The chosenness of the Children of Israel by God occupies a central role in Judaism as it is the main theme in the history and theology of its Scripture.
The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) starts with an account of creation that quickly moves to focus on the creation of mankind. One fifth of the way into its first book, Genesis, it moves to focus on Abraham and then his descendants, in particular those from his grandson, Jacob (Israel). The book is effectively a history of the Israelites in which all other peoples are supporting actors. Even God is depicted as being focused on the Israelites more than anyone and anything else. This ethnos is presented as the chosen people of God and the center of His plans and actions.
While early Christians did not hold one view of how the Hebrew Bible related to Jesus’s message, it was accepted as God’s word. Christianity inherited the Biblical concept of the chosen people of God but reworked it to meet its theological needs, presenting the Church as the new chosen people.
The Qur’an confirms that the Children of Israel were chosen and preferred by Allah over other peoples, but it explains this differently from its presentation in Judaism and later adaptation in Christianity. Muslim scholars have agreed that the Qur’an does not present the chosenness of the Israelites as perpetual over all nations. Yet when it comes to the exact meaning of this chosenness, scholars have often spoken about it in general terms, citing various divine favors referred to in various verses. Such general and broad statements do not clearly explain the specific concept of “chosenness” as they do not distinguish between different Qur’anic terms. Studies of the various forms of chosenness in the Qur’an often conflate different, albeit related, terms and concepts.
Translating those already-conflated Qur’anic terms into another language adds another layer of misconception, making the distortion of meanings considerably harder to spot.
This article will try to show that distinguishing between different Qur’anic terms clarifies the exact meaning of the chosenness of the Israelites and related concepts. The result is a simple, coherent, and compelling explanation that corrects the Jewish and Christian misunderstandings of the meaning of God’s choosing of the Israelites 
The incoherent chosenness of the Israelites in the Bible
The Hebrew Bible mentions several covenants that God had with people. The first of these is the covenant He made through Noah with all creatures that never again would a flood destroy the whole of the earth and those living on it. He set the rainbow as a reminder of this covenant.
In the second covenant, God promised Abraham to make his descendants His chosen people. It is first mentioned when God instructed the seventy-five-year-old Abraham to leave Haran, believed to be today’s Harran in southeastern Turkey, and go to Canaan, which He told him He would give to his offspring.
From then on, God’s promise to Abraham is mentioned repeatedly, as in this speech by God to the ninety-nine-year-old Abraham:
I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God… As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised.
The Bible later clarifies that it is only Abraham’s descendants through his son Isaac
and grandson Jacob,
who is later called Israel, whom God chose as His people.
The Bible describes the uniqueness of God’s election of the Israelites and His relationship with them in exclusive language that effectively makes Him more of a god of His chosen people than the rest of the creation. Here are a few illustrative statistics from its second book, Exodus, which starts with the Israelites being numerous but enslaved by the Egyptians. In Exodus, the expression “the God of” occurs twenty-seven times, all referring to Israelites:
- The God of the Hebrews: 6
- The God of Israel: 4
- The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: 3 x 3 = 9
- The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: 1
- The God of your ancestors: 3
- The God of their ancestors: 1
- The God of your father: 1
- The God of my father: 2
There is not a single instance in which God is referred to as also the God of the Egyptians or anyone else. Similarly, Exodus reports God using the expression “my people” to exclusively refer to the Israelites no less than twenty-seven times. So, the various forms of the phrases “the God of” and “my people” in reference to Israel occur as many as fifty-four times in Exodus alone. This tribal image of God significantly conflicts with also presenting Him as the only Lord of everyone and everything.
Western scholars also agree that the Israelites once believed that each tribal nation had its own god. This is traceable to at least as early as Julius Wellhausen in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The early Israelites “did not think of YHWH as the only God, but as the mightiest among the gods. His power, though, was restricted to the land of Israel.”
The Israelites are also said to have worshipped more than one god.
