Tags

Archives

(older) VMware Enter Key 

The Gentiles


This post was published on Wednesday 20 August 2008.

In Jeremiah, there’s a lot of judgement, of Israel and the surrounding nations.   The final few chapters basically comprise a long series of judgements on the surrounding nations.

So I was surprised when I noticed that God promises to restore some of them.   For example, in 49.6 God says, ‘But afterwards I will restore the fortunes of the Ammonites.’   And in 49.39 he says, ‘I will restore the fortunes of Elam.’   And so on.

While the language of judgement is common to all nations (not just Israel), normally the language of restoration is reserved only for Israel.   They are God’s chosen people; the surrounding nations are not.   Therefore, although they are judged, they are never completely destroyed.

So what is going on here?

I wonder if we have here a prefiguring of the mission to the Gentiles that comes in the New Testament.   The fact that God doesn’t simply punish, but also restores the Gentile nations suggests that his salvation is not limited to (although he may primarily be for) Israel.

Of course, the verses only have this significance once the mission to the Gentiles is made explicit.   But they are maybe one of the reasons why the early disciples accepted Peter’s vision and Paul’s mission.   For I hope that they used the Scriptures to test the words of prophecy and visions, as Paul tells us to do.   If they did, they would have found verses like these (and of course many others, even more explicit) to support the visions.