Excursus - Israel's Role in the History of Redemption

Paul's citation from Isaiah's commission in reference to the unbelieving Jews of his day (28:25-27) raises several important issues. Central to all of them is Paul's recognition - as Jesus before Him - that Jewish unbelief in the first century attested that God's judicial hardening of Israel didn't end with the recovery of the Judean remnant from Babylon. The prophets were uniform in asserting that Israel's desolation and exile - its banishment, not from a land as such, but from Yahweh Himself - would end in connection with the coming of the Son of David and His establishing of the everlasting kingdom which the Israelite theocracy only typified. Israel would be reconciled and restored to its covenant God in and through Messiah; rejection of Him, therefore, meant continuing exile. It meant continuing banishment from God under His sentence of divine hardening and condemnation. This excursus considers that dynamic, especially as it highlights the relationship between human volition and action and God's accomplishment of His sovereign purposes in Christ.