The Qur’an, however, explains the presence of polytheistic and monotheistic language in the Bible differently. The Israelites’ religion as taught by the Patriarchs was always monotheistic, acknowledging only one God and calling the Israelites and people in general to worship Him. The polytheistic passages in the Bible are extraneous to what Abraham and later prophets taught, representing reflections, distortions, and historical episodes by some misguided Israelites over the centuries. For instance, the Qur’an records that post-exodus Israelites asked Moses to make for them an idol to worship similar to idols other peoples worshipped
and later, when Moses was receiving the tablets, they made a calf out of their ornaments and worshipped it.
These episodes are parts of the history of the Israelites but had nothing to do with Moses’ teachings.
Western scholars also look at the concept of election as a product of polytheism, as various ancient nations, including the Israelites, each claimed to have been elected by its god. Early in the twentieth century, Powis Smith suggested a god-nation election relationship was meant to give the elected nation authority over other nations. But as disasters continued to inflict Israel, they could not maintain the myth of world supremacy. The Israelite prophets then developed the common god-nation election to place Israel not as the world ruler but as its spiritual teacher and savior. Rather counterintuitively, Smith argued that the long editorial process through which the Old Testament went ensured that its doctrine of election was ethically and spiritually superior to similar ancient doctrines.
More recently, Reuven Firestone stated that when the early Israelites became monotheistic and believed their god to be the One God, the chosenness that they once had with their tribal god became chosenness by the universal God. Rather than a chosen people by their god, they became the chosen people by the one God.
As it offers its own explanation of the Bible’s accommodation of monotheistic and polytheistic passages, the Qur’an gives a completely different picture of the election of the Israelites, as we shall see later.
In making the chosenness of the Israelites the focus of its history and theology, the Bible has two related fundamental problems: it does not provide a meaningful explanation of this chosenness nor does it give a logical justification for it. The following is a typical passage in which chosenness is confirmed but no explanation or justification is given:
For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
The Bible is unclear as to what making the Israelites God’s chosen people means. The awarding of the Mosaic Law cannot be the explanation because the election predates it by centuries. Indeed, being given the Torah is seen as a result of being God’s chosen. The offering of the Torah to Israel was itself an act of divine love for the elected.
What about the unique granting of the holy land? This could have been a meaningful explanation if this was a case of a feudal landlord giving a group of his servants a piece of land, but it would be absurd to suggest that this could even partially explain the eternal chosenness of a group of human beings by the Divine.
The Bible’s focus on a land in this world, though, is consistent with its ignorance of life after death.
The holy land itself is repeatedly praised for its worldly benefits, such as its produce.
Even piety and righteousness are presented as needed in order to benefit in this world.
The Bible is even more averse to providing a justification for the election, making this divine act arbitrary. The following is one passage, in which God addresses the Israelites through Moses, that captures this silence:
When the LORD your God thrusts them out before you, do not say to yourself, “It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to occupy this land”; it is rather because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is dispossessing them before you, in order to fulfill the promise that the LORD made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know, then, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness; for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness; you have been rebellious against the LORD from the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place.
The Bible mentions the evil of the Canaanite nations as the reason for removing them from the land. Yet it repeatedly and expressly reminds the Israelites that they did not deserve God’s decision to replace the Canaanites with them. The passage seems set to explain giving the land to the Israelites, only to end up stressing that there is no justification, condemning the Israelites instead.
Usually, the Abrahamic covenant, when his descendants were first declared chosen, is seen as unconditional by Biblical scholars, while the Sinaitic (Mosaic) covenant, when the Law was given to Moses, is considered conditional. The Bible stipulates that the covenant depends on the Israelites’ obedience to God, using terms such as “commandments,” “statutes,” “decrees,” and “ordinances”:
If you heed these ordinances, by diligently observing them, the LORD your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors.
Yet paradoxically, there is nothing that the Israelites could do, no matter how evil in God’s sight, that would make them “unchosen.” This is why God’s commitment to the Israelites is also described as everlasting. The Israelites might sin and get punished by God but they would never lose their status as His chosen. We may draw a timeline of the Israelites’ alternating prosperity and punishment throughout history, but there is no corresponding timeline of chosenness and “unchosenness.” For example, after the destruction of the northern and southern kingdoms and the taking of their inhabitants into exile, Jeremiah prophesied that God would end the suffering and return the exiled home:
Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. For the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the LORD, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors and they shall take possession of it.
