Prayers for Jerusalem (and Babylon)

Today I would like to do a brief scriptural analysis of the oft misquoted *pray for Israel* mantra that evangelicals mindlessly repeat. What does it actually say? What is the context? And is there a near identical exhortation to pray for Babylon? Read on…

One scripture often referenced is Psalms 122:6 which states: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee”. Let us read it carefully, and the entire psalm it is a part of. First, it does not actually tell you to pray for Israel, just for the city of Jerusalem. It also does not mention Jews. The word *Jew* does not appear in the Psalms or the books of Moses, not even once. It does not say this is a perpetual command. It also did not say people would be cursed for failing to pray for Jerusalem, or for opposing the actions of Christ rejecting Jews and a future political entity known as the state of Israel.

Read in the context of the psalm in which it appears, it is just David is telling the Hebrews of his day to pray for the city of Jerusalem as *at that time* it was the home of the temple and thus the center of worship for the true church *at that time* (the true church then being pious Hebrews awaiting the messiah, which was certainly not all of the Hebrews). After the Jewish people en masse rejected the messiah, Jesus Christ sent a Roman army to destroy Jerusalem and level the temple. The temple no longer mattered as Christ had made the one pure and for all times sacrifice of himself, and the temple was now an obstruction to the Gospel being preached. In his commentary on the verse, John Calvin applied it in a *spiritual* sense to the modern Christian church (aka spiritual Israel, aka the Israel of God, aka believers in Christ) and noted that: “Hence we learn that the curse of God rests upon all such as afflict the Church, or plot and endeavor by any kind of mischief to accomplish its destruction”.

Also, just for laughs, I would ask those who still embrace the command to pray for Jerusalem (and/or the entire physical land of Palestine/Israel) the following: did the command to pray apply during the almost 1,900 years of the diaspora, during which much of that time a Muslim people ruled the city? And playing theoretical games, what if right now Iran and Lebanon team up, America and Russia stand back for fear of a nuclear exchange, and Arabs violently retake not just Gaza but the city of Jerusalem? Are you still going to pray for Jerusalem as an Islamic flag waves over every inch of it? The verse simply said pray for the peace of Jerusalem, not pray that it stays in Jewish hands. If you take the injunction to pray as extending past David and the people he was speaking to, does it ever end?

Now let us read the 29th chapter of Jeremiah, with special focus on 7th verse. Jeremiah commanded the Jews whom God had sent into captivity to: “And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace”. Pray unto the LORD for Babylon? Is not this a near identical verse to Psalms 122:6? Pray for a place and/or its peace, and you will get a blessing (peace or prosperity). Why oh why are Christian Zionists not praying for the city of Babylon (and/or the country of Iraq in which it is located)? Why? The admonition is just as clear. We all know why. Because the Evangelicals who embrace Dispensationalist eschatology and Zionism as legitimate have a near superstitious reverence for the Christ rejecting Jewish people and their state of Israel.

Evangelicals think physical Jews are blessed and have a special status with God as they reject his son. Evangelicals have no clear comprehension of the teaching of the apostle Paul in Romans and especially in his epistle to the Galatians (most especially the 3rd chapter). Most present day Christians do not understand the New Covenant, because they are not a part of it. I can write truth here at GKS, but only Jesus Christ can open the eyes of the blind. All spiritual truth, and regeneration itself, flow from Christ. I am only an essayist whose material is what the Reformed term a *means* of grace.

If you cannot break free from your superstition concerning the Jews, at least be consistent and pray for Babylon and Iraq every time you pray for Israel. And pray for the Palestinian civilians (including those bombed while in a Christian ran hospital) who are being mercilessly killed by the IDF as they invade Gaza.