The remnant of Israel
What exactly is the remnant of Israel, and how does a mere remnant recover from exile and become, once again, the people God promised Abraham?
The remnant
The Old Testament uses two words for “remnant.” One is “sheerith,” meaning rest or residue, from a root meaning to remain, to be left over. The other is “sarid,” meaning survivor, from a root meaning to escape.
The first occurrence of this idea comes in the story of Joseph, where he tells his brothers that his trials in Egypt are to preserve them as a remnant from a famine — quite literally a matter of life and death. That’s fitting, since both Hebrew words are strongly connected with a matter of life and death when it comes to people throughout the Old Testament.
The prophets return to this idea again and again when describing the Day of the Lord: The remnant of Israel is described as the survivors of Israel; Only the remnant will return from the exile; After getting the remnant from Israel, God will get His second reach to get His people from the nations; and God will start with a (small) remnant and increase in number.
But there’s a further thread worth pulling on: the remnant theme doesn’t stop with ethnic Israel. The Gentiles, too, will become part of Israel — which is exactly how Israel fulfills its original purpose of blessing all nations and bringing them back into relationship with God.
The Gentiles become part of Israel
The first example comes from Isaiah:
“He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendour.’ 4 But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due to me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.’ 5 And now the Lord says — he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honoured in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength — 6 he says: ‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’”
The servant here is called Israel, yet he cannot simply be Israel: he is the one who gathers Israel back to God, which puts him outside the group he’s gathering. Nor is it likely to be Isaiah himself, since Isaiah is part of sinful Israel and needs restoration as much as anyone else. The Servant, then, must be a single person who restores Israel from outside it — and everyone who identifies with Israel must, in turn, identify with him.
The next step in the argument is Psalm 87.
“He has founded his city on the holy mountain. 2 The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwellings of Jacob. 3 Glorious things are said of you, city of God: 4 ‘I will record Rahab (Egypt) and Babylon among those who acknowledge me — Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush — and will say, “This one was born in Zion.” ’ 5 Indeed, of Zion it will be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High himself will establish her.’ 6 The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: ‘This one was born in Zion.’”
Gentiles are considered to be born in Israel here. The register mentioned in verse 6 is an end-time act of registration that will include everyone who knows Him, exactly as described in verse 4.
Another passage from Isaiah goes even further, calling Egypt and Assyria “my people.”
“In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty. One of them will be called the City of the Sun. 19 In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the Lord at its border. 20 It will be a sign and witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a saviour and defender, and he will rescue them. 21 So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the Lord and keep them. 22 The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them. 23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. 24 In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. 25 The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.’”
Egypt and Assyria are mentioned alongside Israel, and they are bound together by the same language and the same covenant with God. That’s striking because “my people” is a term Isaiah otherwise reserves exclusively for Israel.
Another passage in Isaiah goes on to include the Gentiles in the temple service of Israel itself:
“Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.’ And let no eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree.’ 4 For this is what the Lord says: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant — 5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure for ever. 6 And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant — 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.’”
Eunuchs were excluded from temple service in the Old Testament, but here they are granted access to the temple. Foreigners, too, become servants of God, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices — and the Hebrew words used for this are reserved elsewhere for the service of the priests, which means the Gentiles are pictured as taking on the role of priests themselves.
Now we have a more complex passage that requires a deeper study. The central final chapter in Isaiah can be divided into three major parts:
- description of the end-time Israel,
- judgment of end-time Israel,
- inclusion of the Gentiles.
Now we will check the last part step by step
“‘And I, because of what they have planned and done, am about to come and gather the people of all nations and languages, and they will come and see my glory.”
This probably refers to an earlier passage in Isaiah where all nations come to Jerusalem.
“‘I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations — to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians (famous as archers), to Tubal and Greece, and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations.”
Who are these survivors? They are the faithful remnant in Israel after God’s judgment, sent out to the nations to bear witness to their coming restoration.
“And they will bring all your people, from all the nations, to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord — on horses, in chariots and wagons, and on mules and camels,’ says the Lord. ‘They will bring them, as the Israelites bring their grain offerings, to the temple of the Lord in ceremonially clean vessels.”
Once again, these are the believers in Israel bringing the offering — but who are the “brothers” they bring it from? They can’t be other Israelites, since the whole context here is about the Gentiles, and nowhere else do Israelites restore other Israelites except through the Servant of God himself. So these “brothers” must be the Gentiles who have come to the Lord, now described in the same terms as “sons of Israel who bring their grain offerings to the temple of the Lord.”
Paul most likely understood this phrase to mean that he was a servant to the Gentiles.
“And I will select some of them also to be priests and Levites,’ says the Lord.”
This, too, must refer to Gentiles, since the Israelites are already priests and Levites — and even in the end times, it wouldn’t make sense for Jews outside the tribe of Levi to suddenly become priests.
Zechariah offers another passage where the Gentiles are called “my people”:
“‘Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.”
Finally, a passage from Ezekiel describes how the Gentiles become, in effect, native-born Israelites:
“‘You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. 22 You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the foreigners residing among you and who have children. You are to consider them as native-born Israelites; along with you they are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. 23 In whatever tribe a foreigner resides, there you are to give them their inheritance,’ declares the Sovereign Lord.”
The foreigners here are considered fully part of Israel, included with the same rights as those born there. That pattern recurs throughout Israel’s history: Egyptians received the same rights as native Israelites; Rahab was included; and Ruth the Moabitess was not only included but became the ancestor of David and Jesus.
The Ezekiel passage describes non-Jews who married into Israel, and the fact that they received a share of the land is what marks them as genuinely part of Israel, since only Israelites can receive land.