This chapter works through Romans 9 in conversation with other early Jewish evidence, arguing that Paul consistently cites the prophetic promises of the restoration of northern Israelites “from the nations” as promises that gentiles themselves (by definition not YHWH’s people) would become incorporated into Israel as part of Israel’s own redemption. Faced with potential accusations of divine injustice, Paul argues that this is in keeping with God’s prior dealings with his people, who have persistently resisted God’s purposes, leading God to achieve his purposes through new processes.

Promises of Israel's restoration appear throughout the Latter Prophets. This chapter argues that modern interpreters have overlooked the surprising amount of attention specifically paid to the fate of the northern tribes of Israel throughout the Latter Prophets, even in books by prophets who lived long after the destruction of the northern kingdom.Whereas many have suggested a narrowing in the scope of Israel such that prophecies such as those of Second Isaiah refer to the restoration of Judah, this chapter argues that the prophets consistently take a more expansive view of Israel and that Second Temple period readers would have—and in fact did—read these prophecies as referring not only to those from Judah exiled by the Babylonians but also to the northern tribes scattered by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE. The prophets' promises therefore remained unfulfilled so long as the northern tribes had not returned.

Too little scholarly attention has been paid to the paradox that those from the southern kingdom of Judah wrote, collected, and edited a foundational narrative not of Judah but of Israel, the ethnonym more closely associated with the northern kingdom even within the biblical narratives. This chapter argues that, rather than staking their claim to be the sole heirs to the heritage of the covenant with YHWH, the Judahite biblical editors constructed a biblical narrative that emphasizes that Judah is only one portion of a larger Israel that is presently—from the perspective of the editors and their implied audience—incomplete and awaiting reunion and restoration. By constructing an Israel of the past and rhetorically situating the reader in exile, the editors of the Primary History (Genesis–2 Kings) and 1–2 Chronicles establish a perspective of restoration eschatology in which an idealized biblical Israel (of course under the leadership of Judah) does not presently exist, having lost its status due to covenantal disobedience and disunity, but remains a social and theological aspiration.

The final chapter provides a brief summary of the conclusions that can be drawn from the study, explaining the relationships between the concepts and terms Israelite, Jew, and Hebrew as they were used in the Second Temple period. The chapter concludes that the concept of Israel was inextricably linked with the concepts of covenant and restoration eschatology established in the Torah and other biblical literature. Nevertheless, within those larger bounds, Israel was then variously understood and the boundaries of Israel variously defined as different groups laid claim to the historical and theological heritage embedded in the name Israel.

This book presents a new understanding of the composition of Isa 24–27. Originally, these chapters celebrated the crumbling of the Neo-Assyrian empire as an act of divine deliverance and exhorted the former Northern Kingdom to reunite itself with Judah at a moment when that was a plausible choice for the first time in centuries. The withdrawal of Neo-Assyrian forces from the Levant in the 620s would have left the door open for new political ideas, and it would have been quite natural for a Davidic monarch like Josiah to imagine reunifying the kingdoms.

There are multiple indications within the Bible itself that Josiah took an interest in the north; these form a foundation for the argument that Isa 24–27 was an overture by Josiah to inhabitants of the former Israelite kingdom. It has demonstrated the continuing consensus that the basic reports of Josiah’s reforming activities in Bethel were more or less contemporaneous with his reign, which suggests that Judah had increased freedom to operate in the former Northern Kingdom. Yet it has also observed that there is no indication in the Bible or in archaeological findings that Josiah ever conquered or ruled the bulk of the north. He had ambitions, but they went unfulfilled – indeed, they may have cost him his life when Egypt sensed them. From Egypt’s point of view, Judah seems to have been more or less free to inhabit its rocky hill country, but an interest in the more desirable lands farther north or west would not have been well received.