah to our generation He would have used phrases common to government constitutions and treaties of contemporary times. The point is that God is giving the Covenant treaty with people – the Israelites – who are familiar with certain writing styles and phrases. He therefore writes according to their time and place.
Similarly, certain phrases found in the Ancient Near East treaties and Deut. 28 may have been common phrases at the time the Torah was written in the Ancient Near East.
The reason why God decided to use phrases and ideas from the surrounding cultures the Israelites were familiar with is irrelevant. The main point is that the Torah’s prophecies of Deut. 28 are very specific ones – the ones that precisely happened to the Jews and the Jews alone. These other Ancient Near East treaties bring many, many curses and if the Torah would have selected other ones over the ones it has selected, the outcome would have been a clear failed prophecy. But in reality, the Torah has chosen (for whatever reason) the specific curses that it did, and the Jews have indeed experienced those curses during the Babylonian and Roman exiles. This is significant since no other nation has experienced this unparalleled history that Jews have experienced.
So we established supernatural foreknowledge in Deut. 28. Well, what does that prove? Does it prove the entire Torah or just the specific chapter? Could it be that Moses, or whichever author wrote Deut. 28, had access to supernatural foreknowledge and his ability to harness that “truth” doesn’t show anything about the specific beliefs Moses had or represented?
So, we first must realize that no other document in the world has this astounding piece of prophecy or anything even remotely similar to it. This would suggest that it wasn’t merely an acute ability Moses had to get in touch with some spiritual truths and foreknowledge. If there was such an ability, we would have found other religious documents containing similar pieces of foreknowledge. So there must be something special about Moses that specifically in his writings do we find supernatural foreknowledge. The only plausible explanation would be that his document is divinely inspired and his prophecies truly from God given to the one true messenger of his, Moses. Not Jesus, not Muhammad, not Buddha, or any atheist magician. The uniqueness of Moses’ ability to foresee and foretell the future is testimony to the uniqueness of the religion and message he represents.
Which parts of Judaism or Torah do the prophecies validate?
So they definitely validate the Law, i.e. the Mitzvos. The very chapter of the prophecies describe the consequences of disobeying God and not performing the Mitzvos properly. This would suggest that the Mitzvos the Jews are expected to keep would be accurate and intact. Otherwise, God wouldn’t be able to “punish” us for not performing those Mitzvos.
The chapter would also likely validate the historical elements of Torah, but to a much lesser degree. We could argue that God wouldn’t allow for major corruption to enter his Torah (besides for insignificant scribal errors, perhaps). Therefore untrue historical fiction would unlikely be added. Based on this philosophical argument, we wouldn’t regard Genesis and the story of the Exodus to be fiction added by authors later than Moses.
However, it can be argued that only the Law section of the Torah is validated by the prophecies. Other parts, like history which has no practical relevance if they actually happened or not, would not necessarily be backed by the truth of the prophecies. Since these historical elements have little practical significance, they were possibly added by later authors than Moses. Whether the stories of Genesis or the Exodus happened would have little impact on God’s expectations from us to do the Mitzvos and the consequences if we don’t keep them (laid out in the prophecies, in addition to the afterlife justice system discussed here). Therefore, it can be argued, that these stories, like that of Creation and the Great Flood, were added by later unauthorized authors who wrote down what they thought to be true history (based on years of legend) and a good introduction to the Torah. This possibility is discussed more at length in “Early Genesis as a Historical Error” and in “Is Tanakh a Historically Reliable Document.”
But after all said and done, we cannot reject the possibility for some laws to have been influenced by surrounding religions and cultures (see here). These laws possibly creeped into Jewish observance, influenced by other religions and cultures, until it made its way into standard Judaism and into Torah Law. But even if were the case, this wouldn’t invalidate the overall Torah Law. A few potential mistakes shouldn’t invalidate an otherwise authentic Law system. In fact, the fulfilment of the Covenant predictions is indicative of the still-binding and still authentic Torah Law. For more on this subject, see “Where Man Meets the Divine: A Partially Divinely-Inspired Model of Torah.”
[1] After the few waves of exiles to Babylon (Jehoiakim – II Kings 24:14-15, Hezekiah – II Kings 25:11-12, 21), II Kings 25:26 says that those remaining in the land all left to Egypt after the assassination of Gedaliah fearing Babylonian retribution. Perhaps a quarter of the population were exiled (possibly more – see here), All the cultural elite were exiled while the poorest stayed in the Land (II Kings 25:12). But it seems that a majority left for Egypt even of those who stayed (II Kings 25:26).
