Most of us understand that the various scatterings of Israelites over history are prophetic types of the scattering to occur shortly, in the time called Jacob’s Trouble. For example, the Assyrian-led scattering of the House of Israel in 722 BC is typical of the impending scattering of Israel by the Beast Power.

Christ described this approaching scattering as a time of distress like no other in human history (see Matthew 24:21). Something about this scattering-to-come makes it unique, different from its predecessors. What characteristic will set this future scattering apart from past ones? We will address that question by looking at some Hebrew verbs with the meaning “to scatter.”ⁱ

Pûṣ

Deuteronomy 28:64 contains the first of these words, pûṣ,ⁱⁱ the verb most commonly translated “scatter”: “Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other . . .” (see also Ezekiel 20:23; emphasis ours throughout).

While pûṣ can mean “to scatter” in a non-violent sense (see I Samuel 14:34), it can also refer to a violent dashing to pieces. For instance, Jeremiah 23:29: “‘Is not My word like fire?’ says the Lord, ‘and like a hammer that breaks [pûṣ] the rock in pieces?’” (see also Job 16:12). Here, God likens His Word to a sledgehammer capable of crushing rocks. After a few blows, even granite can become highly fragmented. Quarry-grade rock-crushing equipment, made of iron and steel, makes quick work of stone. Pûṣ can refer to the breaking up of the apparently durable, the evidently robust.

Nāpaṣ

Daniel 12:7 uses a second word often translated with the verb “scatter”:

He replied, with both hands lifted to heaven, taking oath by him who lives forever and ever, that they will not end until three and a half years after the power of God’s people has been crushed. (The Living Bible [TLB])

The angel dressed in linen tells Daniel that the wonders will continue until the “power of God’s people has been scattered,” as the Hebrew is translated in the King James Version. The Hebrew verb here is nāpaṣ.ⁱⁱⁱ Other translators of this passage modify the verb with the adverb completely, as “completely shattered.”^iv In other passages, the King James translators render naphats as “break in pieces”^v and “dash in pieces.” Its first use, in Genesis 9:19, speaks of widespread dispersion, at God’s behest, but without violence: “These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered [populated, NKJV] over the whole earth” (New International Version).

However, in Psalm 2 is a poetic use of nāpaṣ, which joins this notion of widespread geographic dispersion with two other essential elements: disintegration and violence^vi:

Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them [nāpaṣ] like earthenware. (Psalm 2:8-9, New American Standard Bible [NAS])

Shattering a vase with a hammer gives one a graphic idea of the meaning of nāpaṣ.

Nûaʿ

We find a third and even stronger verb for “scatter” in Amos 9:9 (The Amplified Bible, Classic Edition [AMPC]): “For behold, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations and cause it to move to and fro as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth and be lost [from My sight].”

Nûaʿ,^vii appears twice in this verse.^viii Its first use, in Genesis 4:12, refers to Cain. Here the translators have used the noun “fugitive”: “When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive [nûaʿ] and a wanderer on the earth.” We should keep this word choice in mind. Making a person a fugitive is fragmentation to the point of isolation.^ix A fugitive is often on the run, moving about, an image enforced by grain moving to and fro in the wind.^x

Pāzar

In Jeremiah 50:17, we see yet a fourth verb for “scatter,” pāzar^xi:

The Lord says, “The people of Israel are like sheep, chased and scattered [pāzar] by lions. First, they were attacked by the emperor of Assyria, and then King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia gnawed on their bones. (Good News Translation [GNT])

The image here is of a flock of sheep totally broken up as predators chase its individual members in every direction. The idea of a fugitive appears again here. Each sheep is alone, pursued, and endangered as he is separated from his fellows. The sheep are still there, but the flock is gone.

This passage illustrates the level of fragmentation yet to take place in Israel. Importantly, it speaks to modern Israelites, not ancient ones. For that, consider Jeremiah 50:4-5, where the prophet establishes the timeframe of his comments as the regathering of Israel at the conclusion of the Day of the Lord:

“In those days and in that time,” declares the Lord, “the people of Israel shall come, they and the people of Judah together; with continual weeping they shall come, and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces toward it, saying, ‘Come and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that will not be forgotten.’”

That did not happen in the days of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser (see I Chronicles 5:26) or the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar.

