Exile and Return

Definition

A reading of Israel’s story (and through Israel, of the world’s story) as a long unresolved exile that the gospel announces has finally been ended in Jesus. The framework, most associated with N.T. Wright, argues that many first-century Jews understood themselves as still in theological exile even after the physical return from Babylon: the temple was rebuilt but the Shekinah glory had not returned, the kingdom was not restored, foreign rulers (Persia, Greece, Rome) still held the land. The gospel’s claim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand is, on this reading, the announcement that the long exile is over and the long-promised return has begun. Matthew’s genealogy makes the framework explicit: three sets of fourteen generations, structured as Abraham → David (rise) → exile (fall) → Christ (return).

Key proponents

Modern

N.T. Wright, the framework’s primary architect. The New Testament and the People of God (Fortress, 1992) is the foundational academic treatment. Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1996) develops the case that Jesus understood himself and his ministry as ending Israel’s exile. Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress, 2013) extends the framework to Paul.
Brant Pitre, Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Baker Academic, 2005), an academic argument that Jesus deliberately staged his ministry as the resolution of Israel’s exile.
James D.G. Dunn, his work on Christology and on the Jewish background of the New Testament builds on the exile-and-return frame.
Scot McKnight, the gospel-as-Israel’s-story-reaching-its-head reading depends heavily on the exile-and-return arc.
Walter Brueggemann, The Land (1977) and Theology of the Old Testament (1997), the prophetic tradition’s wrestling with exile is foundational to the framework.
Marty Solomon and Tim Mackie, both build on Wright and develop the exile arc as a central reading of the Hebrew Bible’s macro-narrative.

Premodern witnesses

The Second Temple Jewish tradition itself held the exile-still-ongoing reading. Texts like Daniel 9 (Daniel praying that the seventy years of Jeremiah’s exile prophecy be extended into seventy weeks of years, that is, 490 years), the Qumran community’s self-understanding as awaiting the true return, and many of the prayers in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha all assume that Israel was still in exile despite the physical return.
The early church reading of 1 Peter as exile literature: 1 Peter is addressed to the elect exiles of the Dispersion (1 Peter 1:1) and frames the church’s life in the world as exilic pilgrimage.
Augustine of Hippo (354 to 430), City of God, frames the entire age of the church as pilgrimage through a hostile world toward the heavenly city, an exile-and-return structure applied to the post-resurrection condition.
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 to 1153) and the broader monastic tradition read the soul’s life as exile from God seeking return; the framework is foundational to Christian mystical theology.
Martin Luther (1483 to 1546), The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), explicitly named the medieval Roman ecclesiastical system as a new Babylonian exile and the Reformation as a return.
The Puritan tradition read the church’s life through the exile-and-return lens; the Mayflower Pilgrims understood their voyage as exodus from the Babylon of Stuart England.

See How We Read for the longer lineage of this and the other frameworks on this site.

Core insights

Israel went into exile in 586 BCE and many Jews considered the exile theologically unresolved. When Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, burned the temple, and deported the population, the prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Lamentations) named it as the covenant curse of Deuteronomy 28 to 30 falling on the unfaithful nation. Cyrus’s decree allowed a return in 538 BCE, and a remnant did return and rebuild the temple. But the rebuilt temple was, by the testimony of the prophets and the Second Temple writers, never quite the same: the Shekinah glory was not seen returning to fill it (as it had filled Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 8); the kingdom was not restored; foreign rulers continued to dominate. Many first-century Jews understood themselves as still living in exile, even in the land.

Daniel 9 is the foundational text for the long-exile reading. Daniel, praying near the end of the seventy years Jeremiah had predicted, is told by Gabriel that the actual exile will extend much longer: seventy weeks (Daniel 9:24-27), almost certainly read as seventy weeks of years (490 years). The end of this extended exile will be marked by the coming of an Anointed One and the inauguration of everlasting righteousness. Many Second Temple readers (the Qumran community, the apocalyptic writers) read Daniel 9 as the timetable for the return.

The gospel announces that the exile is over. John the Baptist’s repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 3:2) is the announcement that the long-awaited return is happening now. Jesus’s opening sermon (Matthew 4:17, identical wording) makes the same announcement. The Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the table fellowship with sinners, the cleansing of the temple, the death and resurrection. All of these are staged as the resolution of Israel’s exile and the inauguration of the promised return.

Matthew’s genealogy makes the framework explicit. The three sets of fourteen generations (Matthew 1:1-17) map the Hebrew Bible’s macro-arc: Abraham to David is the rise, David to the exile is the fall, the exile to Christ is the return. The fourteenth generation after the exile is the Messiah. The waiting that began with the paqod yifqod promise of Genesis 50 and continued through the prophets is announced as ending in this child.

