God Keeps Israel — Not Donald Trump

“He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:4)

Standing beside the Emir of Qatar at the G7 summit in Evian this week, with a memorandum on Iran days from signing and a rebuke for Jerusalem already on his lips, President Donald Trump said something that no friend of Israel should let pass without an answer. “Without the United States, there would be no Israel,” he declared. “Without me, there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did.”

Let me say plainly what I am not saying. I am not ungrateful. The United States has been, in our generation, the truest friend the Jewish state has had among the nations. I have spent my life teaching Christians to stand with Israel, and I have praised this president’s policies when they deserved praise — the embassy in Jerusalem, the pressure on Tehran, the refusal to flatter Israel’s enemies. Gratitude to a friend is a biblical duty, and Israel owes thanks to many friends.

But there is a word for what was said in Evian, and the word is not gratitude. It is a boast. And Scripture is not silent about the boasts of great men who imagine that the survival of God’s covenant people rests upon their own arm.

Begin with the verse above, and begin with the truth it carries: the Keeper does not sleep. The psalmist does not say that Israel is kept by treaties, by armies, by patrons, or by presidents. “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” The Keeper of Israel is the LORD, and He has never once closed His eyes over this people — not in Egypt, not in Babylon, not at the Red Sea, not at the gates of Auschwitz, and not in 2026.

Consider who has claimed Israel’s fate before. Pharaoh held Israel and lost her. Assyria swallowed the northern kingdom and is gone. Babylon burned the Temple and vanished. Persia, Greece, Rome — every empire that ever boasted of holding the Jewish people in its hand is dust, and the people they meant to erase are still here, still reading the same Scriptures, still praying toward the same Jerusalem. The nations rise and the nations fall. Israel remains, because her Keeper does not sleep.

A president who serves four years, or eight, cannot be the reason a nation has endured for four thousand. The arithmetic alone should give a humble man pause.

Consider, too, that the instrument is not the hand. The Bible does not deny that God uses powerful gentile rulers to accomplish His purposes for Israel; it insists upon it. But it draws a line that the proud cannot see, and it is exactly the line Mr. Trump crossed.

When the LORD used Assyria to discipline His people, He called that empire “the rod of mine anger” (Isaiah 10:5) — an instrument in His hand. And what was Assyria’s sin? Not that it acted, but that it boasted: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent” (Isaiah 10:13). To which the prophet answered with one of the most withering questions in all of Scripture: “Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it?” (Isaiah 10:15). The axe does not keep the woodsman. The woodsman wields the axe.

Or take the kinder example. God raised up Cyrus of Persia to send the exiles home, and He called him “his anointed” (Isaiah 45:1) — and yet, in the same breath, “I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me” (Isaiah 45:4). The instrument did not even know the God who was using him for Israel’s sake. Cyrus got a kingdom. He did not get the glory. “I am the LORD: and my glory will I not give to another” (Isaiah 42:8).

If the President wishes to be a Cyrus — a gentile ruler who serves God’s purposes for the Jewish people — let him. It is an honorable thing. But Cyrus did not stand before the nations and say, without me there would be no Israel. The moment the instrument claims to be the hand, it has reached for a glory that belongs to God alone.

The covenant, after all, is older than any presidency. Why will Israel not perish? Not because of American goodwill, which can change with an election, and which — let us be honest about Evian — was on full display this week as the same president scolded Jerusalem over Lebanon. Israel will not perish because of a promise that no ballot can revoke.

“Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night… If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever” (Jeremiah 31:35–36). The sun still rises. The covenant still stands. And the blessing flows in one direction only: “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3). Nations are measured by how they treat Israel. Israel is not measured by how the nations treat her.

Let me end with a warning, offered in friendship, because Scripture is also a record of what happens to rulers who forget these things. Nebuchadnezzar walked the roof of his palace and said, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built… by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). The words were not yet out of his mouth before heaven humbled him to the grass of the field, until he learned “that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men” (Daniel 4:17). Moses warned Israel of the same temptation in their own hearts: do not say “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17).

Mr. President, Israel thanks her friends. She will thank you when you are right. But she does not owe her existence to you, and no honest believer — Jew or Christian — can let that claim stand. The God of Israel kept this people for thousands of years before you took your oath, and He will keep them long after you have left office.

He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. He was never going to.