The Demographics of Exile

When Israel was deported to Babylonian exile, it would have been natural for Israelites to reason that they ought to limit the size of their families and wait for a return to the land. It might even be best to avoid marriage/ After all, who wants to support a wife or raise children in virtual slavery?

Jeremiah’s instructions were the opposite. In a letter to exiles (Jeremiah 29), he told them to “build houses and live; plant gardens, and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do no decrease” (vv. 5-6). Like Israel in Egypt, Israel in Babylon is to be “fruitful and increase greatly and multiply, and become exceedingly mighty, so that the land is filled with them” (Exodus 1:7).

As the parallel to the exodus shows, the outcome isn’t necessarily straightforwardly positive for Israel. Pharaoh was spooked by Israel’s rising numbers in Egypt, and cracked down on them, first with intensified labor (Exodus 1:11) and then with an attempted genocide (Exodus 1:15-16). It didn’t work; Israel kept multiplying. So Pharaoh doubled-down with the genocide. The Nile turned red with the blood of Hebrew children, which called up Yahweh as the avenger of the blood of His people. Israel was eventually liberated, but only after passing through death.

If American Christians are in a kind of exile in a strange once-Christian country, we should take Jeremiah’s instructions to heart: Do not diminished, but multiply and increase. Get your kids married off, and encourage them to have kids and to disciple them faithfully. With low birth rates among Americans generally, the demographics are on our side. But don’t forget the exodus, because the path may not be a straightforward one. Some, like Pharaoh, will be frightened; some might take steps to curb the growth of Christian fundamentalism.

For Christians, demographics, like everything else, is under the shadow of the cross.