The Restoration Of Israel When?

A fascinating and little-understood prophecy is given in Isaiah 11:11-12: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people…And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” Note that the two houses, Israel and Judah, would both be gathered together at the same time, not one before the other: “…the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together…” (Jer. 3:18)

The Lord would recover, redeem, or restore (Heb., qanah, Strong’s H7069) His people “the second time.” What were these two promised restorations of Israel? Was the first fulfillment the Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land? Was the second the return of a portion of Judah from Babylon in 538 B.C.? Or, as many suggest, was the second a latter-day return of Israel and Judah together? Biblical commentaries do not agree on the fulfillment of this prophecy.

For example, respected evangelical scholar, John Trapp (1601-1669), understood that the two fulfillments were the Exodus and later Babylonian return. He did not agree with a Church Age Jewish return. He wrote: “The Lord shall set his hand again the second time. Not to bring them back to the promised land, to Palestine, as once he did out of Egypt; that is but a rabbinical dream, not unlike that other – viz., that all Jews, in what country soever they are buried, do travel through certain underground passages till they come to their own country of Jewry.”

Reformation scholar, Matthew Poole (d. 1679), believed that the first restoring was the Exodus, and the second either the Babylonian return or, more probably, a gathering to the Messiah at His return. He wrote, “The first time, to which this word ‘second’ relates, seems to be, either, (1) The deliverance out of Egypt, as most both Jewish and Christian interpreters understand it; and then this second deliverance must be that out of Babylon. Or, (2) The deliverance out of Egypt; and then this second deliverance must be in the days of the Messiah; which, with submission to better judgments, seems to me more probable.”

Poole then explained that the reason why the second return was not from Babylon but in the Messianic era, was because the Babylonian return included only Judah, not the ten tribes who did not return! He understood the clear Scriptural truth that the two houses were to return together. Poole stated, “this second deliverance was [to be] universal, extending to the generality of the outcasts and dispersed ones, both of Israel, the ten tribes, and of Judah, the two tribes, as is evident from Isaiah 11:12-13; whereas that out of Babylon reached only to the two tribes, and to some few of the ten tribes which were mixed with them, as is acknowledged, both by Jews and Christians.” The Babylonian return was only limited and incomplete, consisting of only a small number of Judah (Ezra 2:64) which nearly entirely left out ten of the twelve tribes! We therefore witness that neither of these two respected scholars, Trapp and Poole, believed in a pre-messianic return of unredeemed Jews as occurred in 1948.

Interestingly, leading Dispensational-Futurist scholar Arno C. Gaebelin (1861-1945) also agreed that the Babylonian return did not constitute a general Israelite return. He wrote, “Israel’s regathering will be from a worldwide dispersion. It will be ‘the second time.’ It does not and cannot mean the return from Babylon, but the return from their present exile of almost 2,000 years.”
British-Israel author J. Llewellyn Thomas (1879-1930) wrote a book on this subject, “The Restoration of Israel” (1922) in which he suggested that the Exodus was not the first restoration because Israel went down to Egypt an Abrahamic family and only became an actual nation at the time of the Exodus. Therefore, he believed that the post-exodus entry into the Promised Land did not constitute a restoring of the “nation.” He considered Israel’s exile to Europe and the Isles as the first, and the prophesied united return of redeemed Israel and Judah (Jer. 3:14-15) to be the second. Thomas stated, “The First or Preliminary Restoration is that of Israel apart from Judah (the Jews) into some land, which is not Palestine, into which they are to come after their great dispersion and wanderings from sea to sea.” In contrast, Scripture affirms there were more than one Assyrian exiles which actually did include both the House of Israel in 721 B.C. (2 Ki. 17:6) and “all the fenced cities of Judah” in 701 B.C. (2 Ki. 18:13) except Jerusalem. Therefore, “the outcasts of Israel, and…the dispersed of Judah” were both included. Thomas continued, “The Second or Final Restoration is that of Israel of the Ten Tribes together with Judah into the Promised Land, to begin their endless occupation of it.” (p.15) This would be at the end of the age.

Another British-Israel exponent, F.C. (Frederick Charles) Danvers (1833-1906), also wrote on this subject in 1905 in his classic work, “Israel Redivivus,” from the Latin meaning “renewed,” “restored,” “living again,” or “brought back to life.” This was a link to the apostle’s words concerning exiled Israel in Romans 11:15, “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” Danvers did not specifically address the prophecy in Isaiah 11, but did express his belief that the gathering of Israel and Judah in lands of the West was a prophetic restoring of God’s chosen people.

With this variety of views, how can we clarify the meaning of Isaiah’s prophecy of Israel’s two renewals? Most agree that the Exodus was the first restoration. The argument against the Exodus being the first restoration is faulty because the prophecy does not specify a “nation,” but only “the remnant of his people,” which certainly described Abraham’s extended Israelite family. But what was the second recovery of Israel? The limited return of a small portion only of Judah in 538 B.C. does not match a united return of both houses in the prophecy. Nor does the return of unrepentant, unredeemed Talmudists and atheists in 1948 in any way fulfill prophecies of a redeemed throng of both houses. (Isa. 35:10; 51:11) The reasoning of the two late British-Israel scholars, Thomas and Danvers, concerning the recovery of Israel in Western lands and isles remains the only reasonable explanation of the prophecy, although Thomas believed it to be the first restoration, and the return of the two houses the second.

However, the idea that many people hold of a latter-day complete return of all of the population of the two houses of Israel to Canaan is also problematic. The Davidic Covenant clearly stated that Israel, when exiled to other lands, would “move no more,” ruling out a wholesale remigration back to Palestine: “Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as beforetime” (2 Sam. 7:10). In fact, prophecy indicated that Israel would have only a representative return to Palestine, “one of a city and two of a family” (Jer. 3:14). They would return “one by one,” not en masse as a complete body (Isa. 27:12). The return of the two houses of Israel to Canaan was therefore archetypical and not a wholesale “second recovery.”

For these reasons, it is clear that the Exodus to the Promised Land under Moses was the first restoration, and the Exile of Israel and Judah to lands of the West is “the second time” of Isaiah’s prophecy.