The ballot you are not holding

One · What happened

Long lines at the polls in Israel

The Central Elections Committee of Israel released turnout figures through the morning, and Israel National News and NBC News carried them. By ten o’clock local time, sixteen point seven percent of eligible voters had cast a ballot, against fifteen point nine percent at the same hour in 2022. By noon it was thirty-one point five percent, against twenty-eight point four in 2022. Justice Noam Sohlberg, the committee’s chairman, said, “We are receiving reports of long lines at polling stations.” The committee added that anyone already in line when the stations closed at ten at night would still be allowed to cast a ballot.

“Vote correctly,” Netanyahu said after he cast his ballot. NBC News reported that the vote was widely seen as a referendum on his decades in power. The war with Iran and the Gaza campaign were among the questions on voters’ minds, the network said. Netanyahu leads the Likud party and wanted to stay prime minister. His strongest rival, Gadi Eisenkot, is a former army chief of staff who leads a bloc called Yashar. Eisenkot said he was convinced the night would end “with change and a new spirit for the State of Israel.”

According to Israel National News, most polling stations were due to close at ten o’clock that night, when the exit polls would be released. NBC noted that no party has ever won a majority of the Knesset’s seats, so a clear winner was unlikely when the polls closed and coalition talks were expected to take weeks. Who ought to govern Israel is a matter for the Israelis holding the ballots. A reader abroad has a smaller matter in hand, the hours he spends watching.

Two · What it is doing

The stranger a reader hopes for

The Times of Israel and NBC News both kept live blogs running through election day. Each gave a reader on the other side of the world a page to refresh from the first turnout figure onward. A reader in Houston or Manila, who cannot vote in Israel and pays no tax there, can still attach his hope to one candidate before noon and his dread to the other. NBC reported that Likud and Eisenkot were neck and neck before the voting began. A reader on either side had good reason to feel that the day was close.

Supporters of both men stood in line on Tuesday, and the committee’s report of long waits named neither camp. A reader far away keeps a picture of the other camp’s voter. Often it is the loudest person in some clip he watched on his phone. Contempt for that picture comes easy. Nobody asks the man who holds it to look the voter in the eye. NBC cited an estimate from Channel 12 that over half a million Israelis were voting for the first time, each of them somebody’s child in a line.

The exit polls were due at ten o’clock that night in Israel, four o’clock Eastern time. The first numbers land in the stomach of a reader who has picked a candidate within a second, as relief or as dread. A reader whose side leads may find himself enjoying the other side’s loss. One whose side trails may find himself writing off a whole nation’s voters in a single post. Midterm elections in the United States fall on 3 November. The habit practiced on a foreign count can carry over into them.

Three · Where the ground is

What Psalm 146 says about princes

“Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Psalm 146:3–4). The psalm turns from praise to the powerful within three verses. Nothing in it mentions an election. A citizen can stand in the voting line on Tuesday and still keep his hope off the man he marks on the ballot and drops in the box with his own hand. The psalm names the better place for it in the next verse, “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God” (Psalm 146:5).

What Daniel said about kings

Daniel was a captive in Babylon when the Lord showed him King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in the night. Daniel blessed the God of heaven and said that God “changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21). The verse names no successor and gives no reason for any of the removals. Solomon’s proverbs add that “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).

What Paul asked for rulers

Paul wrote to Timothy while Rome ruled the world he knew. He asked that prayers be made for all people, “for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:1–2). The instruction carries no clause about the ruler earning the prayer. A man who has prayed for a prime minister by name finds it harder to cheer when the prime minister falls. The proverbs put a limit on that cheering, “he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 17:5).

What Jesus told Pilate

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus told Pilate, who had asked him if he was a king (John 18:36). Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, handed that prisoner over to be crucified, and on the cross Jesus bore the sins of others before God raised him. The kingdom he named is not run by ballots or coalitions. His church gathers each week in small towns and large cities that will have no say in any count. John, writing from the island of Patmos, calls Jesus “the ruler of kings on earth” (Revelation 1:5).

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

The first two belong to the hours before the exit polls, and the rest can fill the days that follow.

1. 01

   Close the results tab until supper.

   Choose the hour the exit polls come out, four o’clock Eastern, and shut the live blog or mute its alerts before it arrives. Open Psalm 146 and read verses 3–5 straight through, then leave the phone in another room until the evening meal. The numbers will be reported at the same speed after you have eaten.

2. 02

   Pray for Netanyahu and Eisenkot by name.

   Write both names on one card and keep it by your Bible. Every evening this week, pray the words of 1 Timothy 2:1–2 over each name. Ask the LORD to give whoever forms the government wisdom, and ask him to keep the Israelis who stood in the lines safe. The verse lists kings and all who are in high positions with no party attached. The man you were hoping against belongs on the card.

3. 03

   Ask the relative in the other party how he is.

   Choose the brother-in-law or the coworker who will vote differently from you in the United States on 3 November and ring him this week. Ask about his work or his children, and say nothing about the election unless he brings it up. If he does, ask him a question before you answer. Romans 12:18 leaves the effort with you, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).

4. 04

   Take a supper to a neighbor who eats alone.

   Make a double batch of supper this week and carry half to a neighbor who lives alone, perhaps a widow from the congregation. Stay twenty minutes and ask about the family. Peter told scattered believers, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9).

5. 05

   Find out whether anyone in your church has people in Israel.

   Ask at the church office, in person or by phone, if a member has family or friends living in Israel, Jewish or Arab. Write the name on your prayer list and send a short note to say you are praying. Many families there have been grieving since 7 October 2023. The psalmist told Israel’s pilgrims, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!” (Psalm 122:6).