The book of Chronicles, the final book of the Hebrew Bible, rarely gets much attention from Jews or Christians, especially when it comes to the genealogies that make up the opening chapters. But, subjecting these chapters to careful and inventive reading, Peter Leithart detects a surprising message:

[T]he fact that Chronicles begins with [the word] adam, [literally “man”], the name of the first human being, is a hint that large issues are afoot. Whatever Chronicles is about, it’s something as fundamental as Adam.

Structure gives a clue. Commentators have noted that the genealogies are arranged by the mirror-image literary device known as “chiasm.” . . . The unique central section of a chiastic text is frequently the key to the whole, and at the center of the Chronicler’s genealogy is Levi, the priestly tribe of Israel. A history that begins with Adam hinges on clans of priests within the priestly people. God fathered Adam so that Adam could father generations of palace servants. (Along similar lines, the entire genealogy ends with a description of the duties of Levitical gatekeepers.)

We can be more specific. The genealogies of Chronicles center on a particular set of Levites, the singers and musicians. . . . So we can gloss the earlier suggestion: God created Adam so that he could produce singers. God made man so that man could make music. . . . .

That doesn’t seem right. Surely, we are made for something more than music. In Scripture, though, music encapsulates the vocation of human beings. We are made to be singers because we are made to be priests, kings, and prophets. . . .

To say God made Adam to make musicians is to say that God made Adam to produce priestly singers, royal musicians, and prophetic chanters mad with the divine spirit. God made us to make music, and to be made by the music we make.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.