Zāraʿ

The fifth word for “scatter” is zāraʿ,^xii found in Ezekiel 5:12. Remember that the prophet Ezekiel wrote to future Israel, as the kingdom had already been taken into captivity more than a century before. His words do not pertain to those earlier scatterings. When Ezekiel wrote, the Assyrians had already deported—scattered—the House of Israel to northern Persia (Iran). Since then, the Babylonians had deported the House of Judah from Jerusalem and its surrounds.^xiii So, the fulfillment of this prophecy is yet future:

One third of you will die by plague or be consumed by famine among you, one third will fall by the sword around you, and one third I will scatter to every wind, and I will unsheathe a sword behind them. (Ezekiel 5:12, NAS)

The naked sword carries the image of pursuit, the chase, as one hunts a fugitive. Zāraʿ has much the same connotation as nûaʿ (“to sift”), as it can mean “to winnow or spread widely.” Its first use, Exodus 32:20, stresses the granularity of spreading. There, we read that Moses “ground to powder” the golden calf and scattered (zāraʿ) the dust on the water for the Israelites to drink. This is a clear image of pulverization.^xiv

Consider that Ezekiel himself was among those deportees from Judah in some sort of concentration camp, as he says in Ezekiel 1:1, “among the captives by the River Chebar.” That is an important detail: He was not isolated. However, Ezekiel 5 looks forward to a highly granular scattering, where people become widely separated—“to every wind.”

The typical, historical scatterings of God’s people were not notably granular. All the children of Israel, en masse, migrated to Egypt during the time of Jacob. More than two million of their descendants migrated from Egypt about 215 years later. The Assyrians deported virtually all the folk of the House of Israel. In the Babylonians’ three principal deportations of Judah, “None remained, except the poorest people of the land,” according to II Kings 24:14. It appears that much the same happened in the diaspora of AD 70 under the Romans.

While some families were certainly broken up in these various typical scatterings, by and large, the deportees did not become completely isolated from kith and kin. For lack of a better term, it is a “chunky” scattering. For example, Jewish Israelites today, though scattered around the world, live in huge enclaves, such as the State of Israel or the metropolis of New York City. God indeed scattered Israel, but He did so in huge chunks.^xv

But, looking carefully, we see this in the words describing the scattering to come: powder, not chunks. God prophesies that the final dispersion will be gross fragmentation, pulverization, atomization, isolation. In it, we are looking at images of grains of wheat blown by the wind, fugitives, vagabonds, pottery fragments, and crushed rock. We see people spread about geographically and on the run, alone, or at least almost so. “Fugitives” seems to describe them. The granularity of the final scattering, the one hovering over national Israel today, will be far more significant than in the typical dispersions of her history. The chunks will be much smaller—powder. The surviving Israelites will be spread extremely thin.

A New Thing

If we look for this extreme level of fragmentation in history, we will find it only exceptionally, uncommonly. The Nazis penned the Jews of the holocaust in concentration camps. Atomization was the exception, not the rule then. We do not see widespread pulverization in history; it awaits the time of Jacob’s Trouble (Jeremiah 30:7), a time without precedent. This level of pulverization will be a new thing on the earth. This intense level of granularity is the new characteristic of the future scattering.

A new thing,^xvi but for all that, we see the outlines of such atomization today. Where? Amazingly, we are experiencing it in type in the present church of God. What has begun in spiritual Israel will eventually manifest as a roaring lion in modern physical Israel.

In the closing moments of the twentieth century, God pulverized the church of God. Like folk in Babylon centuries ago, remembering Zion’s heady days, we too remember the old church, with congregation after congregation of upwards of 200 people, often 300 or 400 or more. We recall choosing from many Feast sites, many of which boasted more than 3,000 attendees. Those days are gone. Our children today cannot conceive of the church we knew only a few decades ago.

Today, congregations are small, many of only a handful of people. Feast sites of even 2,000 people are scarce. If it were not for technology, communication would be exceedingly difficult. God has pulverized His church, and frankly, it is only getting worse. Some leaders in the greater church forbid social intercourse between their congregants and those in other flocks. These leaders are increasingly pounding the church, amplifying the level of atomization, aggravating the isolation.^xvii

We in the church face continued and worsening isolation. Physical Israelites can look forward to experiencing the pulverization, the pounding, of their secular civilization, as they are forced into highly isolated situations, alienated from kith and kin, hated by everyone, fugitives in hiding, starving, sick, and apparently abandoned. They may not be concentrated in camps, but at least metaphorically, placed in isolation chambers, perhaps an emblem of the scattering to come.

