God Has Made A Promise To The Jewish People

Reflecting back to the Bible during the time of captivity, the spiritual condition of the people had mixed results. Many of them rebuked God and idolized other gods to help them restore their lives. The Israelites also fell into spiritual slothfulness and disobeyed the laws of marriage and their loyalty to God. However, some rejoiced, “The sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the impurity of the nations of the land to join them, to seek the Lord God of Israel, ate the Passover. And they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had caused them to rejoice, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel” (Ezra 6:21-22). Then many fell from God’s realm and didn’t trust what was in store for them so they did not want to leave the place they were once captive, so they became part of the community.

I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation. “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to

At the beginning of time, God created mankind, creatures made in his own image, with whom He could have relationship with. Unfortunately, the original humans, Adam and Eve, shattered this relationship by turning away from God and sinning, putting themselves before Him. All of the descendants of Adam and Eve, mankind itself, have and continue to suffer from the repercussions of this Original Sin. Ever since that time, thousands of years ago, God has been working through human history in order to repair His relationship with Humanity, redeeming them from the effects of sin. His plan of salvation began with a covenant He made with a nomad named Abraham, whose descendants became the nation of Israel. This covenant established the Lord's intentions to bring about redemption for humanity through the nation of Israel. Sadly though, the ancient Israelites time and again were unfaithful to their covenant with God, and would worship the false idols of the nations around them. Because of their sin of apostasy, the nation of Israel eventually split in two, and was then wiped out by foreign invaders, sending in the Hebrew people into exile. It was during this exile that the Prophets, men who would speak on behalf of God, began to predict the coming of the Messiah, an 'anointed one' of

When the Hebrew peoples lost everything and entered into captivity to Babylon, they were a lost and floundering nation. “After the days of Solomon, the history of Israel was a story of increasing apostasy and judgement” (Clowney, 2013, p. 185). Despite their breaking of the covenants, and sinning against God in the worst ways, God did not abandoned them. He was very unhappy, and sent many prophets to speak His words to try to bring them back into relationship with Him, then God sent judgements down upon them. However, through these judgements, He kept to His promise to Abraham to ultimately bless the nations of Israel. (Clowney, 2013, p. 193) When they were allowed by Cyrus to return to Jerusalem (Arnold & Beyer, 2008, p. 58), with permission

In His faithfulness, the Lord as Divine Judge will judge His covenant people Israel after they disregard their covenant obligations and then offer them deliverance once they demonstrate repentance.

After Solomon betrayed God and turned to worship other gods, God punished Israel as he had warned: “I will cut Israel off from the land that I have given them; and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight” (1 Kings 9:6). Jerusalem witnessed the division of the United Monarchy and the decline of Judah after God withdrew his blessings, and it finally fell to the Babylonians in 587 BC. Solomon’s Temple, the most sacred place in the nation where foreigners used to come and pray towards (1 Kings 8:41), became a heap of ruins. Jerusalem at this time is personified in the Book of Lamentations as a widow who “sinned grievously so she has become a mockery; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness” (Lamentations 1:8). This destroyed city’s gates were desolate, its king was on exile, and its people were captured by the foe. Jerusalem lost its prosperity (Lamentations 1:3-5). Being a kinetic space, Jerusalem has experienced vicissitudes, and even once lost its holiness as it fell away from

The people was destroying what Abraham was longing for. They was ruthless and didn't care were they came from.

early church.” 1 And though the Temple was rebuilt it never returned to the splendor of the first. It could not because Israel had lost the treasures of the Frist Temple that God had bestowed upon them, namely the Ark of the Covenant. Israel stayed a part of the Persian Empire for over two hundred years and during this time the people saw Gods hand moving in their history.

The book of Lamentations poetically describes the people of Judah's disillusionment after exile. "The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off

Exodus 19:5: Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.

In Jeremiah 25:8, God re-established a punishment of captivity or exile to the Jews, because the continued worshiping false gods, and failed to follow the Ten Commandments (King James Version). Likewise, God established exactly what would take place during their captivity, also, the end result of destroying their oppressors, so those faithful Jews could still follow Yahweh’s plan. Because, they continued to ignore the covenant established through Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon of worshiping Yahweh and no other gods, therefore a new covenant was established, in Jeremiah 31:15, for those few faithful Jews, of those original laws reside inside each person.

I conclude with this quote from Matthew Henry’s Commentary saying “They deserted the temple, and therefore God deserted it; they profaned it with their sins and laid it common, and therefore God profaned it with his judgments and laid it

The Lord reminds Moses that Israel has seen these awesome acts the Lord has done for them. The Lord has committed acts such as freeing the Israelites from their slavery and unjust treatment in Egypt, guiding them away from their captors towards safety and then sending them to the land the Lord that was sworn to their ancestors. The Lord reminds the Israelites that the covenant was first started with Abraham, an ancestor of the Israelites, and how Abraham and his family originally journeyed to Egypt with only seventy other people. However, thanks to the power of the Lord he has made Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in heaven. A promise that was included in the first covenant between Abraham and the

Idolatry is probably one of the most talked about problems throughout the whole history of Israel and Judah. From Moses and Arron with the golden calf right up until the Assyrian and Babylonian captivity we see the people of Israel and Judah repeatedly turn away from God to worship idols. Every time they turned away from Him, God would send a prophet to rebuke His people and to preach judgement if they did not repent.

Israel does not hold true to the four covenant relationships built with God. Consequently, Wright concludes that salvation was brought about to the nations through Jesus, due to the failures of upholding the covenants by the people of Israel.