Washington: The verse from Genesis 12:3, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse," is often cited by American Evangelicals as more than just scripture; it is perceived as a mandate for foreign policy. This verse is frequently invoked on Capitol Hill and across pulpits in red-state America to justify the steadfast U.S. support for Israel. Such support persists despite the nation's constitutional separation of church and state, and any deviation from this stance is often labeled a spiritual betrayal.
According to TRTworld.com, the association of Genesis 12:3 with Israel can be traced back to the Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1909. The Bible's footnotes, rather than its text, made the connection, suggesting that the verse referred to Israel. Biblical scholars have long argued that this is a misinterpretation. Jonathan Kuttab, co-founder of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, stated that the Scofield Reference Bible's commentary predates the establishment of the State of Israel, thus it cannot refer to it. He explained that the verse actually refers to the "seed of Abraham," which is not modern Israel or even the biological descendants of Abraham, but "Jesus Christ, and through him will all the nations of the world be blessed."
Reverend Dr. Donald Wagner, a Presbyterian clergyman and veteran Middle East analyst, also contends that Genesis 12:3 refers to a covenant with Abraham, not a political state created in 1948. He noted that there are four uses of Israel in the Bible, none of which imply a modern state. Wagner emphasized that in a Biblical covenant, God is the initiator, and there are conditions, which include keeping commandments such as having no other gods than Yahweh or Elohim.
Gary Burge, a New Testament Scholar, highlighted that only a subset of Evangelicals in the U.S. believe the verse refers to Israel. He pointed out that the promise was for Abraham's immediate context with Egypt and that his descendants were to create a temple-centered religious nation, which modern Israel is not.
The narrow understanding of identity is another issue. Some Evangelicals apply the verse to Abraham's descendants, which presents its own problems. The Torah distinguishes the blessings of Ishmael, the father of Arabs, from his brother Isaac. However, both Old and New Testament prophets reject the notion that blessings follow ethnic lines, suggesting instead that it is an ethnic argument that is not supported by scripture.
The man behind the Scofield Reference Bible, Cyrus Scofield, was a controversial figure with a troubled past, yet his reference Bible helped embed the Israel-Genesis connection in American Evangelical consciousness. This reference Bible includes a type of fundamentalist Christian theology called premillennial dispensationalism, which implies that God favors the Jewish people and a modern Israel as the site of final prophetic events. However, this interpretation is seen as a human invention inconsistent with the Hebrew prophets or Jesus' teachings.
For Kuttab, the motivation for misreading the verse is political rather than theological. He argues that those who exclude Arabs and Christians from the label "children of Abraham" do so for political reasons, not theological ones.