The disciple-community lives “in but not of” the world as a returning-exile community. The exile-and-return framework gives the church a way to locate its life in the present age. The exile is officially over (the kingdom has come, the King has been raised), but the return is not yet complete (we still wait for the renewal of all things). The church lives in the now-but-not-yet of the resolved exile, which is exactly the position 1 Peter, Hebrews, and Revelation describe.

Romans 8 is N.T. Wright’s most concentrated exile-and-return exposition. Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans (Zondervan, 2023) develops Romans 8 as the New Testament’s most concentrated new exodus and return from exile passage. The chapter’s structural moves are exilic in form: creation subjected to futility (8:20, the Genesis 3 expulsion language), creation groaning in labor pains (8:22, the wilderness suffering), the redemption of our bodies (8:23, the return to bodily life in the land), and all things working together for good (8:28, the providential governance of the journey home). The adoption language of 8:15-17 (you have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry “Abba, Father”) is the exodus’s I will take you to be my people (Ex 6:7) brought to its eschatological climax. Romans 8 is not abstract systematic theology about how individuals get to heaven; it is the cosmic exile-and-return announcement with creation and the church being brought home together. Romans 9-11 then extends the framework to Israel’s exile-and-return: ethnic Israel’s partial hardening is the not-yet of Israel’s exile; all Israel will be saved (11:26) is the eschatological return from exile (see the olive tree).

Implications. This framework reshapes how the New Testament’s call to come out of Babylon (Revelation 18:4) is heard, how the church’s vocation in the world is understood, and how the Hebrew Bible’s narrative is read as continuous with the gospel’s announcement. It also resists the Marcionite temptation to detach the New Testament from Israel’s story: the gospel is the climax of Israel’s story, not a replacement of it.

Where it shows up in Scripture

Deuteronomy 28 to 30, the covenant blessings and curses, including the prediction of exile and the promise of return-with-circumcised-hearts
2 Kings 17, 25, the historical accounts of the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles
Lamentations, Israel’s exilic grief
Isaiah 40 to 55, the great consolation, announcing the new exodus from Babylon
Jeremiah 29, the prophet’s letter to the exiles: settle, build, plant, seek the welfare of the city
Ezekiel 37, the valley of dry bones: the resurrection of the exiled people
Daniel 9:24-27, the seventy weeks prophecy, the foundational long-exile text
Ezra-Nehemiah, the partial physical return and the unfinished theological return
Malachi 3 to 4, the closing Hebrew Bible voice: the messenger is coming; Elijah will return before the great day
Matthew 1:1-17, the genealogy structured by the exile (Abraham → David → exile → Christ)
Luke 1 to 2, Simeon and Anna waiting for the consolation of Israel (the exilic-return language)
Luke 4:18-21, Jesus reads Isaiah 61 in the synagogue and announces the year of the Lord’s favor (the Jubilee return)
John 1:14, the Word became flesh and dwelt (eskenosen, tabernacled) among us, and we beheld his glory: the Shekinah glory has returned to dwell with the people
Romans 11, Israel’s restoration and the ingrafting of the Gentiles into the covenant family
1 Peter 1:1, to those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion
Hebrews 11:13-16, the patriarchs as exiles seeking a better country, that is, a heavenly one
Revelation 18, Babylon falls; come out of her, my people
Revelation 21 to 22, the new Jerusalem descends: the exile is fully over

Common misreadings to avoid

Treating exile as purely historical. The framework holds that exile is also theological: a covenant condition that the Hebrew Bible names and the gospel resolves.
Replacement theology. The church does not replace Israel; the church is the people gathered into Israel’s covenant story through the Messiah, with the Gentiles ingrafted (Romans 11). Wright is emphatic on this point.
Reading exile as merely metaphor. The exile has concrete socio-political dimensions (oppression, displacement, dispossession). The framework holds these together with the theological dimension; one should not be collapsed into the other.
Triumphalism. The exile is over in principle (the King has come, the kingdom has been inaugurated), but the church lives in the not-yet of the return’s full completion. Triumphalism that ignores the now-of-the-not-yet misreads the framework.
Equating contemporary states with biblical Israel. The framework’s reading of Israel still in exile applies to the first-century theological condition Jesus addressed. Importing it directly into contemporary geopolitics (as if any modern nation-state plays the role of biblical Israel) is a category-error.
Erasing the Hebrew Bible’s own voice. The Hebrew Bible’s writers wrestled with exile in their own terms (Lamentations, Psalm 137, Daniel, the post-exilic prophets). The framework does not flatten that wrestling; it reads the gospel as the answer the Hebrew Bible was reaching for.

Definition

Key proponents

Core insights

Where it shows up in Scripture

Common misreadings to avoid

Further reading