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The role of Israel in the Bible narrative

When reading the Bible, you cannot help but see that the Bible is not only a grand narrative about the purpose of God for the human race and this earth, but that it also follows the history of a particular people, the Israelites or the Jews as they were later called. 

It outlines their birth as a people and nation and follows their development. It explains the establishment of the nation under David and Solomon. It follows their steady decline and turning away from God, resulting in their removal from the land. It also contains prophecies about their regathering to the land of Israel and their future turning to God at the coming of a king descended from David.  

Who are Israel?

1. Israel can be considered to be the people, or descendants, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

Genesis 12:1-8   
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 

Here you read that Abram (later called Abraham) is called by God to move to a distant land.  He was promised descendants and was told that he would inherit the land.  But he was also told that through him all nations would be blessed.  God entered into a covenant with Abraham as a way of showing he would keep his promises        

The same promises were repeated to Isaac and Jacob. 

Genesis 26:1-5 
Genesis 28:13  

Jacob's name was changed to Israel, which probably means “he strives with God”      


2.  Israel can also be thought of as the nation selected by God to represent him and his ways before other nations       

Exodus 3:7-10  

Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

God delivered the people from the land of Egypt under Moses.       

Deuteronomy 7:6-8 
Exodus 19:3-6  

God selected the nation of Israel to be His “treasured possession” not because they were special in any way but because of the promises he had made and to show himself to a watching world through his relationship with one nation.  It is important to appreciate that God’s selection of a person (Abraham) and a people (Israel) is not to exclude others but to reach all people through those he selected for his purpose.

Deuteronomy 4:6-8   

“Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”

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