– It is that small group that escaped the invaders (597 BC) and from which God promises to make a great nation arise:
Is 4:3 : What remains of Zion, the survivors of Jerusalem, will be called saints.
Is 6:13 : If a tenth of the population remains, it will be thrown into the fire, like terebinth and oak.
Is 10,19-21 : There will be so few trees left in your forest that a child will be able to count them.
Am 5:15 : Perhaps then the Lord, the God of hosts, will have mercy on what is left of Joseph!
– Later the “remnant” would be found among the deportees (582 BC), the poor of Yahweh:
Jer 40:11 : Knowing, in his turn, that the king of Babylon had left the rest of the people in Judah.
Jer 44:28 : The small number of them who escape the sword will return from Egypt to Judah.
Zeph 3:13 : The remnant of Israel shall abstain from evil, and shall not speak a lie.
Zech 8,12-13 : I will make everything prosper: the vine will give its grape and the earth its fruit.
Zech 13,8-9 : In all the earth – oracle of the Lord – two thirds of the inhabitants will be exterminated and one third will remain.
– From this remnant will arise the righteous shoot, the Yahweh-Our-Righteousness, the Messiah:
Jer 33,14-16 : And in those days and in those times I will make a righteous shoot to be born of David.
– God does not abandon his people, so he should not fear, but rejoice because the Lord is with him:
Sf 3,14-18 : Shout for joy, daughter of Zion! Shout for joy, O Israel!
– These are the same words that Luke puts in the mouth of the angel, when addressing Mary, to signify that Zephaniah’s prophecy is fulfilled in the incarnation of the Son of God:
Lk 1:30 : The angel said to her: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God”.
– See HEART.
