God Traded Empires for Israel

The prophet Isaiah records one of the strangest transactions in the Hebrew Bible: God gave away empires.

"I gave Egypt as kofer for you, Ethiopia and Seba in your place" (Isaiah 43:3). Kofer — ransom. Payment. The price of redemption. The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, compiled in the 2nd century CE from the legal and theological traditions of Rabbi Ishmael's school, reads this verse as one of the most radical statements of divine love in all of Jewish literature. God did not simply free Israel from Egypt. God paid for Israel's freedom with Egypt itself. Three nations — Egypt, Ethiopia, Seba — were handed over to destruction so that Israel could walk out.

Why? The next verse answers: "Because you were honored in My eyes, you were honored and I loved you, and I placed a man in your place and nations in place of your souls" (Isaiah 43:4). Not strategy. Not covenant obligation. Love. God valued Israel's souls above the existence of empires, and the Mekhilta reads this as a cosmic love story embedded in the machinery of history — the plagues, the drowning of Pharaoh's army, the collapse of Egypt's power, all of it the price God was willing to pay.

But then a second text asks an uncomfortable question about the beloved in this love story. Was Israel even showing up?

The Beloved Who Would Not Call

Just two verses after Isaiah 43:3 comes one of the most cutting lines in the prophetic tradition: "But you did not call Me, Jacob, for you wearied of Me, Israel" (Isaiah 43:22).

Rabbi Yitzchak opens a teaching in Esther Rabbah — the great homiletical midrash on the Book of Esther, compiled in the Land of Israel no later than the early medieval period — with precisely this verse. His reading tears the verse open. God is not simply noting absence. God is naming a specific betrayal: Israel gave time and energy and voice to every other claimant in the world and did not give them to God.

Rabbi Yochanan connects the verse to Damascus, where 365 houses of idolatry stood — one for each day of the solar year. Worshippers visited each shrine on its appointed day, and on one grand annual occasion made the full circuit, bowing at all 365 in a single day. Israel, the midrash records with quiet horror, assembled them all and worshipped them collectively. The verse from Judges (10:6) lists the catalog: Ba'alim, Ashtarot, the gods of Aram, Sidon, Moab, Ammon, the Philistines. "They forsook the Lord, and they did not serve Him" — not even alongside the others. God was not demoted to one shrine among 365. God was not in the rotation at all.

What Is a Nation Worth?

Set these two texts alongside each other and a painful irony emerges. On one side: God, who valued Israel so highly that He handed over Egypt — a civilization, a superpower, a nation of millions — as the price of their ransom. On the other side: Israel, who could not be bothered to include God in the circuit of shrines they were visiting anyway.

Rabbi Levi captures the absurdity with a parable. A king's servant prepared a banquet for soldiers and invited every one of the king's legions — but not the king himself. The king's response was not fury. It was a kind of wounded minimalism: "If only you had treated me like all of my soldiers." Not first. Not honored. Just included. "If only My children had treated Me like the dessert that comes at the end," God says in the midrash. One last item on a long list. An afterthought. God was asking for less than He was worth and still not receiving it.

The Mekhilta's teaching on Isaiah 43:3-4 transforms the Exodus into proof of divine love measured in civilizations. The midrash on Isaiah 43:22 shows what Israel did with that love. The gap between those two readings of the same chapter of Isaiah is the gap between how much God was willing to pay and how little Israel was willing to offer in return.

Why the Name Jacob Appears Here

The verse does not say "you did not call Me, Israel." It says "you did not call Me, Jacob" — and the distinction matters to the midrash. Jacob is the birth name, the name of the man who wrestled and strived and bargained his way through life. Israel is the name given after the wrestling, the name that means he contended with God and prevailed. Both names address the same person. But Jacob is the name of the struggle, the human effort, the reaching — and it is under that name that the accusation falls.

The prophetic text then itemizes what Israel withheld: the daily burnt offerings (Isaiah 43:23), the portions burned on the altar, the handful of flour from the meal offering, the frankincense. These are not grand gestures. They are the daily maintenance of relationship — the small, recurring acts that say: I have not forgotten You, I am showing up, I am still here. Rabbi Huna notes, in the name of Rabbi Yosei, that cinnamon once grew wild in the Land of Israel and the animals grazed on it freely. Even nature's abundance was available for the service of God. Israel was not poor. They simply redirected everything they had.

The Baal Who Never Tired

The midrash closes with an observation that cuts deeper than any of the others. Regarding the prophets of Baal: "They called in the name of Baal from the morning until noon, saying: The Baal, answer us. But there was no voice, and none responded" (I Kings 18:26). Baal's worshippers called all day. They did not tire. They received nothing and kept calling.

Israel, by contrast, had a God who answered. Who had redeemed them. Who had paid with Egypt. And they could not sustain the attention long enough to finish a prayer without wearying. They sat and talked all day without fatigue, but when they stood to pray, they tired. They studied the day away without complaint, but when it came time to review the Oral Torah, they tired. The prophet Baal had devoted worshippers who received silence in return. The God of Israel had a beloved people who received redemption in return and could not be bothered to call.

"But you did not call Me, Jacob" — says God across Isaiah 43:22, across Esther Rabbah, across every midrash that read the Exodus as a love story and then looked at what happened next. The ransom was paid in full. The beloved simply forgot to call.