Page 25 - Advanced Biblical Backgrounds Revised

that because of the sin of the people of God, there will be an exile. The people will be delivered by God,
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who will establish His kingdom in Jerusalem and reign on the throne of David.

This view of the exile and the saving work of God is picked up by the predominantly Jewish early church.
Notice that in Hebrews, the Christians are told not to go back and perish with the Jews but to come out
from among them into the wilderness and seek the city that was to come. God was going to establish
the New Jerusalem. If they were faithful, they would receive the promise.

Revelation also takes up the language of the exodus concept. There is great oppression on earth as the
whore of Babylon and the dragon persecute God’s people. God supernaturally defends His people. He
destroys the evil empire, judges it for its wickedness, and establishes His kingdom where He will reign
from Jerusalem. Then God beings down the new heavens and the new earth. In them is a New
Jerusalem.

Jesus’ own work can be seen as a second exodus. Through His blood, He conquered sin and death to set
the captives free. He is taking them to a new land He promises. One in which He will reign on the throne
of David forever. This is why Jesus and later John use the terminology of passing from death to life (John
5:24 and 1 John 3:14).

Jeremiah’s Prophecy
Of the later prophets, Jeremiah had the most to do with Egypt. Late in his life, he was taken by force to
Egypt, where he apparently lived out the rest of his life (see Jer. 43:5–7). Earlier in his ministry, Jeremiah
had insisted that the kingdom of Judah should bow to the yoke of Babylonia and not align itself with
Egypt. This anti-Egypt, pro-Babylonia position did not find adherents among the leaders of Judah. The
results, of course, were disastrous for Jerusalem and the
surrounding country.

11. The famous monument of Pharaoh Merneptah (ca. 1224–
1216 B.C.), son of Ramses II. It is often called the “Israel stele”
because the next-to-bottom line of its inscription contains the
only mention of the name Israel in all ancient Egyptian writing
thus far discovered: “Israel is desolate, her seed is not.”

When Jeremiah was forcibly kidnapped to Egypt by Jews who had
assassinated Nebuchadnezzar’s governor, Gedaliah, it appeared that
Egypt would again be a place of safety. But Jeremiah made it clear to
his Jewish captors that it would not be so. In chapter 44, he
addressed all Jews living in Egypt, prophesying that, rather than a
shelter from troubles, Egypt would be for them a place of
punishment. The Jews in Egypt would be so thoroughly destroyed,
he said, that only a “small number” would return to the land of
Judah (Jer. 44:28). Finally, Jeremiah prophesied, the scourge of the
sword would be so great that the pharaoh himself would fall to it

46 R. Michael Fox. Ed. Reverberations of the Exodus in Scripture. United States: Pickwick Publications, 2014.

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