It will be amazing to behold how God will bring unifying order out of the tohu and bohu soon to come, collecting each lonely grain, “one by one and one to another,” as the prophet puts it in Isaiah 27:12 (AMPC), restoring each sheep to His fold. No wonder those witnessing that restoration will not speak of the first exodus, the second being so much more astonishing!^xviii

End Notes

i Old Testament verbs for “scatter” not discussed here include the following:

• Pāʾā (Strong’s #6284) appears only once (Deuteronomy 32:26), where the King James translators render it “scatter into corners.” The verb means “to cleave in pieces” and “to break into pieces.”

• Bāzar (Strong’s #967) appears twice, both times as “scatter” (Psalm 68:30; Daniel 11:24). It means “to disperse” or “to scatter.”

• Zāraq (Strong’s #2236) appears 35 times (e.g., Exodus 9:8). The translators render it as “sprinkle” (31x), “scatter” (2x), “here and there” (1x) and “stowed” (1x.)

• Bedar (Strong’s #921), an Aramaic word, appears only once (Daniel 4:14), translated as “scatter.” It is related to the Hebrew pārad (Strong’s #6504), which is rendered as “separate” (12x), “part” (4x), “divided” (3x), and once each as “scattered about,” “dispersed,” “joint,” “scattered,” “severed,” “stretched,” and “sundered.”

ii Pûṣ (Strong’s #6327) appears 67 times, mostly translated as forms of “scatter.” It is the word in Genesis 11:9 that refers to God’s scattering the people building Babel. It is also used in Zechariah 13:7 to describe the scattering of Christ’s disciples, pictured in the metaphor as sheep.

iii Nāpaṣ (Strong’s #5310) appears 22 times, strongly carrying the idea of pulverization (see Isaiah 27:9).

iv Examples include the New King James Version (NKJV), the Names of God Bible, and the GWT.

v Such as the World English Bible (WEB) and the American Standard Version.

vi This verb appears in the well-known incident where Gideon’s men broke the pitchers in their attack on the Midianites (see Judges 7:19).

vii Nûaʿ (Strong's #5128) appears 42 times in the Old Testament. It is translated six times each as “shake,” “move,” and “wander”; “promoted” (3x); “fugitive (2x); “sift,” “stagger,” and “wag” (1x each); and 13 other miscellaneous translations.

viii A fascinating use of nûaʿ appears in Isaiah 24:20. In verse 4, “haughty people of the earth” may be the elite, the rich, or a more general reference to Israel. Elsewhere, “haughty” (mārôm, Strong’s #4791) is rendered “highest,” “high ones,” “lofty,” and “elevated.” It appears twice as “heaven” in Isaiah 24:21. Hence, the “haughty people” may refer to Israel, “the chief nation” (Amos 6:1; see also Jeremiah 31:7). It is no accident that the United States’ international dialing code is 1, much to the consternation of the Russians.

With those preliminaries in mind, Isaiah 24:19-21 (WEB) reads:

The earth is utterly broken. The earth is torn apart. The earth is shaken violently. The earth will stagger [nûaʿ] like a drunken man, and will sway back and forth like a hammock. Its disobedience will be heavy on it, and it will fall and not rise again. It shall happen in that day [probably the Day of the Lord] that Yahweh will punish the army of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth.

Hidden in most English translations is the repeated Hebrew words here, mostly verbs. The figure of speech employed is Polyptoton, or “Many Inflections,” which refers to the repetition of the same parts of speech (a repetition of nouns, adjectives, or verbs), usually with different inflections. English examples include: “Judge not that you be not judged” and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Polyptoton does not require the word to be repeated exactly, only its root. That is, the inflections of the repeated words may be different.

