Our Jewish Neighbors and the Veil

This chapter is about our Jewish neighbors, so it must begin with respect.

For thousands of years Jewish families have carried the Scriptures. They copied them letter by letter, read them aloud week by week, and taught them to children who could not yet read. The Bible every Christian holds came to us through their hands. Paul says it plainly: “they were entrusted with the logia λογία log-ee'-ah(oracle-word)s of God” (Romans 3:2). Any honest conversation about the Torah and the Jewish people has to start there.

The claim runs like this:

“Orthodox Jews read and memorize the Torah all their lives but do not come to Yeshua. That is what happens when you are bound to the Torah.”

It is usually offered as a warning rather than an insult. The thought is that the Torah, held too tightly, becomes a blindfold, and that if those who know it best do not see the Messiah, the Torah itself may be what blinds them.

Yeshua Spoke to This

We do not have to work this out on our own. Yeshua faced people who knew the Scriptures deeply and still did not come to Him, and He told them why:

John 5:39-40; 5:46-47 You search the graphai(written-scriptures) because you think that in them you have eternal zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life); it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have zoe(life). … For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My rhema ῥήμα hray'-mah(spoken-words)?"

Notice what He does not say. He does not say, “You believe Moses too much, and that is why you cannot believe Me.” He says the opposite: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.”

The problem was never too much Moses; it was not believing him. Moses does not stand as a wall between them and Yeshua. He stands pointing to Him.

The Letter of Introduction

Think of a letter of introduction. A trusted friend writes to you: “A man is coming to your town. Here is what he looks like, here is where he comes from, and here is what he will do. When he comes, receive him.” You keep the letter, read it every morning, and can recite it by heart. Then the man arrives, exactly as described, and you do not receive him.

What went wrong? You did not read the letter too often, and you did not trust your friend too much. Somewhere between the reading and the receiving, the letter was not believed. Had you read it more closely, it would have led you to his door.

That is Yeshua’s argument: “He wrote about Me.” The Torah, believed, leads to the Messiah. That is why Yeshua can say that believing Moses and believing Him go together, just as not believing Moses and not believing Him go together.

The Veil, Not Moses

Paul speaks of the same thing in 2 Corinthians, with a picture of his own:

2 Corinthians 3:14-16 But their noemata(minds) were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Messiah. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain). But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Three things stand out. First, Moses is still being read: “whenever Moses is read.” Paul does not say that the reading should stop. Second, the problem is a veil, and it lies “over their kardia(heart, soul-domain),” over the heart that reads rather than over the Torah that is read. Third, when one turns to the Lord, “the veil is taken away.”

What is removed is the veil, not Moses and not the Torah. The text stays exactly where it was. The veil comes off the reader, and the text can then be seen for what it always was, a letter written by the one of whom Yeshua said, “he wrote about Me.”

Tens of Thousands

A simple historical fact also settles the question. When Paul came to Jerusalem near the end of his travels, the elders there told him this:

Acts 21:20 And when they heard it they began glorifying the Lord; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law);

The YLV says “how many thousands,” and the Greek word behind it is myriades μυριάδες moo-ree'-as, tens of thousands. Tens of thousands of Jews had believed in Yeshua, and every one of them was “zealous for the nomos(law).” The next day Paul went into the temple to show that he too walked in the Torah (Acts 21:24, 26).

If being bound to the Torah kept Jewish people from the Messiah, those believers could not have existed. Yet they did, by the tens of thousands, in the city where the Messiah died and rose. For them, believing Moses and believing Yeshua were one faith.

Do Not Boast Over the Branches

To us, Gentiles who came later, Paul gives a direct charge about how we speak of the Jewish people:

Romans 11:17-18 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became a synkoinonos συγκοινωνός soong-koy-no-nos'(co-sharer, co-partaker) of the root and the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches — but if you do boast, it is not you who bears the root, but the root bears you.

We are the wild olive, grafted in, and we became a “synkoinonos(co-sharer, co-partaker) of the root and the richness of the olive tree.” We did not plant the tree; we were joined to it. “It is not you who bears the root, but the root bears you.”

Then he adds:

Romans 11:20-21 True — they were broken off by unbelief, and you stand by faith; do not be high-minded, but fear, for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you.

Paul gives the grafted branch no permission to look down on the natural ones. He warns it.

A claim that says, in effect, “they do not believe because they hold on to the Torah,” stands dangerously close to that boasting. It treats the very root that bears us as the thing that broke them off. Paul names a different cause. They were broken off “by unbelief,” not by the Torah, and the same unbelief would break us off too.

What We Can Say

What, then, can a Christian rightly say about Jewish people who love the Torah and have not come to Yeshua? Exactly what Yeshua said, and no more. We cannot say that they believe Moses too much. We can say that Moses wrote about Him, and that when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away and Moses is seen clearly at last.

It follows that a Christian who wants to speak to a Jewish friend about Yeshua has no reason to begin by running down the Torah. That would be asking him to stop believing Moses, which is the very thing Yeshua said was the problem. The better road is the one Yeshua took: open Moses, and show where he wrote about the Messiah.

That is a word of hope, not of contempt. The letter is still in their hands, and it still points to the door.

One last line remains in Part Two, and it reaches to the end of the age, to the little horn of Daniel 7 and to a verse in that chapter that is often skipped.