THE TRAGEDY OF ISRAEL

A Nation Without a Country

WE believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes, etc. (Articles of Faith, No. 10).

The gathering of Israel is contingent upon the fact of that people's dispersion. Consideration of the scattering is a necessary preliminary to a study of the reassembling of Israel's hosts.

God made covenant with Abraham that through him and his posterity should all nations of the earth be blessed. A rich fulfilment of the promise is found in the earthly birth of the Christ through the lineage of Abraham. Further and related fulfilment appears in the effect of the distribution of Israelites amongst other nations through enforced dispersion.

Abraham's descendants through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob have been distinctively known since Jacob's time as Israelites, or the Children of Israel. As the Old Testament avouches they grew to be a mighty nation, distinguished in certain respects from all other peoples. They were particularly characterized as "Jehovah worshipers," professing allegiance to the living God, whilst all the rest of the world was pagan and idolatrous. By their world wide dispersion a knowledge of the true and living God has been diffused.

So long as the Israelites were true to the Divine covenants made with Abraham, and reaffirmed severally with Isaac and Jacob, they prospered in material things as in spiritual power. So far as they became alienated through pagan practises and unrighteous affiliations, they suffered both individually and as a nation.

The Lord set before them the alternative of blessed perpetuity incident to their faithfulness, or disruption and subjugation to alien powers as the sure result of disobedience to Divine requirement. Both sacred and secular history make plain that Israel chose the evil part, forfeiting the promised blessings, reaping the foretold curses.

At the death of Solomon the nation was divided. Approximately two of the twelve tribes became established as the Kingdom of Judah, and came in time to be currently known as Jews; the rest of the tribes retained the title Kingdom of Israel, though known also by the name of Ephraim. The division led eventually to the eclipse of both kingdoms as autonomous powers among the known nations of the earth.

The Kingdom of Israel was subdued by the Assyrians about 721 B. C.; the people were carried into captivity, and later disappeared so completely from history as to be designated the Lost Tribes. These are the ten tribes whose restoration is predicted as an event of latter times. The Kingdom of Judah maintained a precarious and partial independence for a little more than a century after the Assyrian captivity, and then fell a prey to the conquering hosts of Nebuchadnezzar. After seventy years of bondage, the period specified through prophecy by Jeremiah (25:11, 12; 29:10), a considerable number of the people were permitted to return to Judea, where they rebuilt the temple, and vainly strove to reestablish themselves on the scale of their vanished greatness. They were impoverished by the aggressions of Syria and Egypt, and eventually became tributary to Rome, in which condition of vassalage they existed at the time of Christ's earthly ministry amongst them.

From the numerous Biblical prophecies relating to Israel's dispersion the following are cited as particularly illustrative:

"And the Lord shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the Lord shall lead you." (Deut. 4:27.)

"And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee." (Ezek. 22:15).

"For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." (Amos 9:9).

"And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." (Luke 21:24).

And so, in progressive stages, the covenant people of God have been scattered. The bringing of a body of Israelites to the Western Continent six centuries before the birth of Christ, of which the Book of Mormon bears record, was part of the general dispersion, and was so recognized by Nephite prophets.

Since the destruction of Jerusalem and the final disruption of the Jewish nation by the Romans, A. D. 71, the Jews have been largely wanderers upon the face of the earth, outcasts among the nations, a people without a country, a nation without a home. Israel has been sifted "like as corn is sifted in a sieve"; but, be it remembered that coupled with the dread prediction was the assuring promise "Yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth."

The record made by that division of the house of Israel which took its departure from Jerusalem, and made its way to the Western Hemisphere about 600 B. C., contains many references to the dispersions that had already taken place, and to the continuation of the scattering which was to the writers of the Book of Mormon yet future. In the course of the journey to the coast, the prophet Lehi, while encamped with his family and other followers in the valley of Lemuel on the borders of the Red Sea, declared what he had learned by revelation of the future "dwindling of the Jews in unbelief," of their crucifying the Messiah, and of their scattering "upon all the face of the earth." He compared Israel to an olive tree, the branches of which were to be broken off and distributed; and he recognized the exodus of his colony, and their journeying afar, as an incident in the general plan of dispersion.

Nephi, the son of Lehi, also beheld in vision the scattering of the covenant people of God, and on this point added his testimony to that of his prophet-father. He saw also that the seed of his brethren, subsequently known as the Lamanites, were to be chastened for their unbelief, and that they were destined to become subject to the Gentiles, and to be scattered before them. Down the prophetic vista of years, he saw also the bringing forth of sacred records, other than those then known, "unto the convincing of the Gentiles, and the remnant of the seed of my brethren, and also the Jews who were scattered upon all the face of the earth."

After their arrival on the promised land, the colony led by Lehi received further information regarding the dispersion of Israel. The prophet Zenos, quoted by Nephi, had predicted the unbelief of the house of Israel, in consequence of which these covenant ones of God were to "wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and a by-word, and be hated among all nations."

The brothers of Nephi, skeptical in regard to these teachings, asked whether the things of which he spake were to come to pass in a spiritual sense, or more literally; and were informed that "the house of Israel, sooner or later, will be scattered upon all the face of the earth, and also among all nations"; and further, in reference to dispersions then already accomplished, that "the more part of all the tribes have been led away; and they are scattered to and fro upon the isles of the sea"; and then, by way of prediction concerning further division and separation, Nephi adds that the Gentiles shall be given power over the people of Israel, "and by them shall our seed be scattered."

The day of deliverance for Israel is near at hand; the restoration of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, and of the remnants of all the tribes distributed throughout the earth, as well as bringing forth from their long exile the tribes that have been lost, are particularly specified as events of the current dispensation, directly precedent to the second advent of the Christ.