[2] They were exiled for 70 years according to Jeremiah the Prophet and Chronicles (see Jeremiah 29:10 and II Chronicles 36:22). However many scholars dispute this based on the 166 missing years of the Persian Empire in the Jewish records.
[3] The Nobel Prizes are prizes awarded to individuals who have contributed to the world in different ways, most notably in the sciences and arts. Despite being only .02% of the population, the Jews compose 22% of Nobel laureates. Some of the greatest minds of recent memory include Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud who were Jewish. There is much material out there discussing this well-known fact of Jewish contributions to society. See here for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/books/review/genius-and-anxiety-norman-lebrecht.html
https://fundacionhispanojudia.org/2017/09/28/contributions-of-jews-to-the-modern-world/?lang=en
[4] Although the Prophets echo these prophetic sentiments, we do not quote from the Prophets. The reason I hesitate to quote from the Prophets is because they are pretty much piggy-backing off the early Mosaic prophecies of Deuteronomy and often applied it to their situations in exile.
[5] In my research, I found only 8 nation of whom a majority were exiled, one of them being the Jews. [This excludes Ancient Near East exiles in which some city-states were exiled by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Here we speak of national exiles of the past 2,000 years.] The others are Armenians, Circassian, and multiple Native American tribes (Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, Muskogee, and Chickasaw). Other nations such as the Acadians, Crimean Tatars, and many Indians and Pakistanis were exiled only from certain areas while the overwhelming majority remained in their hometowns. The exile of the majority of the Palestinian Arab population in 1948 cannot be regarded as a national exile, for they are not regarded as a nationality or ethnicity by any standards. They had no distinct ethnicity, religion, culture, language, or identity. Note that all these nations were exiled in recent history, where modern capabilities allow for easier mass deportation.
[6] The only exception that I have found is the Armenian exile, the Romani, Carthiage, and some of the Native American tribes. Yet even these nations or ethnicities have assimilated at a pace that makes them bound to disappear within the next few centuries, being that they were only exiled in the recent past and have already assimilated at an astonishing pace. It is highly unlikely that these cultures/ethnicities would survive the 2,000 year-span that the Jews have survived.
Although some of the Romani have been in diaspora for almost 1,500 years, they have no memory of where they came from. Only with linguistic comparisons have historians been able to trace them back to India. In addition, they are a distinct nation of their own exiled from their land. Most Indians are still at home. Some Romani are Christian, others Muslim, and yet others Hindu. These factors make their experience very different than the Jewish one. The Jews were nationally exiled from their homeland, retained their religious identity and have a distinct memory of their past and their homeland.
The city of Carthage was exiled by the Romans after the city was destroyed. That’s the only example I know of in which the Romans exiled a peoples. The difference between this and the Jewish exile, is that this was merely a city whereas Judea and Galil was a kingdom compiled of miles upon miles of many cities and towns. It is much harder and rarer for an entire nation to be exiled than for a single city to be exiled. In addition, Carthage no longer exists as a nation/culture/religion, whereas the Jews do having survived the long exile.
[7] The vast majority of Jews lived in Europe which was the epicenter of anti-Semitism. The Sephardic communities of North Africa and other lands under Islamic rule were also experiencing hatred and persecution at many times. See https://www.jpost.com/opinion/maimonides-on-jewish-humiliation-under-islamic-rule-622050
[8] Even though many Jews did assimilate, we speak of the nation as a whole.
[9] This has happened to some city-states that were exiled during the Assyrian and Babylonian empires (see the Cyrus Cylinder). But since then, this phenomenon has happened to the Jews alone.
[10] Ancient Sumer set the stage in many fields for future civilization. But in all fairness, they were the only civilization around at the time. To the exception of Egypt and perhaps China, they were basically the only civilization, or nation, to be around. Thus the Sumerians shouldn’t be counted a part of this equation.
[11] Genesis 12:3. In all fairness, this is only one of two ways of interpreting the verse. According to Rashi, the verse means that people will bless their children saying “may you be like the Children of Israel.” That, however, has not happened with all the rampant historical anti-Semitism.
[12] The other reasons they claim the texts were written then are discussed here.
[13] To the possible exception of Carthage destroyed and exiled by the Romans. However, being a single city, it is questionable if they can be compared to the nation of Israel which were exiled form dozens of cities in Judea and Galil. Also, Carthage no longer exists as a nation/religion/culture whereas the Jews have survived their long exile. There may be more examples that I’m unaware of – but the same response probably applies to those possible exceptions as well.
[14][14] Like the Romani and Armenians.
