Not For the Jews Alone

"But the Torah has also taught us not to conceive of this our destiny and of the lot which awaits us because of it and for the purpose of its fulfillment, in terms of isolated phenomena. Even as it has taught us to acquire the proper, thoughtful appreciation for nature through God, and for the place of man in nature, so it also demonstrates to us that the founding and the destiny of our people is most intimately linked with the course of the history of mankind as a whole, which is no less guided by God than is our own. It teaches us to recognize that the purpose of our founding and our introduction into the midst of the nations was that we might teach mankind, and reclaim mankind for, the knowledge and recognition of God, and of its own destiny and task as assigned it by Him. At the very beginning, Abraham was appointed to be "the spiritual father of the multitude of the nations." It was through him, and through the generations that would follow him, that blessings were to come "to all the families of the earth." At the time of His very first intervention in the course of the history of the nations in behalf of Israel, God referred to the latter not as His "only son" but rather as His "first-born" son. In the same spirit, God declared the aim of the miracles He had wrought for the deliverance of His people in Egypt to be "that His Name might be proclaimed throughout the earth" (Exod. 9: 16). And it is repeatedly stated that a reason for the preservation of Israel among the nations was that all the nations might be brought back to a purer knowledge of God (Num. 14:13 ff)."

R' Hirsch, intro to commentary on Tehillim