Deuteronomy 28:58

"If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, JEHOVAH THY GOD; then Jehovah will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance. And he will bring upon thee again all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee. Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will Jehovah bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed. And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou didst not hearken unto the voice of Jehovah thy God. And it shall come to pass, that, as Jehovah rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you, so Jehovah will rejoice over you to cause you to perish, and to destroy you; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest in to possess it. And Jehovah will scatter thee among all peoples, from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, even wood and stone. And among these nations thou shalt find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot: but Jehovah will give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul; and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shall have no assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say, Would it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would it were morning! for the fear of thy heart which thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. And Jehovah will bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I said unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall sell yourselves unto your enemies for bondmen and for bondwomen, and no man shall buy you."

Here the removal of Israel from the Promised Land is stated as one of the penalties of their repudiation of God's covenant, and, of course, that happened. Yes, following the Babylonian captivity, some of the Jews returned to Palestine, but the status of Israel (the old Israel) was not the same. Whereas they were at one time in covenant relationship with God, even having been allowed a king of their own, and being, in fact, God's wife, as symbolized in the prophecy of Hosea; they returned to the Holy Land, not as God's wife, but as his slave (a status they occupied until the Messiah was born). As God's property until the promise to the patriarchs was fulfilled, they were, of course, protected against annihilation by God's providence, but they remained "without king, without prince, without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim" (Hosea 3:4), and in that new and humble status Israel "sat still for God many days" (Hosea 3:3).

Many current scholars think that the restoration of a secular nation called "Israel," in the days of President Truman, is in some manner a sign that God has received Israel back as "his wife," and restored her to her ancient place as "the chosen nation," but an apostle declared that Christians are now "the people of God" (1 Peter 2:10). Christ himself declared that only those "who believe in Christ" are in any sense whatever "sons of Abraham" (John 8). Therefore, the pretension of modern Israel to any Divine sanctions for their usurpation of the ancient land of Canaan, even though they had the help of the U.S.A. and the United Nations, is without any Divine sanction whatever! The true Israel of God today is NOT an ancient racial element going back to Abraham, but it is the community of believers in Jesus Christ, in which all people, including Jews are welcomed to participate. This viewpoint fully harmonizes with what God declared through the apostle Paul, namely, that, "God has put no distinction between them and us" (Romans 10:12).

A discerning paragraph from Kline on this subject is the following:

"Prophetically following the besieged and conquered Israelites into their exile (Deuteronomy 28:64-67), Moses catches with a few strokes all the pathos of unbelieving, homeless Israel down through the long centuries - once the people of God, but become in their exile like the heathen, without Christ, having no hope, and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). By repudiating their election and covenant calling, in virtue of which they had been delivered from Egyptian bondage to become God's theocratic sons, the people of Israel were doomed to fall back into a worse Egyptian bondage (Deuteronomy 28:68), into bondage to Satan, and sin, and death, and Hell."[23]

Without at all disagreeing with the spiritual "slavery" in the Egypt of "sin," as indicated in the latter part of Kline's paragraph, above, we should also note that there was a literal return of a great many Jews to the literal Egypt, and that they were transported on ships. "After the capture of Jerusalem, the Roman general Titus sent a great many captives to the Egyptian mines."[24] Adam Clarke tells us that the Jews thus transported were "those above seventeen years of age."[25] Clarke also noted that "the eagle" (Deuteronomy 28:49) was universally identified with the Romans, an image of an eagle being atop all of the standards of all their legions. That, and the mention of an Egyptian slavery accomplished by the transportation "in ships" of many of the Jews to work in the mines of Egypt makes this passage an incontrovertible example of predictive prophecy. Have the critics ever come up with a reasonable means of denying this? No! Over fourteen centuries before it happened, Moses told exactly what would happen. Even the vain efforts attempting to move the authorship of Deuteronomy to a group of incompetent and rebellious priests in whatever century does nothing to aid their cause here! How did they know, in the seventh century, or at any other time, exactly how God would punish Israel?

Cook referred to this passage as the climax:

"Just as the exodus from Egypt was, as it were, the birth of the nation into its covenant relationship with God, so the return to the house of bondage is in like manner the death of it. The mode of conveyance is added to heighten the contrast. They crossed the sea from Egypt with a high hand, the waves of the sea itself being parted before them; but they would go back again cooped up on slave-ships!"[26]

The utter contempt in which the Romans would hold the Jews is here prophesied exactly. "They would be offered for sale, and no one would buy them, and therefore they were transported to work the mines of Egypt."[27]

In our studies we are deeply impressed with how little the critical scholars have to say about this chapter, but we do not blame them at all!