A good example of Polyptoton is Isaiah 24:19-20, where “earth,” Hebrew ʾereṣ, appears four times, but after each use, a verb appears twice. So, the Hebrew reads, ʾereṣ, verb, repeated verb; ʾereṣ, verb, repeated verb; ʾereṣ, verb, repeated verb; ʾereṣ, verb, repeated verb. For example, the first in the sequence is ʾereṣ raʿ raʿ (“destruction” or “damage”) in Hebrew. This duplication of verbs continues into verse 20, “the earth shall reel to and fro,” which is ʾereṣ nûaʿnûaʿ. God’s duplications of these four verbs are certainly for emphasis: The earth is really broken, split open, shaken, and reeling. This repetition suggests double-portion time, like “Babylon is fallen, is fallen,” as written in Revelation 14:8 and 18:2. (On double portions, see Deuteronomy 21:17; II Kings 2:9; and Isaiah 61:7.)

ix Nûaʿ can carry the idea of dispersion as well. See Psalm 109:10 (NAS), where David sings of the sons of the wicked: “Let his children wander about and beg; and let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes.” Nûaʿ appears in the phrase “wander about.” In context, the children of the wicked are dispossessed of the homes of their forefathers, begging for food far from those ancestral homes.

x Reference also Isaiah 16:3-4 (WEB), where the topic is Moab:

Give counsel! Execute justice! Make your shade like the night in the middle of the noonday! Hide the outcasts! Don’t betray the fugitive! Let My outcasts dwell with you! As for Moab, be a hiding place for him from the face of the destroyer. For the extortionist is brought to nothing. Destruction ceases. The oppressors are consumed out of the land.

The subject is probably people in the true church (verse 4: “My outcasts”), the members of which are fleeing. Noteworthy is the reference to fugitives and wanderers—outcasts. The noun “outcasts” is the Hebrew verb nādaḥ (Strong’s #5080), here informed by the notion of their being driven out (see Deuteronomy 4:19; Isaiah 27:13; Jeremiah 49:36). The last of these is intriguing as it stresses how widespread the dispersion will be: “And [I] will scatter them toward all those winds; there shall be no nations where the outcasts of Elam will not go.”

Nādaḥ’s verbal relative is nādad (Strong’s #5074). Its first use is in Genesis 31:40, where it appears as the verb “departed”: “. . . my sleep departed from my eyes.” Of special interest is the last clause of Jeremiah 49:5 (English Standard Version), where nādad is rendered with the noun “fugitives”:

Behold, I will bring terror upon you, declares the Lord God of hosts, from all who are around you, and you shall be driven out, every man straight before him, with none to gather the fugitives [those who wander off, NKJV].

xi Pāzar (Strong’s #6340) appears in Esther 3:8, where Haman, talking to the Persian king, describes the Jews as “scattered.”

xii Zāraʿ is Strong's #2219.

xiii Incidentally, Jeremiah 50:11, where God addresses the “plunderers of His heritage,” is highly instructive. Through the term “My heritage,” it connects latter-day Babylon with Israel. Babylon is not the heritage of God but the creation of mankind under Satan. Israel is God’s heritage. Yet, in Jeremiah 50:1-3, God is plainly describing the fall of Babylon. In fact, Israel falls at or near the time of Babylon’s fall, as the two have become highly intertwined, virtually synonymous in practice. For all practical purposes, Israel is today’s Babylon.

Germany is an excellent example of the amalgamation that has taken place between Israel and Babylon. Many Germans, especially those blond types of Prussia, are Israelites, while others seem to be descendants of Assyria/Babylon/Chaldea. For all that, the German society, like the American, is Babylonish in nature.

xiv The second use of Zāraʿ also reflects the Ezekiel 5 passage: “I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you” (Leviticus 26:33).

xv A good example is the scattering of Israel into the North American continent. Notable cases aside, migrants came to these coasts with their families more commonly than as individuals.

xvi In the context of ancient Israel, I Kings 19:18 (GWT) suggests significant fragmentation among His people. God tells Elijah, “But I still have 7,000 people in Israel whose knees have not knelt to worship Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” It appears that, up until this time, Elijah knew nothing of the existence of these 7,000 people. It is hard to hide that many people. They were likely scattered, living as fugitives, hiding in fear of Ahab and Jezebel, probably in tiny enclaves.

xvii The atomization to come to Israel will undoubtedly have a strong economic basis. Notice Deuteronomy 28:68 (GNT): “The Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, even though he said that you would never have to go there again. There you will try to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will want to buy you.” The scattering to come will involve geographical spread, as it always has. Moreover, people will be unable or unwilling to provide work for migrant Israelites.

xviii See Jeremiah 16:14-15: 23:7-8.