In Deuteronomy chapter twenty-eight, verse sixty-four, the scattering of Israel occurs several times throughout their history when they were taken captive by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans. We do not know of Israel’s falling into actual idolatry in dispersion, except in Egypt of Jeremiah forty-four seventeen and possibly in Babylon of Ezekiel fourteen twenty-two through twenty-three.
According to Nehemiah one, verses eight through nine, these words were fulfilled in the Babylonish captivity. However, they have been far more amply fulfilled since the dispersion of the Jews by the Romans. “What people have scattered so far and wide as they? And where is the nation that is stranger to them or to which they are strangers? They swarm in many parts of the East, spread through most of the countries of Europe and Africa, and several families of them in the West Indies. They circulate through all parts and are the brokers of the whole world.”
Does God inflict vengeance? What miseries his curse can bring upon people in this present world! Yet these are but the beginning of sorrows to those under the curse of God. What then will be the misery of that world where their worm dieth not, and their fire not quenched! Observe what is here, said of the wrath of God, which should come and remain upon the Israelites for their sins. It is astonishing to think that a people so long the favorites of Heaven should be so cast off and yet that a people so scattered in all nations should be kept distinct and not mixed with others. If they would not serve God cheerfully, they should be answerable for catering to their enemies. The reality of sin causes people to scatter from God and spread all over the earth.