Walk into any church or synagogue today and ask people why God created humanity. You’ll hear variations of the same answer: to worship God, follow His commandments, and earn our place in heaven. This seems reasonable enough. After all, what could be more important than securing eternal bliss in the presence of the Almighty?
The great 18th-century Jewish scholar Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto appears to validate this view. He writes that “man was created solely to delight in God and to derive pleasure in the radiance of the Divine presence.” He explains that while this ultimate pleasure awaits us in olam haba (the world to come), our task in this world is to earn our portion in that eternal realm.
Yet something doesn’t add up. If heaven represents the ultimate goal of human existence, why does the Hebrew Bible never explicitly mention it?
This glaring omission becomes even stranger in comparison to other ancient civilizations that were very focused on the afterlife. The Egyptians built pyramids to house their pharaohs for eternity, and the Greeks spoke of Elysium, the resting place for heroes and virtuous souls after death. Yet the Hebrew Bible, which reveals God’s will for humanity, remains conspicuously silent about our eternal destination.
Various explanations have been offered for this strange silence. Some argue that the Bible focuses exclusively on this world and therefore avoids discussing the next. Others suggest that most people cannot grasp what the world to come actually means, so the Bible omits concepts beyond human comprehension. The great medieval philosopher Maimonides adds that the Bible tells us what to do, not what rewards await us for compliance.
But these explanations miss something crucial. The Bible’s silence about heaven isn’t an oversight or a pedagogical choiceāit’s a deliberate rejection of a fundamentally flawed understanding of human purpose. Instead of promising individual escape to a better world, the Hebrew Bible consistently points toward the transformation of this imperfect world.
These aren’t descriptions of heavenāthey’re prophecies about earth’s ultimate destiny. Godās focus is on global redemption, not personal salvation.
The Sages understood this distinction clearly. They taught that “a person should never declare that he performs commandments and studies Scripture to merit a portion in the world to come. This is not the approach of the prophets or the wise.” Why not? Because turning religion into a transactionāeven a transaction with eternal stakesāfundamentally misunderstands what God wants from us.
Rabbi Luzzatto himself acknowledges this in the same work where he initially emphasizes a focus on heaven. His opening emphasis on the world to come is directed at religious beginners who need to reject materialism and choose a life dedicated to spiritual pursuits. But this represents only the first step in serving God. In chapter 19 of the very same book, he addresses more mature believers and completely reverses course: “He whose motivation in his divine service is to purify his soul before his Creator and receive reward in the world to come does not have the best of motives. As long as a person is motivated by his own benefit, his divine service is for his own self-interest.”
What, then, constitutes proper motivation? Rabbi Luzzatto explains that our true purpose is “to serve solely to raise and increase the honor of the Master.” The righteous person “longs for redemption because then the honor of God will be exalted. He prays always for the redemption of Israel, for it is impossible for the honor of God to be raised except through the redemption of Israel.”
This teaching completely changes our entire understanding of the Bible and what God wants from humanity. We weren’t created to escape this world for a better one. We were created to perfect this world and reveal God’s glory within it. The Hebrew Bible focuses relentlessly on this world because this worldānot some distant heavenāis where God’s purposes will ultimately be fulfilled.
Don’t misunderstand: heaven is real, and we certainly want to reach it (though I, for one, am not in a rush to get there!). But heaven is not the point.
The biblical prophets understood this mission clearly. They never tired of emphasizing this earthly mission, calling Israel to be “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6)ānot to accumulate merit for the afterlife but to illuminate God’s truth for all humanity.
This explains why the Bible never mentions heaven as our final destination. Heaven-focused religion inevitably becomes self-centered religion, even when dressed in pious language. It reduces the Creator of the universe to a cosmic vending machine: insert good deeds, receive eternal bliss. Such religion produces individuals who may be personally moral but remain fundamentally detached from God’s larger purposes for creation.
The Bible demands something far more demanding and magnificent. It calls us to become partners with God in the ongoing work of redemption. Every act of justice, every moment of kindness, every stand against evil contributes to the ultimate revelation of God’s glory on earth. This is why the Sages taught that “better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than the whole life of the world to come” (Avot 4:17).
The prophets never tired of emphasizing this earthly mission. They called Israel to be “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6), not to accumulate merit for the afterlife but to illuminate God’s truth for all humanity. They demanded justice for the oppressed, care for the widow and orphan, and righteousness in all dealingsānot as tickets to heaven but as expressions of God’s own character.
Modern believers who focus primarily on securing their place in heaven have missed the Bible’s central message. They’ve exchanged the grandeur of divine partnership for the smallness of personal salvation. They’ve traded the vision of a redeemed world for the comfort of individual security.
The Bible’s silence about heaven isn’t a deficiencyāit’s a declaration. God doesn’t want servants motivated by eternal reward. He wants partners committed to His glory and His purposes.
The Hebrew Bible never mentions heaven because heaven was never the point. The point is here, now, in this world that God created and declared good. The point is partnering with the Creator to make His glory known from sea to sea – nothing less than the complete transformation of human civilization according to the divine blueprint revealed in Scripture.
This is the Hebrew Bible’s revolutionary declaration: God doesn’t want to rescue us from this worldāHe commands us to redeem it.