Significantly, “the God of Israel” still refers to the punished people who had lost the holy land as His people. Triumphant or defeated, rewarded or punished, the Israelites remain God’s chosen people at all times.
No matter how good any other nation is, it remains unchosen. Christianity changed this Biblical doctrine, as we will see later.
The Bible’s concept of election, as well as the promised land, is unclear.
The relevant texts are incoherent, so it is not possible to make sense of the concept. But its comparative claim is clear: the Israelites are “the most blessed of peoples.”
They are better than other peoples and more loved by God. They are God’s privileged people. However, the Bible fails to explain or justify God’s unique election of the Israelites.
The genesis of this confused and paradoxical chosenness is its ethnic nature. God understandably loved Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for their righteousness, yet He inexplicably chose all the descendants of one of those three individuals as His people, “And because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them,”
fully aware that they would be a disobedient people throughout history. This chosenness is described as a “covenant” and does place commitments on the Israelites, yet in reality it is more of a one-sided commitment by God as it is unconditionally everlasting. The writers of the Bible could not deny that the history of the Israelites is one of persistent disobedience and numerous national calamities, which are linked to their rebellion against God, but they were not going to compromise their ethnocentric message either. The Israelites were chosen not because of their righteousness or any particular virtue but because of their ethnicity, the Bible unambiguously states. The inevitable outcome was an incoherent and paradoxical election. This is one Biblical contradiction that the Qur’an explains and corrects.
The chosenness of Israel in Western scholarship
This section presents a quick review of how Western scholarship has dealt with this core Biblical concept. I will make references to early Judaism, but I will discuss the Christian adoption and adaptation of this notion later.
Jewish, Christian, and secular scholars of all persuasions acknowledge that the Bible’s presentation of the election of Israel is at least challenging, if not incoherent, as I have already shown. Leaving aside secondary issues, for now, the fundamental claim that God, the Lord of all creation, prefers one ethnic group over all other ethnicities and human groupings is intrinsically problematic. This already difficult concept is made even more counterintuitive by the Bible’s insistence that the Israelites were not given this status on merit but sola gratia.
Many Jewish and Christian scholars have settled for God’s love as the explanation for His choosing of the Israelites.
This love is “mysterious,” as Kaminsky describes it, because it is “inexplicable.”
Sanders has noted that God’s love for the Israelites is a constant theme in Tannaitic literature while stressing that this is not much of an explanation.
Similarly, Novak notes that claiming that God loved/chose the Israelites because He loved/chose them is tautological.
The unmerited election is explained by unmerited love. The question of why God loved Israel has no answer; hence, the election of Israel remains a mystery. Divine love is called upon to explain Israel’s election, only to end up being another special favor from God that cries for an explanation, “those whom the king loves are greater than those who love the king.”
A similar attempt at an explanation makes the election of the Israelites a fulfillment of the promise God made to their forefathers.
One Jewish scholar has advised that, when studying this mystery, we should “avoid an answer that does too much.”
Ironically, this explanation by mystery is common in books and papers that use the full power of human reasoning to develop sophisticated, defensive, rational arguments of Biblical theology, including the notion of the election of the Israelites.
