Paul in Romans 3.1 tells us that the Jewish people have been entrusted with the very words of God. When he says that he is telling us that they were responsible for preserving and passing on the Scriptures. I've long been in awe of those Jewish people who have taken that task very seriously. One way you can see the seriousness of that study and passing on tradition is when you go to a Synagogue. In most Christian Churches the center of the building, the place people want to take you and show the best area of the building is the sanctuary or worship area. However, if you go to a synagogue the pride of place belongs to the Library.
Already in the book of Daniel we see this commitment to the very words of God and passing on those words. In Daniel 8.9-10 we read, " 9 Out of one of them came another horn, which started small but grew in power to the south and to the east and toward the Beautiful Land. 10 It grew until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth and trampled on them." The stars represent the faithful people of God and the heavens make it clear that the attack on God’s people is in fact an attack on God. The fact that the stars are trampled on shows the great suffering of God’s people as they sought to be faithful to him. The suffering of the people is reflected in the book of 1 Maccabees. Many Jewish people when their faith was banned choose to live in caves and underground so they could keep teaching their children Torah. It was a time when people lost their lives in brutal ways for following God. Hebrews 11.35-38 seems to reflect this period in Jewish history, "35Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37They were stoned[f]; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground."
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On the other hand Israel had their brutal side as well as evidenced in this passage. Notice in particular verse 2.
Deuteronomy 7
A Chosen People
7:1 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. [1] You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
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