[15] The Assyrian exile will soon be discussed more at length.
[16] These were city-states in the times of the Assyrian and Babylonian exile who were exiled, survived for 70-100 years, and then returned to their land in the days of Cyrus the Great:
“From [Babylon] to Ashur and Susa, Agade, Eshnunna, the cities of Zamban, Meturnu, Der as far as the borders/region of the Gutians – I returned to these sanctuaries/sacred cities on the other side of the Tigris, sanctuaries founded in ancient times/which have been ruins for a long time, the images that had been in them there and I made their dwellings permanent. I also gathered all their (former) people/inhabitants and returned (to them) their habitations. And then at the command of Marduk, the great lord, I resettled all the gods of Sumer and Akkad.”
The Cyrus Cylinder; Briant, P. From Cyrus to Alexander A History of the Persian Empire. Pg. 43
[17] Noteworthy to mention that other nations don’t share the same Covenant in their sacred texts. Had hundreds of nations had this Covenant, then we could have argued that the Jews just happened to be the one nation whom luck dictated would end up fulfilling the predictions in the Covenant. If national exile, universal dispersion, persecution, identity, and return had been a feat achieved by, say, .01% and hundreds of nations would have had this Covenant, then we could have argued that the Jews got lucky to be of the 0.1% of nations who were bound to fulfill the prophecies. But of course that isn’t the case since the Covenant – with the predictions of national exile etc. – are exclusively Jewish sacred ideas.
[18] Survival as a people doesn’t seem to be enough of a survival if they lost their culture and religion. The reason is that the Covenant seems to describe the nation as one who still preserved their sacred Law and refer back at it while in their exile (see Deut. 30:1-11).
[19] Only in 1917 has there been a national exile for Armenians. But that wasn’t true of the early diaspora of theirs – which is what we are talking about. We are discussing long survival in a national exile. This wasn’t the case for the Armenian diaspora whose national exile was so far only 100 years. The Romani had no national exile. Historians believe they originated from India (although they have no recollection of their past). Thus, it was merely an exile of local people – not a national exile of Indians.
[20] What is the meaning of “and there you will seek to be sold as slaves”? Why would they want to be sold as slaves? This can be for several reasons. The first is that they would be so impoverished that they would seek food and shelter and slavery (which was a form of employment in those days) is the only way they can get that (indeed, II Kings 25:26 describe a large group leaving to Egypt by the Babylonian exile). The second explanation is that they would hope to be bought instead of being in the hands of their captors (i.e. the Romans) who probably haven’t fed them and sheltered them too well while in captivity (they were treated more as wholesale products until they were bought by a slave-owner who would feed and shelter them). The Third possibility is that the verse actually is saying that they would be up for sale – not that they themselves would seek to be sold. The grammar in that Hebrew word vehitmakartem is flexible and can mean either way. It’s also possible that the hei added to the word was a spelling mistake from over the centuries (see here). Alternatively, they will offer themselves as slaves in the market – in order to be freed from the Roman military holding them in captivity. Thus, they are selling themselves – “and there you will seek to be sold as slaves.”
[21] Who, unlike a common misconception, have very possibly retuned back to Israel – albeit in smaller numbers. The Gemara in Talmud, Megillah 14b and Erchin 33a describe Jeremiah the Prophet on a mission to return the Ten Lost Tribes and somewhat succeeding. There are mentions of Israelites from those 10 tribes in later post-exilic Writings, see. 2 Chronicles 15:9; 30:18; and 34:6, and Nehemiah 11:20. So either these Israelites were originally living in the Kingdom of Judah prior their exile, or have fled there during the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom – or, they have returned with the exiles of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin along with Ezra and Zerubbabel. It also may have been a combination of these options.
[22] Take the Merneptah Stele (13th-century BCE) for example in which the Pharaoh boasts “Israel was laid waste; its seed is no more” – clearly an exaggeration since Israel continued to exist well after this inscription was written.
[23] Verses that suggest a collective and accumulative punishment/reward system: Ex. 34:7, Deut 7:8, Gen. 3:16-17, Gen 49, Gen 15:16, Ex 20:5, Numbers 14:18, and potentially Gen. 6:3 and 7. The very Covenant of Lev. 26 and Deut 28 indicate collective punishment for the nation as a whole.
[24] Ezekiel 38 and 39 clearly describe the Jewish people returning to Israel and rebuilding their cities. But then it describes this huge army from all the nations attacking Israel in an attempt to destroy it.