This may satisfy those who identify with the ancient Israelites (Jews) and those who believe that they are the new Israel (Christians), as this theological doctrine is profitable to them. For the rest of us, including those Jews and Christians who do not believe in the inerrancy of Biblical theology or that it is wholly inspired,
this love-election circular thinking that confirms Israel’s uniqueness by stressing the arbitrariness of God’s decision is wholly unsatisfactory. God is not irrational and does not engender incomprehensibility or reward incomprehension. Outsourcing the explanation to the mystery of divine love buries rather than addresses the serious problems in the concept of the chosenness of Israel. An inexplicable and unjustifiable ethnic election is an affront to divine justice and God’s equal Lordship of all nations, as David Cline explains in these critical observations:
There is no doubt that the Pentateuch represents God as the God of the Hebrews—God of the Hebrews, that is, in a way he is not God of the Egyptians or Hittites, for example (even if he is God of those nations in any sense at all). This is all right if you happen to be an Israelite and have no dealings with Hittites. You know all you need to know, which is that Yahweh is your God. But if you happen to be a Hittite, or even a twentieth-century reader of the Pentateuch, how congenial is it to encounter in its pages a deity who is bound in this way to just one nation: the nation claims that he is their peculiar deity, and he professes that he has chosen them as his own peculiar people? What is the sense in this arrangement, what rationale is offered for it—especially since the Pentateuch itself regards God as the creator of the whole world? And above all, for our present consideration of God in the Pentateuch, what does this exclusivity say about the character of the deity represented here? The Pentateuch itself sees no problem here, nothing to be excused or justified; if anything, it makes a point out of there being no rationale for the choice of Israel as the people of God. But it does not occur to it that the very idea that there should be just one nation that is the chosen people—leaving the rest of humanity unchosen—is itself problematic. The time-honoured language, and the sense of fitness that creeps over us through long acquaintance with the idea, should not be allowed to soften the sense of shock to the modern conscience (religiously formed or otherwise) that such an example of nationalistic ideology must deliver. Nor should we blur the contours of this distinct figuration of God in the Pentateuch with some pacific harmonization or identification of this God with the universal deity of the Christian religion—or, for that matter, patronize the God of the Pentateuch by excusing the myopia of his vision as a necessary stage in the progress of religion.
Opponents of this kind of commonsense scrutiny often argue that it is misguided because it applies Enlightenment values to Biblical theology. The problem with critiquing election in this way, in the words of one Jewish scholar, is that the “Biblical text might not be compatible with the now pervasive liberal, democratic, multicultural ethic.”
Another Christian scholar acknowledged that Israel’s special status causes discomfort to the modern interpreter
but goes further by noting that even the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob do not prove that God’s election of them was more than a caprice. The assumption that God’s choice must be fair, he argues, seems to “import a modern concern into the text.”
Pioneering rationalists, such as Spinoza (d. 1677 CE) and Kant (d. 1804 CE), are accused of marginalizing election by pointing out its contradiction with Enlightenment universalistic ideas, in particular monotheism.
The application of Enlightenment universalism to the particularistic election of Israel could have been accused of being illegitimate anachronism had Judaism not been a living religion and the Bible not treated today as sacred Scripture. But the often vehement defense of this Biblical concept in modern scholarship is not undertaken in the context of discussing an ancient religion that once was. Indeed, Spinoza did not reject that the Israelites were chosen by God, but he argued for a particular interpretation of that election and that it had ceased.
Blaming the Enlightenment for questioning the rationality of the chosenness of the Israelites is a misleading defense. Rabbinic literature shows that early Jewish scholars also grappled with the illusive meaning and justification of this concept.
They tried to show that “it was not odd of God to choose the Jews.” They came up with three answers: 1) God offered the covenant (and the commandments attached to it) to all, but only Israel accepted it; 2) God chose Israel because of some merit found either in the Patriarchs or in the exodus generation or on the condition of future obedience; 3) there is no reason beyond God’s own will.
The latter was a last-resort position they were forced to take only when a reasoned answer was not possible.
On the other hand, the great twelfth-century Jewish theologian Maimonides almost completely ignored the chosenness of the Israelites. It does not feature in his Thirteen Principles and Mishneh Torah (The Laws of the Foundations of the Torah) and it appears probably only once in his other writings.
He denied that the Israelites had any inherent, essential characteristic that distinguished them from other nations, arguing that they were made a holy nation by having been taught the Torah.
Yet, as already noted, the Torah followed, rather than preceded or caused, the election. Maimonides probably found the Biblical portrayal of the election of Israel irrational and indefensible, so he acknowledged this foundational Biblical theme only in passing and tried to rationalize it. His solution might well be a response to the teachings of the Qur’an on the election of the Israelites, so its context might be Jewish-Muslim polemics.
Furthermore, God’s choosing of the Israelites is not a purely divine matter that is not subject to reasoning, like why He created the universe or why He did so at a particular point. It is not even only a matter between God and that one nation because the choosing of the Israelites meant the “unchoosing” of all other peoples. Even those who defend the chosenness of Israel concede that the choosing is not inconsequential for the unchosen.
