The Long Exile (Part 3)

The True Israel and the End of Exile

NT Use of the OT

To illustrate how the New Testament reuses Old Testament exile imagery, Matthew explicitly cites Hosea stating, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matt. 2:15, Hos. 11:1). In Hosea 11, the prophet recalls Israel’s exodus stating that when Israel was still young, God loved him and called them out of Egypt (Hos. 11:1). Beale points out that this chapter begins with the exodus and recounts Israel’s disobedience, but that the chapter ends stating that Israel will again come out of Egypt (Hos. 11:11).[1] As Beale argues, Hosea understands that God works in redemptive patterns and presents the exodus as a typological pattern pointing forward.[2]

Matthew 2 narrates Joseph’s flight into Egypt to escape Herod and the subsequent return after Herod’s death. Matthew cites Hosea 11:1 at the moment of departure into Egypt rather than at the return, a placement that has puzzled interpreters.[3] Yet when read against Hosea 11 as a whole, the logic becomes clear as it contains the entire pattern, the past exodus, reentry into Egypt, and final return. Beale notes that Matthew invokes the opening line because it encapsulates the entire typological movement.[4]

A further difficulty concerns the corporate language of Hosea. Hosea 11:1 refers to Israel as God’s son, whereas Matthew applies the text to an individual, Jesus. Beale addresses this objection by showing that Hosea himself moves between corporate and individual categories. Hosea frequently applies narratives about individual patriarchs to the nation as a whole.[5] Matthew reverses the movement: what was spoken corporately of Israel is applied to the individual Messiah.

Within Matthew’s narrative, Jesus is presented as true Israel. He descends into Egypt, returns, passes through the waters of baptism, enters the wilderness for forty days, and resists temptation. The national history is recapitulated in the Messiah. Yet where Israel failed, Jesus obeys. This typological fulfillment directly serves Matthew’s larger theological aim. The exile that followed Israel’s covenant infidelity finds its climax in the obedient Son. Thus, Matthew is not proof-texting Hosea, but is claiming that in Jesus, the pattern of exile and return has reached its fulfillment.

Application

Understanding that throughout the scriptures, exile is the product of sin against God and ends in death, the application of the gospel and return becomes clearer. This is because, against the backdrop of exile and death, the gospel can be understood as the good news that exiles have been restored. Jesus retraces the exile of His people and bears the curses of exile in His body (Gal. 3:13) that those under that curse may be brought back to God. In His resurrection, He inaugurates the return from exile and is, by virtue of His mediation, bringing many sons back to the glory of God that man lost in the garden (Heb, 2:10). However, although this restoration from exile has been inaugurated, it has not been consummated.

From Eden forward, exile has meant separation from the presence of God, and the movement of redemption history has consistently been described as drawing near. At Sinai, Israel was summoned to approach the mountain, though boundaries warned that access was restricted. In the tabernacle and temple, the people drew near again, yet always through priests and sacrifice, and never without mediation. Under the new covenant, believers draw near through Christ, by the Spirit, and through the proclaimed Word, yet they do so now by faith and not by sight. As John Calvin explains, believers already possess the hope of the glory of God through Word and sacrament, but these are revelations suited to pilgrims.[6] In them, the restored presence of God is truly given, though still mediated. Worship is therefore not an escape from exile but nourishment in the wilderness, training believers to desire what they will one day behold fully. The theme of exile, therefore, informs the church’s understanding of corporate worship. If believers live as pilgrims awaiting the consummation of redemption, the gathered worship of the church functions as a foretaste of restored communion with God. Within this framework, corporate worship can be understood as one of the primary means through which God sustains his people as they live between the inauguration of redemption and its final consummation.

Understanding exile also reshapes the perseverance of the New Covenant believers. Hebrews 11 commends those who were strangers and exiles on the earth and who sought a better country. It does so, not because their endurance was grounded in themselves or their own ability, but rather because they understood their state as pilgrims who were heading back to God’s dwelling. This, as the author of Hebrews argues, is this understanding of living in a land of exile, and the hope that is to come that grounds the believer’s engagement in the surety of complete restoration. Further, it is this full restoration that sustains believers as they continue and keeps them from gripping too tightly on the present and temporal, as they understand they are heading to the sure inheritance of eternal things. To live as a Christian is to live as one who knows that the present landscape is not ultimate and that the coming city, whose builder and maker is God, actually defines one’s reality.

The theme of exile also provides a theological framework for understanding the mission of the church. The prophets envisioned a restoration that would extend beyond Israel to the nations, gathering the scattered into one redeemed people (Isa. 49:6). For this reason, Christ commissions his disciples to participate in that global regathering (Matt. 28:18–20). If exile names humanity’s condition as estrangement from God, then the propagation of the gospel is not proselytizing; it is bringing people, as Peter states, out of the kingdom of darkness and into the light of God (1 Pet. 2:9).

Understanding exile also forms the compassion of those who are making their way home. If believers confess themselves to being sojourners and pilgrims, they cannot regard exile as someone else’s problem. The theme of exile and restoration trains the church to see in all people, and especially those who are the least of these, the reality of humanity’s estrangement from God. Hospitality to strangers, as the scriptures command, and as the fruit of the Spirit exemplifies, reflects the character of the God who hears the cry of the oppressed.

In all of this, exile functions to diagnose the human condition as alienation from the presence of God, magnifies the achievement of Christ as the one who bears the curse and opens the way home, defines the church as a pilgrim people sustained by promise, and directs hope toward the final restoration when the dwelling of God will again be fully with humanity and exile will be no more.

Conclusion

Tracing the theme of exile from Eden to the New Jerusalem reveals that it is not merely one theme among many within Scripture, but a central thread that runs through the unfolding history of redemption. By following the chronological progression of redemptive history—from Eden, through Israel’s historical exiles, to the work of Christ and the hope of new creation—this study has shown how exile functions as a framework for understanding both humanity’s alienation from God and the redemptive work that restores that relationship.

What began in the first pages of scripture, in Adam’s banishment from the garden and the presence of God, unfolds over and over through the pages of the Old Testament as the lead to the fullness of time when Christ is born in Bethlehem. Exile, then, is not just a displacement of people in various narratives; it is a structure that shows the state of humanity, even when it is seemingly given another chance. If exile is understood in this way, then Scripture’s storyline is seen as the progressive unveiling of God’s purpose to reverse that condition despite the failures of men.

The arrival of Christ then stands as the decisive turning point in the exile narrative. In Him, the presence of God returns personally, and in Him, Israel’s history is recapitulated and fulfilled. His obedient life succeeds where Adam and Israel utterly failed, and His death bears the covenant curse that exile required, and His resurrection marks the inauguration of true return.

In Christ, the drama of exile finds its center, yet the New Testament also makes clear that believers live within an already-and-not-yet. The church exists as a pilgrim people whose identity is shaped by accomplished redemption and future hope. Understanding exile in its full biblical scope, therefore, guards against reducing the gospel into something that promises prosperity, political prominence, or moral behavior. It also locates the problem of humanity in its estrangement from God, and something that can only be fixed by a return to Him. The gospel answers that estrangement by announcing that the curse has been borne and the way back into the presence of God has been opened. When the New Jerusalem descends, and the dwelling of God is fully with humanity, the long eastward movement will be undone, and the story that began with expulsion will conclude with welcome.

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[1] G. K. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Exegesis and Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 60.

[2] Ibid., 64.

[3] Ibid., 64.

[4] Ibid., 61.

[5] Ibid., 64.

[6] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948), 206.