The Torah turns the soil, removing rock, weeds and hardened ground. Where the field to be cultivated is 'all Adam', the good heart of the soil first cultivated is 'all Israel', including an extract from every nation.
The picture is here of the corporate Humanity, 'all Adam', the structural design of Humanity that God built into Humanity, being the "field" that He desires to regenerate with the seed sown, the word of God. In other words, we are looking at God's desire to regenerate the very structure of Humanity, its corporate nature.
Individual conversion and regeneration is not enough. Accumulated individul conversion is not enough. There must be a conversion of WHAT we are in common not just of WHO we are individually, even if added together. How does this corporate salvation and regeneration of Humanity occur?
The Western mind is not accustomed to thinking that the word of God could be addressed to a whole people, not just to a aggregate of individuals. But this precisely is the truth. While the word of God is also addressed to human beings as individuals, it is first addressed to human beings as indivisible members of one corporate entity.
But isn't it the individual who hears, the individual with an individual will and individual responsibility? Just as the first parents of Humanity were not only individuals but also together one corporate head and had to listen to the word of God as such, so every person is first a member of the greater adamic whole, and only as such is an individual at all!
We are inclined to think of the individual person as the soul, so that we think of the individual person as the primary entity. But just as there has never been a human being without a personal body, so that salvation cannot be complete without the resurrection of the body, so there has never been a human being without a family body. The man was not created alone. The woman was not created alone. No one was created alone or separately. Yet we mistakenly continue to define the true essential human being as being the individual.
In fact, the Torah, the word of God, was declared from Heaven to Israel as one, a corporate whole. The primary responsibility of those who heard the commandments on Mount Sinai and then the whole Torah was a corporate responsibility and only then in a way derived from this was it an individual responsibility. So it is with the Good News of Israel. It is first a seed sown in the soil, the heart, the life of the nation as a corporate entity and only then in the life of the individual in a way that is derived from this.
What then of the nations and 'all Adam'? Israel is "the little finger" of Adam. The corporate body of Adam died but "a little finger" of the corporate body was selected to be redeemed and given new life. The corporate body of Adam is organic in nature. One corporate part of it, even "a little finger", can be preserved through a resurrected life and this result in the redemption of the corporate body itself. Look at one example:
God said to Moses that He could destroy the body of Israel as it existed at the time in the wilderness and build up Israel again out of Moses' own offspring alone. After listening to Moses prayer and pleading for Israel, his argument being to the effect that the nations would say that God was unable to bring Israel out of Egypt and keep them alive, God granted to Moses his request and did not do this. However, in principle, this is exactly what God did do with Abraham in relation to Adam. The Good News is that God corporately redeemed Adam in corporately redeeming Torah defined Israel. He did this temporally by way of promise in Egypt and at Mount Sinai and eternally by way of the fulfillment of that promise through Mashiach.
As much, therefore, as the word bears fruit in Israel that fruit multiplies the seed in all the world among all the nations, where, being heard and obeyed, it incorporates all things into the redemption of "Adam's little finger."