Indeed, it has been noted that the privilege of chosenness could be detrimental to the unchosen. Unconstrained chosenness could portray the Jews as a herrenvolk (master race) and the only possible relationship Gentiles can have with them is to “accept Jewish sovereignty and dominance, be it political or only ‘religious.’” It could lead to “a practical program of coercive dominance,”
as seen in Zionism. Lohr agrees with critics like Clines that “a God of favourites is dangerous.”
Kaminsky accepts that the treatment of the Canaanites was genocidal but he rejects the assumption that “ancient Israel’s treatment of the Canaanites was paradigmatic for her treatment of other outsiders.”
While it is true that the belief in the chosenness of Israel does not have to lead to coercive dominance and genocide, the history of the modern state of Israel shows just how easy it is for this to happen. It suffices to refer to Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza and the genocidal language repeatedly used by Israeli officials when referring to the Palestinians, including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to the slaughter of the Amalekites in the Bible.
One approach to ameliorating the problem of election theology has been to play down the implied inferiority of the unchosen. Kaminsky came up with the creative solution of suggesting that the Bible differentiates between two groups of unchosen, “non-elect” and “anti-elect.” Those who suffered the worst consequences of being unchosen, such as the Canaanites, are assigned the label “anti-elect.” They are “generally seen as beyond the pale of divine mercy and doomed for destruction.” The non-elect, on the other hand, “have a place within the divine economy even while they retain a different status than Israel, the elect of God.”
Kaminsky goes on to reassuringly note, “In much of the Hebrew Bible (as well as in much of rabbinic thought), being non-elect is in no way equivalent to being damned.”
Lohr finds this distinction between non-elect and anti-elect useful for reading Deuteronomy.
However, he confines the importance of non-elect nations to treat “God’s elect with blessing, not disdain.” They “appear to be able to respond to God appropriately while remaining outside of God’s people.”
Another question that has occupied scholars is whether the election of Israel is conditional or not. Thornhill argues that many scholars, including Jewish Second Temple authors, saw the covenant as involving both conditional and unconditional elements, which “resonates with the Old Testament itself.”
Sanders disagrees, as does Novak,
noting that the Tannaitic literature supports the opposite view:
Although God would punish disobedience and although intentional rejection of God’s right to command implied rejection of the covenant, the Rabbis did not have the view that God’s covenant with Israel was conditional on obedience in the sense that the covenantal promises would be revoked by God because of Israel’s sin. The covenant is, in this sense, unconditional, although it clearly implies the obligation to obey.
Kaminsky suggests that the shock of the exile was reflected in post-exilic texts in the Bible that stress conditional covenantal theology.
The conditional-unconditional question of the election of Israel is thus an intrinsic conflict within the Bible reflecting the historical development of its texts. Spinoza, for instance, used the Bible to show that “God did not choose the Hebrews forever.”
As the covenant was unconditional, rabbis believed that God would never cancel it even when faced with disobedience.
Kaminsky notes, “The vast bulk of relevant texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament affirm that God’s promises to Israel are unbreakable and persist in perpetuity.”
The election of the Israelites, specifically, is irrevocable in the Hebrew Bible. Although the covenant repeatedly seems on the verge of dissolution, it is always renewed; it is never ended.
This quick overview shows that huge efforts have been invested by Jewish and Christian theologians to address the internal inconsistencies of the concept of the chosenness of Israel in the Bible and its conflict with basic values, such as justice. One scholar who describes himself as a Christian and a Gentile ends his book on the subject with an honest question:
The criticisms of Schwartz,
Clines, and others—that a God of favorites is dangerous—may well hold true. But what might be the alternative? I am not altogether sure, but the Bible implies that the God of Israel is a God who takes risks and is deeply involved in the matters of humanity.
The Bible’s version of history and theology is not without an alternative. The Qur’an provides one.
