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Bible prophecy explained:
Biblical prophecies fulfilled by Israel - part 1

Below is a selection of prophecies involving the exile, preservation and re-gathering of the people of Israel during and after the time of the Babylonian Empire.

1. God will never forget the children of Israel
Bible passage: Isaiah 49:13-17
Written: Between 701-681 BC
Fulfilled: Throughout history
   In Isaiah 49:13-17, the Lord makes it clear that even though the people of Israel are to be exiled from their land, the Lord will never forget them, and the Lord would eventually bring the exiles back to their homeland.

Isaiah lived about 2700 years ago. At about that time, the Assyrians invaded the northern part of the land of Israel and had scattered many of the people. More than a century later, the Babylonians conquered the southern part of the land of Israel, bringing an end to sovereignty, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple, and forcing people into exile.

With these events in mind, it can be easy to understand the sentiment of Verse 14: "The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me."

But Verses 15 and 16 remind us that the Lord will never forget the people of Israel. In fact, it says that even if a mother could forget her child, the Lord would not forget his children, for they are "engraved" on the palms of his hands. And, verses 17 and 18 show that the descendants of Israel would return, as they did after the fall of the Babylonian Empire.
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Isaiah 49:13-17
13 Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.

14 But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me."

15 "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!

16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.

17 Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you.

2. The people of Israel will never be completely destroyed
Bible passage: Leviticus 26:44
Written: As early as 1400 BC
Fulfilled: Throughout history, particularly during the 1940s
   In Leviticus 26:44, the Bible said that God would never allow the people of Israel to be completely destroyed.

During ancient times, 10 of the 12 Tribes of Israel were decimated by the Assyrians. And the Babylonians had persecuted what was left of the people of Israel.

Instead of assimilating or perishing, the people eventually were able to return to their homeland and recover their way of life.

The recovery was complete enough that Jerusalem again had been restored as the center of Jewish life. And the followers of Jesus were able to begin a process in Jerusalem by which Christianity eventually spread throughout the world.

Not only did the people of Israel survive the trampling of empires, but they were able to change the world in the process.
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Leviticus 26:44
Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God.

3. Isaiah said God would preserve the people of Israel
Bible passage: Isaiah 66:22
Written: Between 701-681 BC
Fulfilled: 1940s, 1930s, 135 AD, 721 BC, etc.
   Many writers have commented on the perseverance of the Jewish people, but few have done so as succinctly as Charles Krauthammer, a controversial, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist:

"This is the only country on earth that speaks the same language, worships the same God and inhabits the same land that it did 3,000 years ago." - Charles Krauthammer, writing a commentary that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on July 6, 1998.

Contrast the preservation of Israel with the fate of neighboring countries:

• Egypt, one of the world's most powerful and influential societies during ancient times, has lost many aspects of its ancient culture to antiquity. The Coptic language, for example, which is a direct descendant of the even more ancient language reflected in Egyptian hieroglyphic, is limited today as a liturgical language for Egyptian Christians. The official language of Egypt is now Arabic.

• Lebanon endured a similar fate as Egypt. While it, too, has retained its geographical identity since antiquity, much of what is present today in terms of language, culture and religion would be unrecognizable to someone who had lived there more than a few thousand years ago. Even so, Egypt and Lebanon actually have fared better than other countries in the midst of Israel.

• The Kingdom of Moab occupied a stretch of land east of the Dead Sea. Moabite sovereignty came to an end during ancient times and the land today is part of the country of Jordan, a nation that didn't exist until the 20th Century. The Moabite language, culture and religion have been washed out of the daily fabric of life, and the lore of their chief god, Chemosh, lives on only in fragmentary archaeological records.

• Perhaps Moab did better than Ammon, which also covered a land east of the Jordan River. So little is known about the Ammonites that even the boundaries of their kingdom, and the language that they spoke, are matters of speculation today.

• Similar fates have befallen other nations that existed near the land of Israel, including Edom, various Phoenician states and Philistine city-states, and the Kingdom of Aram-Damascus.
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Isaiah 66:22
"As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me," declares the Lord, "so will your name and descendants endure.

4. The people of Israel will never cease to be a nation of people
Bible passage: Jeremiah 31:35-36
Written: Sometime between 626-586 BC
Fulfilled: Today
   In Jeremiah 31:35-36, the Bible offers one of many prophecies about the preservation of the people of Israel. Here, we are told, as surely as God has decreed the sun to shine, he too has decreed that the people of Israel will never cease to be a nation of people.

Just as there are several prophets who foretold that Israel would survive the wrath of time and history, there too are several writers who took note of the survival. Here is one example from Pascal:

"This people are not eminent solely by their antiquity, but are also singular by their duration, which has always continued from their origin till now. For, whereas the nations of Greece and of Italy, of Lacedaemon, of Athens and of Rome, and others who came long after, have long since perished, these ever remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many powerful kings who have a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as it is easy to conjecture from the natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation has been foretold); and extending from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our histories which it preceded by a long time." - Pensees, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), as translated by W. F. Trotter.
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Jeremiah 31:35-36
35 This is what the LORD says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar-- the LORD Almighty is his name:

36 "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight," declares the LORD, "will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me."

