It may seem very odd to argue that Zionism is in a battle with the Daughter of Zion, but it is true. The Zionism that formed from the currents of European thinking in the time of Herzl, was not about establishing God's Zion.
Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. This is the word that the LORD hath spoken concerning him;
The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn;
the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. (2 Kings 19:20-21)
The parallelism establishes that Zion is Jerusalem. We are also told that the stronghold of the city of David in Jerusalem was called Zion (2 Sam 5:7).
Recently I read Carline Glick's 'Democracy must be restored to Israel' in which she analyses the “left’s collective nervous breakdown” after the most recent Israeli election.
(Hillel) Halkin blamed “Judaism” for destroying “Zionism,” which he argued, oddly, “sought to cure us” of Judaism’s “fantasies and delusions … only to become infected with them itself.” “Zionism wanted to make us a normal people,” he wrote. Alas, “It failed and grew warped in the process.”
..After the Likud and the right won their first Knesset election in 1977, the left initiated a plan to transfer governing power away from the Knesset and the government to Israel’s unelected deep state—particularly the Supreme Court and the state legal authorities generally.
We do not support 'right' or 'left' as the God of the Bible chooses whom he wills (Daniel 4:17). For Halkin Zionism was to become 'normal', or like other nations! There truly is nothing new under the sun! His ancestors sought to be as other nations in seeking a king! (1 Sam. 8:20). They were told they would not be as other nations – if they were as other nations they would be removed from the land! (Leviticus 18:24-28). They were told they would not be as other nations, but were to be a peculiar people (Ex 19:5, Deu 14:2, 26:18, Psa 135:4 and 1 Pet 2:9). Yet in all when Israel are given a King the matter works out as the God of the Bible, Yahweh Elohim intends.
Halkin complained that Judaism had destroyed Zionism. This might seem quite strange to those Christians who see the project of fulfilling prophecy in the return to Zion as religious, because it is fulfilling Bible prophecy. One reason for confusion is that David Ben Gurion, without believing the Bible, quoted it copiously.
In fact the godless do the most to fulfil Bible prophecy! If Jews deeply steeped in the Bible and Judaism had sought to fulfil the Bible – would it be a miracle? What we have seen is that the godless Jews led the powerful forces of political Zionism.
Are not all 'isms' of humanism, seeking solutions without God? Zionism and Socialism. Communism was international unity, whereas many of the Zionists sought an ethnic (national) Socialism. Consider. Isn't democracy, in its theory, rule of/by the people and not rule by God?
The Jewish refrain in Judaism in years of exile was ‘next year Jerusalem’. This was more than a longing for the centre of their historic nation, as it also spoke of going up to Jerusalem for the three feasts of Judaism. It was quite natural to equate that desire to return to worship at Jerusalem with Zion. It was written that salvation comes out of Zion.
Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! when the LORD bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad. (Psalm 14:7)
Political Zionism arose in a secular era, when Jews sought to assimilate. Jews were most assimilated in Germany and much assimilation had occurred in France, and many wished to be successful in Russia. But many Jews, and most famously Herzl, saw that even if they were exactly as those about them, their ancestral ethnicity was enough for them to be mistreated. The logic was that if there was a place Jews could be ethnically Jews then there would be an end: they could be as other nations.
The larger context was Jews trying to solve the problems of the human condition- the thought leaders were Jews because nobody much other than Jews had noticed they had problems. The dominant voices were Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. In 1901 Chaim Weizmann who was between faith and socialism, lived an hour from Berne Switzerland where Lenin, Plekhanov, Trotsky and their followers were gathered amongst other Russian Jews. Lewis a biographer of Weizmann wrote:
The Socialists and the Zionists were rival fishers for souls and they held each other in contempt. Weizmann particularly resented the arrogant Trotsky's attitude, “They could not understand why Russian Jews should want to be anything else but Russian,” Weizmann wrote, “They stamped as unworthy, as intellectually backward, as chauvinistic and immoral, the desire of any Jew to concern himself with the sufferings and destiny of Jewry.” Weizmann and his friends challenged the Socialists to a debate.. The meeting took place in a Beer hall and lasted for 3 days. P 40 Balfour & Weizmann Geoffrey Lewis 2009 Continuum UK.
The Zionists won that debate in 1901, but the ideals of the socialists were applied to the 'sufferings of Jews' as Zionism grew. The religious Jews who sought Zion were outnumbered (and some refused to go to Zion until Messiah came). Ben Gurion was a Leninist. His vision of Zion was Socialist-democrat and his hope was based in settling the Negev, the wilderness – not in the heartland. Though quoting the Bible, he never lived it. Zionism was a socialist good to be laboured for. There is no mistaking that the philosophical political currents that founded Israel were socialist. Many socialists from about the world volunteered at the Kibbutz and Moshavim, thinking how wonderful it all was. The economy long suffered from the excessive collectivist state control. However from 2000 the political party of Ben Gurion that held power at the founding of Israel lost power dramatically, and in the era of Netanyahu it virtually ceases to exist.
We might expect that the fulfilment of the Bible, in matters relating to the most important part of God's plan comes from fervent Judaism, as the people with a renewed heart seek God. But was this the case as Israel leaves Pharaoh's Egypt and slavery? Yahweh Elohim is wiser than us. My Hebrew teacher pointed out that the Hebrew Sages noted that nobody who came out of Egypt, but Joshua and Caleb, made it to the Promised Land, because their souls were enslaved. A new generation was needed whose souls were shaped by a life of faith in the wilderness.
In the same way Israel was actively formed from 1922-1948 by secular forces. In 1948 Israel suffered a disaster, as Jordan took the Holy Places on the mountains and Jerusalem. Until 1967 enslaved secular socialist Israel was learning to live by faith in the wilderness, as the nation learns to desire its Holy Places and grows in faith. In 1967 that growth in faith is shown a miracle that the prepared hearts can understand. The miracle is so great that those that hate the God of the Bible begin to hate Israel. It is not hidden that this was seen in God's plan, as it was written before.
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because the enemy hath said against you, Aha, even the ancient high places are ours in possession: Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people... (Ezekiel 36:2-3)
...Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; I have lifted up mine hand, Surely the heathen that are about you, they shall bear their shame. But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel; for they are at hand to come. (Ezekiel 36:7-8)
A new generation has arisen on the Mountains of Israel, and the secular few of the coastal sands and wilderness weakly rage against it – so that we may see and take note. The new young generation of Jews on the Mountains is now so numerous that they say:
The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell. (Isaiah 49:20)
The Zionism that the founders of Israel sought is indeed dead, but it always was. Human solutions will always fail. The existence of Israel is witness not to Zionism, which could only fish a few souls but to Yahweh Elohim's work hunting (Jer. 16:16). Even the most committed Zionist knows that their Zionism didn't found Israel as the whole from the beginning was a miracle, at the epic level of world wars killing millions and failed empires.
Revived Judaism has killed Zionism. Zionism is dead and the daughter of Zion is grown up. Next it is written.
Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, 'Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.' (Isaiah 62:11)
Though there may seem no joy for now, Zion's glory in the return of her King is to occur shortly.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. (Zech 9:9) (Quoted John 12:15)
Zion – not Zionism which was always dead – will rise triumphant. Zion is a place, a great city. Zion is the place of the Living God.
But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.. (Hebrews 12:22)
