Starting with the publication of N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God in 1992, the field of biblical theology has seen a growth in scholarship on the biblical theology of exile and restoration. N.T. Wright’s thesis that the story of an ongoing exile drastically shaped the worldview of Jews in the first century has been at the center of this research and the subject of much debate. Scholars such as James M. Scott, Jörn Kiefer, James Dunn, and D.A. Carson have made significant contributions to this debate. However, the dedicated focus to the debate of an ongoing exile has left gaps in a broader theology of exile which warrant examination.
The purpose of this paper is to examine one of these gaps, namely the prescription and practice of individual exile in the Old Testament, which has largely gone unaddressed in scholarship. This paper will demonstrate that an Old Testament theology of individual exile aligns with an Old Testament theology of corporate exile. Both individual and corporate exile are described with similar language of “cutting off” (כָּרַת) and “purging” (בער). Furthermore, God uses both individual and corporate exile to accomplish three purposes. First, God uses exile to protect his people. Second, God uses exile to purify the place where his presence dwells. Third, God uses exile to produce repentance and obedience among his people. This shared language and purpose provides insight into the shift of individual exile from capital punishment to excommunication in the time of Ezra and throughout the intertestamental period.
In the New Testament, the concept of exile is not relegated to the ongoing exilic state of the corporate people of Israel and how that shapes the message of Jesus and Paul. Both Jesus and Paul build upon the Old Testament theology of individual exile as they address the church concerning how they should respond to sinners within the community of faith in Matthew 18:15-17 and 1 Corinthians 5. Therefore, an Old Testament theology of exile which examines both corporate and individual exile and their congruence provides a benefit to the biblical theology of exile and expands the current conversation beyond the story of an ongoing exile in the first century.