5. The Jews would survive Babylonian rule and return home
Bible passage: Jeremiah 32:36-37
Written: Sometime between 626-586 BC
Fulfilled: 536 BC
   Jeremiah was one of the prophets who warned the people of Judah that they would be forced into exile by the Babylonians. In Jeremiah 32:36-37, he prophesies to the people that they will survive that their exile in Babylon and return home.

Babylon had defeated the Assyrians in a decisive battle, ending in 612 B.C., at Nineveh. And then, in 609 B.C., the Babylonians captured and killed the last Assyrian king. The Assyrians had an empire that had included the land of Judah but now the Babylonians had seized control of the empire.

In an effort to show the people of Judah that Babylon was now their new master, they began a process of forcing key residents into exile, as early as 605 B.C. More deportations took place in later years, culminating with the wholesale destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 B.C.

Jews began returning to their homeland after the Babylonian Empire was toppled in 539 B.C., by a coalition of Medes and Persians.
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Jeremiah 32:36-37
36 "You are saying about this city, 'By the sword, famine and plague it will be handed over to the king of Babylon'; but this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says:

37 I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety.

6. The people of Israel would return to "their own land"
Bible passage: Ezekiel 34:13
Written: Between 593-571 BC
Fulfilled: after May 14, 1948
   Like Jeremiah, the prophet Ezekiel also lived during the time that the Babylonians ruled over the people of Judah, and he himself was one of the Jews who were taken to Babylon as captives. In Ezekiel 34:13, he prophesied that God would gather the exiles from the various nations to which they had been scattered and that he would restore them to "their own land."
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Ezekiel 34:13
I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land.

7. Jeremiah said the Jews would buy back land
Bible passage: Jeremiah 32:44
Written: Sometime between 626-586 BC
Fulfilled: late 1800s, 1900s
   In Jeremiah 32, the prophet informs the people of Judah that it is God's will that they be forced into exile by the Babylonians, as punishment for turning away from God, and that fighting against the Babylonians would be useless.

Jeremiah also tells the people that the punishment would be temporary and that the people eventually would return and reclaim their lands within their homeland.

But the means of reclamation, as described in the 32nd chapter of the book of Jeremiah, involved the legal purchase of lands within the Jewish homeland. The means would be different than those used by Joshua when he and the Israelites conquered the land about 800 years earlier.

After the Babylonian Empire fell to a coalition of Medes and Persians, Jews began returning and reclaiming their land, without the use of military force.

Jeremiah's prophecy was fulfilled more than 2000 years ago.

Although beyond the scope of Jeremiah's prophecy, the Romans forced the Jews into exile again. And, in 1901, some of the descendants of the exiles formed the Jewish National Fund to buy land within the ancient land of Israel, in the hopes of re-establishing a Jewish homeland.

When the modern state of Israel was re-established in 1948, there was an estimated 650,000 Jews residing in 305 towns. Of those towns, 233 stood on JNF land, according www.jnf.org, a Web site for the Jewish National Fund.
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Jeremiah 32:44
42 "This is what the LORD says: As I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them.

43 Once more fields will be bought in this land of which you say, 'It is a desolate waste, without men or animals, for it has been handed over to the Babylonians.'

44 Fields will be bought for silver, and deeds will be signed, sealed and witnessed in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the towns of the hill country, of the western foothills and of the Negev, because I will restore their fortunes, declares the LORD."

8. Enemies would move into the land of Israel
Bible passage: Leviticus 26:32-33
Written: As early as 1400 BC
Fulfilled: Beginning in 721 BC
   In Leviticus 26:32-33, as well as in other prophecies of the Bible, we learn that the people of Israel would be persecuted in the nations to which they would be driven during their exile, and that the land of Israel would be in ruins.

Here, though, we also learn that enemies would reside in the land of Israel during and after the time of exile (Leviticus 26:32).

This fulfillment of this prophecy began about 2500 years ago when Jews began returning from their Babylonian exile.

As explained in the Bible's book of Nehemiah, the returning Jews were met with hostility from foreigners who were residing in and around Jerusalem. In the early chapters within the book of Nehemiah, the foreigners taunt the Jews as the Jews seek to rebuild Jerusalem, which had been destroyed earlier by the Babylonians.

Nehemiah confronts the foreigners, telling them that the Jews will be successful in rebuilding their fallen city:

I answered them by saying, "The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it." - Nehemiah 2:20 (NIV).

Nehemiah organized an effort to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem and the project was completed in 52 days, as explained in Nehemiah 6:15-16.

Whereas Leviticus 26:32-33 speaks of the punishment through exile and destruction, other verses within the 26th chapter of Leviticus speak of forgiveness and restoration. Nehemiah played an important role in the restoration of the land and people of Israel after the fall of the Babylonian Empire.
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Leviticus 26:32-33
32 I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled.

33 I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins.

Copyright ©1999-2008 George Konig
www.konig.org

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