Professor Paul S. L. Johnson

On Israel's ʻFishers and Huntersʼ (1919)

Paul S. L. Johnson, The Present Truth and Herald of Christ's Epiphany, July 1, 1919, p. 131.

ʻJeremiah 16: 16 has for some time been fulfilling before our eyes.

The fishers of this text seem to be the Lord's people whose comforting activities (Isa. 40: 1, 2), preceding 1914, offered Israel the bait of Biblical Zionism to induce them to return to Palestine.

Such activities reached a climax in 1910 and 1911.

As the hunter, without offering any desirable inducement, drives and injures his prey, so we understand the hunters of this text to be those who by violence have since 1914 been driving the Jews from their homes, especially among the Slavs.

The contending armies certainly drove out the Jews from before them. Wholesale massacres of the Jews were frequent during the war.

Even now pogroms seem to be of frequent occurrence in Russia, Poland, Galicia, Ukrania and Rumania.

The Hebrews claim that since their dispersion they have not suffered such calamities as those of the last five years.

Their worldwide cries are voicing themselves in publications, assemblies, delegations to the Peace Conference and in processions of mourners, 30,000 of whom, consisting of persons of both sexes, recently paraded with fitting banners and mournful features and attire here in Philadelphia.

Representative Jews have succeeded in enlisting the “Big Four” at the Peace Conference on their behalf.

These are requiring religious, political, social and industrial freedom for minorities in the midst of the new and smaller nations of central and south central Europe. Of course, these minorities are mainly the Jews. In the meantime great numbers of Jews are wending their way to Palestine. God prosper these returning and mourning exiles, and grant them a happy home in the Holy Land! And He will! . . .ʼ

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