After a lot of talking about it, God finally did send His people away from the Promised Land. They didn’t just relocate to another home, but their removal from the Promised Land meant that they suffered the loss of the promise given to Abraham and thus to them. They had no reason to believe they would ever return, no reason to believe there was any hope of a future relationship with God, unless they were fortunate enough to hear Jeremiah’s prophecies. Even if they did hear them, many of them still wouldn’t believe, reaping the consequences of their choices not to believe. It was a sad ending to what could have been an unendingly bright future.
Understand that this is the fruit borne by sin. It cuts short a bright future. It results in destruction, ruin, suffering, and death. It removes hope of anything better. Do you think you could have done better than God’s Old Testament people did? I used to get frustrated reading their story, believing that I would have been faithful where they were unfaithful to God. That is a lie of Satan designed to keep us from looking to God for hope and help, running to Him for salvation from enslavement to our own desires. God’s Old Testament people are examples given to us so that we are warned to keep from pursuing the same choices and suffering the same consequences that they did. We will never do any better than they did without some kind of help from God.
And God has given that help in the form of Messiah. That is the only reason we enjoy hope of ending up any better than the sad fate of Judah in these chapters.