The Abrahamic covenant in the Qur’an
The Qur’an does confirm that the Israelites were chosen by Allah but, unlike the Bible, it gives a clear and coherent meaning of the election. Indeed, the Qur’an’s correction of the Biblical narrative starts with Allah’s promise to Abraham, which is the equivalent of the Abrahamic covenant in the Bible:
And when Abraham was tried by his Lord with commands and he fulfilled them, He said, “Indeed, I will make you a leader for people.” He [Abraham] said, “And of my descendants?” He [Allah] said, “My covenant does not include the wrongdoers.”
Allah confirmed that He was going to make Abraham an imam (a spiritual leader) for people because he fulfilled his obligations. Abraham asked for this favor to be extended to some of his descendants as he was wise enough to know such a favor may be conferred on certain individuals, but never on a whole nation. Allah answered Abraham’s prayer and confirmed that only righteous individuals of his descendants would be granted this favor. Furthermore, Abraham did not ask for the favor to be confined to only one line of his descendants.
There is so much to say about the Abrahamic covenant in the Qur’an,
but I would just like to shed light on one Qur’anic subtlety that is particularly relevant to this article. In the Bible, God’s covenant with Abraham includes the repeated promise to make his descendants a huge nation, “like the dust of the earth”
and “numerous as the stars of heaven.”
This is another form of glorification of the ethnic group that is the focus of Biblical theology and history. This aspect of the covenant is so significant that God changed Abraham’s name accordingly:
You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.
This claim is not explicitly addressed in the Qur’an but it is implicitly and eloquently rejected. When Abraham destroyed the idols of his people, this is how they identified him:
They said, “We heard a young man mention them called Abraham.”
Significantly, this is the only place in the Qur’an where the phrase yuqālu lahu (called) is mentioned before someone’s name. Otherwise redundant, this very unusual expression clearly indicates that Abraham was his name when he was a young man living with his father. It was not a new name he acquired late in his life, as the Bible claims. This subtle observation is further confirmed by the fact that the Qur’an does mention Jacob’s second name, Israel, so it would have mentioned Abraham’s supposed earlier name.
Interestingly, while the Bible claims that God changed Abram’s name to Abraham because his lineage would be numerous, this etymology is not Hebrew. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that “the form ‘Abraham’ yields no sense in Hebrew, and is probably only a graphic variation of ‘Abram.’”
Similarly, the Catholic Encyclopedia describes the Biblical meaning as “popular word play, and the real meaning is unknown.”
Some Muslim scholars have reported the Biblical etymology while others have derived it from the Arabic or Chaldean ab raḥīm/rāḥim (merciful father).
Some Western scholars also have suggested it is Arabic.
It should be noted, though, that the name Ibrāhīm in the Qur’an is a diptote (mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf)—i.e., treated as a foreign name—although this could be due to it being ancient and unfamiliar to the Arabs then. These are all speculations but what is certain is that the Biblical etymology, which is linked to its claim that the name was changed, is incorrect.
Qur’anic coherence versus Biblical incoherence
In analyzing the meaning of the chosenness of the Israelites in the Qur’an, this article employs the established hermeneutical method: the Qur’an interprets itself. This principle was hinted at in a sermon by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661).
The earliest exegetical work in which I have seen a mention of it in some form is the commentary of al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1143), who states that “the best meanings [of verses] are those that the Qur’an points to.”
Sohaib Saeed Bhutta has traced the earliest direct reference to this hermeneutical principle to Ibn Taymiyya’s (d. 728/1328) Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr.
This interpretive methodology is possible because the Qur’an has one Author, ensuring its coherence.
Conversely, even a remotely similar hermeneutical principle for the Bible does not exist because it is a set of diverse books that were written and edited by many unknown individuals over centuries. Some of the editorial work aimed for harmonization but no effort could have made it anywhere near one textual unit. As noted by John Barton, the Bible is not a monolith but “the record of a dialogue among authors and transmitters of tradition, and contains commentary in many of its books on many others.”
To quote Shabbir Akhtar’s succinct comparison:
The Quran, unlike the Bible, is not the heterogeneous work of many hands, in several genres, in a trio of languages, in varied geographical locales, stretching over millennia, surviving only in uncertain and fragmentary forms. It is a unified canon, “revealed” in just over two decades, addressed to a man fully known to his contemporaries and to subsequent history, a man living in only two geographical locations in the same country. It was written in one language, the language of the recipient and of the first audience, a living language that is still widely spoken.
