3096.-The Jews | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 19, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 15.

3096.—The Jews

Was Abraham a Jew? And if so, what made him a Jew? What is the meaning of "Jew"? B.

The term "Jew" presumably comes from the tribe of Judah. We have no one called Jews until after the tribe itself came into existence. The first instance in which the term in the singular occurs is Esther 2:5. In "the palace there was a certain Jew." That is after the tribe went into captivity. The first instance in which the plural occurs is 2 Kings 16:6, in which it still has reference to descendants of the tribe of Judah.

There are scholars who find the origin of the term, however, in another word. Sometimes the Lord's name is given as "Jahwes" instead of Jehovah; and the Jews, such contend, are servants of God, the people of Jahwes. But Abraham is not called a Jew. He is, however, called a Hebrew, Gen. 14:13. And so his descendants are called Hebrews. This comes from their ancestor Eber, or Heber. The term "Jew" is used, however, in a spiritual sense. Jesus was a Jew, and He tells us that "salvation is of the Jews." John 4:22. Then, too, according to the prophecy of Jacob, Gen. 49:10, to the tribe of Judah would the gathering of the peoples be, because Christ, the Shiloh of that tribe, would be the one through whom salvation comes to all. Consequently in later years the term "Jews" came to embrace all of God's children; and the apostle uses the term in a wholly spiritual sense in Rom. 2:28, 29: "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." It is therefore no reproach to be called a Jew, if one is truly such in a spiritual sense, for God condemns those "which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie." Rev. 3:9. The true Jew in the spiritual sense, the only real and true sense, is a true believer in Christ Jesus our Lord.