Exile and Return

Exile is the covenant curse for unfaithfulness. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 spell it out in detail: if Israel breaks the covenant and refuses to return, Yahweh will scatter them among the nations. The Babylonian exile of 586 BC is not a geopolitical accident or a military failure. It is Yahweh keeping his covenant word. The exile that Israel had been warned about for centuries finally came, because Israel had done precisely what they had been warned not to do.

But Yahweh’s word does not end with exile. The same passages that describe the exile also promise return. Yahweh will remember his covenant. He will circumcise the heart. He will gather his people from every nation to which he has scattered them and bring them back to the land. The prophets of the exile, particularly Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah 40-55, sustain hope not through any human prospect of return but through the character of the God who judges and then restores.

The New Testament reads the exile as a pattern for the condition of all mankind apart from God: scattered, estranged, far from home. The return from exile points forward to the greater gathering: all whom Christ has redeemed, drawn from every nation, brought into the presence of God. The articles below trace this theme through several key passages.