18 New Testament Misconceptions No. 17

#17: His Blood Be on Us and Our Children

Perhaps the most famous “anti-Semitic” line in the entire “NT” is Matthew 27:25 where “all the crowd” is said to have invoked an eternal curse upon all the Jewish people. But let’s remember that Matthew himself was also called Levi and Matthew is certainly not pronouncing a curse upon himself and his own people.

In the response to the obvious facts, some bigots suggest that the religious elite were the ones who set the curse, and then, by extension the curse flows over all Jews. Those who are hell-bent on hating Jews will always find reason to hate; they obviously know not Y’shua or the Word of YHWH. Nevertheless, some Pharisees did in fact pronounce a curse upon themselves and their descendants, yet very few realize how this works. Yochanan 11:48-53 makes it quite obvious that the religious elite feared for the entire destruction of Israel at the hands of the Romans, and not just their own personal loss of power. In addition, they were trying to deal with two Scriptural possibilities.

Since Y’shua was performing miracles, they knew it was very possible that he could be the Mashiyach. However, if so, Mashiyach’s main purpose was to die for Israel, to be a substitutionary sacrifice for the nation (Isaiah 53:1-12). That is perhaps why Caiphas even says Y’shua would die, either way. If Y’shua was the Mashiyach, he was supposed to do this. If he wasn’t, according to their human reasoning, his death might still prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of others should Rome decide to destroy Israel, which it turns out, they in fact did, anyway. Even Y’shua predicted this, so he and Caiphas actually agreed on this same point.

However, if they killed and innocent man in order to save the nation (better that one should die than the rest perish), Caiphas still believed Israel would benefit. The reason is, if they made this horrible mistake, the worst that could happen is that their sin would be carried to the fourth generation (Exodus 20:5, 34:7, Numbers 14:18, Deuteronomy 5:9), but Israel proper would survive. If they did not act, however, then the fear was, justifiable or not, that there would be no Israel ever again, for hundreds of generations. In other words, no matter what, Y’shua had to die, which was exactly his mission in his own words, anyway. It may seem self-serving that Paul would speak so highly of his own race but he clearly taught that Jews “… are beloved for the fathers’ sake” (Romans 11:28).