The Bible repeatedly contradicts itself, so it cannot interpret itself. This is one cause of the unbridgeable gap between Jewish and Christian theologies and their respective Scriptures.
As rightly noted by Barton:
Islam perhaps is the ideal type of book religion, and by comparison with it, Judaism and Christianity stand at a considerable distance from their central holy text.
Because the Bible is incongruous, extracting a clear concept from it often necessitates ignoring parts of it. While the Qur’an interprets itself, the Bible obfuscates itself. The incoherence, and, consequently, irresolvable tension, that shrouds the chosenness of the Israelites in the Bible is one manifestation of this fact.
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Qur’anic terminology
The Qur’an uses five different terms to describe Allah’s favors to the Israelites, including choosing them, listed here in their denominal forms:
- ʿAhd (covenant)
- Mīthāq (solemn covenant)
- Ikhtiyār (choosing)
- Tafḍīl (preferring)
- Niʿma (favor)
Citing various verses, I will explain how these terms are precisely used in the Qur’an to tell us much about the Israelites. But here is a brief broad overview first.
Lexicographers usually consider the terms mīthāq and ʿahd synonymous,
as both terms refer to commitments that a party has made under an agreement with one or more other parties. But while mīthāq is very close to ʿahd, it has the connotation of additional confirmation,
so something like “sworn covenant” or “sealed covenant.” Also, when used to refer to a ʿahd that Allah has with a group of people, mīthāq stresses the obligations of the people under the terms of that covenant, which is why it is repeatedly used in the Qur’an in the formula Allah took the mīthāq from. I will translate mīthāq as “solemn covenant.”
In addition to being used once to refer to choosing the Israelites, the verb ikhtār is also used once to describe Allah’s choosing of Moses to be a prophet
and another time for His absolute freedom to choose to create and give creatures what He wants.
It is not used exclusively for Allah’s actions, as it is also used to describe Moses’ choosing of seventy men for his appointment with Allah.
In the seventeen times in which it appears in verbal form II, tafḍīl always describes a divine action of preferring individuals or groups over others. Four of these are for Allah’s preference of the Israelites.
While tafḍīl is a comparative term, niʿma is not. The latter is a general term that is used to describe any favor.
Whenever I quote a verse that contains any of these terms, I will mention their romanized forms, along with their translations. This makes the arguments of this article clearer and makes it easier for anyone interested to further study those terms.
Before discussing how each of these terms is distinctly used in the Qur’an in the following sections, I would like to make a quick but important observation. The two main Qur’anic terms for chosenness by Allah for noble responsibilities and spiritual ranks are iṣṭifāʾ and ijtibāʾ. For example, these terms describe Allah’s choosing of certain individuals for the elevated position of “prophet.” Significantly, neither of these two terms is used for the Israelites.
The covenant with the Israelites
The first observation to make is that Allah’s keeping of His covenant with the Israelites is conditional on their meeting their covenantal commitments:
O Children of Israel, remember My niʿma (favor) that anʿamtu (I favored) you and fulfill My ʿahd (covenant) so I fulfil your ʿahd (covenant), and be afraid of Me.
Unlike the Bible, the Qur’an does not portray Allah as having any unconditional commitment towards the Israelites. He has no eternal commitment that He is self-obligated to keep regardless of how the Israelites behave. For example, He will forgive and admit to paradise only those who keep His covenant:
Allah took a mīthāq (solemn covenant) from the Children of Israel, and We delegated from among them twelve leaders. Allah said, “I am with you. If you establish prayer, give alms, believe in My messengers and support them, and loan Allah a goodly loan, I will surely remove from you your misdeeds and admit you to gardens beneath which rivers flow. But whoever of you disbelieves after that, he has certainly strayed from the plain path.”
The terms of the covenant that the Israelites have to comply with may be compiled from various verses. This is one verse:
When We took a mīthāq (solemn covenant) from the Children of Israel that, “Do not worship except Allah; do good to parents and to relatives, orphans, and the needy; speak to people good words; establish prayer; and pay alms.” Then you turned away except a few of you, shunning.
