It is impossible to understand how it can be said that this covenant will be remembered, if the Jewish people is to continue dispersed, and is to be _for ever_ excluded from the land here spoken of. As to the return from Babylonian captivity, that will not answer the intention of the covenant at all. For to restore a small part of the Jewish people to its own land for a few centuries, and afterwards disperse it among all nations for many times as long, without any hope of return, cannot be the meaning of giving that land to the seed of Abram _for ever_. Again we read:―― “And the Lord shall scatter you among the peoples,...” (Deuteronomy iv. 27.) “But from thence ye will seek the Lord thy God; and thou shalt find Him, if thou search after Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” (_Ibid._ 29.) “In thy distress, when all these things are come upon thee, in the end of days, thou wilt return to the Lord thy God, and hearken unto His voice;” (_Ibid._ 30.) “for the Lord thy God is a merciful God; He will not fail thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which He swore unto them.” (_Ibid._ 31.) This prophecy refers to the thirteenth chapter of Genesis, as is shown by this thirty-first verse; and confirms again the return to the Holy Land, and its possession for ever:―― “And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt bethink thyself among all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee,” (Deuteronomy xxx. 1.) “and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and hearken to His voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul;” (_Ibid._ 2.) “that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peoples, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.” (_Ibid._ 3.) “If any of thine that are dispersed be in the uttermost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will He fetch thee.” (_Ibid._ 4.) “And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.” (_Ibid._ 5.) Amongst the “things which should come upon them,” which are described at large in the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters of Deuteronomy, it is particularly said:―― “And the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;...” (_Ibid._ xxviii. 64.) But observe that subsequently we are told:――