So there’s really two options here. Either God is saying that first He returns some of the people to the land, then there is the war of Gog, then God reveals Himself to all the nations, and then all the miracles of resurrection of the dead occur and the gathering of every single lost Jew on earth.
OR God is saying that He is going to show all the astonishing miracles (Ezekiel 39, Zachariah 12), revive the dead (Daniel 12), bring mashiach (Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 2 and 11), have Elijah the Prophet appear (Malachi 3), miraculously gather every Jew on earth as it is written “Behold I will raise My hand to the nations, and to the peoples will I raise My standard, and they shall bring your sons in their armpits, and your daughters shall be borne on their shoulder[s],” (Isaiah 49:22) etc, and then suddenly after all of this, all the nations on earth will bizarrely decide to turn on God and the Jewish people and arm themselves to destroy the Jewish nation once and for all.
Clearly the first option is the only thing that makes sense. There are many other verses that make it clear that God only reveals Himself in this supernatural capacity AFTER the war of Gog such as Ezekiel 39:22 “And the House of Israel will know that I am the Lord their God from that day on.” Ezekiel 39:28 also implies a second full gathering.
[25] See Ani Maamin by Joshua Berman p._. See http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa02/corpus#saao/saa02:P336598_project-en.106 Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty for the Assyrian treaty that resembles Deut. 28 in many ways.
See https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2014/09/kol388003 for a discussion on the parallels between the 13th century BCE Hittites treaty and the Deuteronomy Covenant.
[26] Take for example the Covenant between God and Abraham in Gen. 15.
[i] Destruction of the land is mentioned in verses 49-57.
[ii] The exile of the Jewish nation is foretold in verses 32, 36, 37, 63.
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile#Nation_in_exile
[iv] See verses 64; 30:3-4.
[v] See verses 65-67.
[vi] See Leviticus 26:44, and the general flow of Deuteronomy 28 (and Leviticus 26) differentiates and singles out the Jews as a nation (something which would have not been possible if they were assimilated).
[vii] These days, thanks to Democracy and freedom of religion, it is more common to see many cultures residing next to each other under one flag. In the olden days that was practically unheard of due to the forced conversions and nationality. Especially a nation with only small communities in a particular area (e.g. having been dispersed) would certainly have had a hard time maintaining their identity. But surprisingly, most Jews of most communities worldwide have religiously and culturally survived the oppressions and odds of numbers. I have yet to hear of a nation who can compete with this. How did the author of the Torah expect and prophesy the odds without divine intervention?
[viii] Deuteronomy 31:21. Yet this verse can equally be interpreted to mean that the Song (of Deuteronomy 32:1-34) should be placed aside the Holy Ark in order (which is an alternative translation of ki in Hebrew) that it serve as a sign and it shall not be forgotten why the Jews are going through their suffering. Therefore, a more accurate prooftext concerning the preservation of Torah would be from the beginning of Deuteronomy Ch. 30. There, the verse speaks of the Jews returning to the Mitzvos at the End of Days in exile, and certainly a Torah is required in order to know the Mitzvos. See also Talmud tractate Shabbat 138b which interprets Deuteronomy 31:21 also as a guarantee that the Torah shall not be forgotten from the Jewish Nation.
[ix] Deuteronomy 30:1-8.
[x] See II Kings 24:14.
[xi] Josephus in The Jewish wars vi, 9:2; Munter, Primordia Eccl. Africanae, pp. 85f.,113. History of Am Yisrael in Ancient Days (Hebrew, Devir), 1971, p. 321.
[xii] II Kings 25:26.
[xiii] See Ezekiel 38, Zachariah 12-14.
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ACJA devotes a bunch of posts about Prophecy; Jewish Survival, Bible Predictor. Also see book Bondage of the Mind by Gold regarding alleged prophecy of Roman conquest. Frankly, seems like these sort of arguments for Judaism are grasping at straws.
Please be more specific with the counter-arguments. I’ve read the ACJA article and much of the Bondage of the Mind book and I believe I’ve addressed any serious counter-argument in the article. If you think I haven’t, then please point out a specific argument so that we can discuss it.
I agree with what you wrote. I often find ACJA’s arguments trivial and inadequate. Although it could be argued that Zoroastrianism shares a similar history their exile was only local, they have not returned, and not all Iranians were exiled. Additionally, no prediction is mentioned in the Avesta, as far as I know. On a side note, another interesting phenomenon is the fact that Abraham was born in 1948. The modern State of Israel was re-established in 1948. The exact year makes it hard to believe it was a coincidence. Lastly, I will end my comment with a quote by John Adams:
I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations… They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews.”