26 Bible Verses about dispersion, the
Most Relevant Verses
“When you have children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, and if you act corruptly, make an idol in the form of anything, and do what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, provoking Him to anger, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will quickly perish from the land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not live long there, but you will certainly be destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be reduced to a few survivors among the nations where the Lord your God will drive you. read more.
There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see, hear, eat, or smell.
For the Lord will strike Israel and the people will shake as a reed shakes in water. He will uproot Israel from this good soil that He gave to their ancestors. He will scatter them beyond the Euphrates because they made their Asherah poles, provoking the Lord.
“But if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all His commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city
and cursed in the country.
Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed.
read more.
Your descendants will be cursed,
and your land’s produce,
the young of your herds,
and the newborn of your flocks.
You will be cursed when you come in
and cursed when you go out. The Lord will send against you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you do until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the wickedness of your actions in abandoning Me. The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until He has exterminated you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will afflict you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat, drought, blight, and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish. The sky above you will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your land into falling dust; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your corpses will be food for all the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the land, with no one to scare them away. “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, tumors, a festering rash, and scabies, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness, and mental confusion, so that at noon you will grope as a blind man gropes in the dark. You will not be successful in anything you do. You will only be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will help you. You will become engaged to a woman, but another man will rape her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away from you and not returned to you. Your flock will be given to your enemies, and no one will help you. Your sons and daughters will be given to another people, while your eyes grow weary looking for them every day. But you will be powerless to do anything. A people you don’t know will eat your land’s produce and everything you have labored for. You will only be oppressed and crushed continually. You will be driven mad by what you see. The Lord will afflict you with painful and incurable boils on your knees and thighs—from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. “The Lord will bring you and your king that you have appointed to a nation neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will worship other gods, of wood and stone. You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you. “You will sow much seed in the field but harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant and cultivate vineyards but not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your territory but not anoint yourself with oil, because your olives will drop off. You will father sons and daughters, but they will not remain yours, because they will be taken prisoner. Whirring insects will take possession of all your trees and your land’s produce. The foreign resident among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you sink lower and lower. He will lend to you, but you won’t lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail. “All these curses will come, pursue, and overtake you until you are destroyed, since you did not obey the Lord your God and keep the commands and statutes He gave you. These curses will be a sign and a wonder against you and your descendants forever. Because you didn’t serve the Lord your God with joy and a cheerful heart, even though you had an abundance of everything, you will serve your enemies the Lord will send against you, in famine, thirst, nakedness, and a lack of everything. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation from far away, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you don’t understand, a ruthless nation, showing no respect for the old and not sparing the young. They will eat the offspring of your livestock and your land’s produce until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, oil, young of your herds, or newborn of your flocks until they cause you to perish. They will besiege you within all your gates until your high and fortified walls, that you trust in, come down throughout your land. They will besiege you within all your gates throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. “You will eat your children, the flesh of your sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you. The most sensitive and refined man among you will look grudgingly at his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children, refusing to share with any of them his children’s flesh that he will eat because he has nothing left during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you in all your towns. The most sensitive and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her refinement and sensitivity, will begrudge the husband she embraces, her son, and her daughter, the afterbirth that comes out from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you within your gates. “If you are not careful to obey all the words of this law, which are written in this scroll, by fearing this glorious and awesome name—Yahweh, your God— He will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses. He will afflict you again with all the diseases of Egypt, which you dreaded, and they will cling to you. The Lord will also afflict you with every sickness and plague not recorded in the book of this law, until you are destroyed. Though you were as numerous as the stars of the sky, you will be left with only a few people, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as the Lord was glad to cause you to prosper and to multiply you, so He will also be glad to cause you to perish and to destroy you. You will be deported from the land you are entering to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. You will find no peace among those nations, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despondent spirit. Your life will hang in doubt before you. You will be in dread night and day, never certain of survival. In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread you will have in your heart and because of what you will see. The Lord will take you back in ships to Egypt by a route that I said you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
“And if in spite of this you do not obey Me but act with hostility toward Me, I will act with furious hostility toward you; I will also discipline you seven times for your sins. You will eat the flesh of your sons; you will eat the flesh of your daughters. read more.
I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your dead bodies on the lifeless bodies of your idols; I will reject you. I will reduce your cities to ruins and devastate your sanctuaries. I will not smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices. I also will devastate the land, so that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it. But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins. “Then the land will make up for its Sabbath years during the time it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and make up for its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate, it will have the rest it did not have during your Sabbaths when you lived there.
Please remember what You commanded Your servant Moses: “If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to Me and carefully observe My commands, even though your exiles were banished to the ends of the earth, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place where I chose to have My name dwell.”
“Yet I will leave a remnant when you are scattered among the nations, for throughout the countries there will be some of you who will escape the sword. Then your survivors will remember Me among the nations where they are taken captive, how I was crushed by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me and by their eyes that lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves because of the evil things they did, their detestable practices of every kind. And they will know that I am the Lord; I did not threaten to bring this disaster on them without a reason.
However, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would disperse them among the nations and scatter them among the countries. For they did not practice My ordinances but rejected My statutes and profaned My Sabbaths, and their eyes were fixed on their fathers’ idols.
I will disperse you among the nations and scatter you among the countries; I will purge your uncleanness.
Israel is a stray lamb, chased by lions.
The first who devoured him was the king of Assyria;
the last one who crushed his bones
was Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but this day public shame belongs to us: the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and all Israel—those who are near and those who are far, in all the countries where You have dispersed them because of the disloyalty they have shown toward You.
But You have rejected and humiliated us;
You do not march out with our armies.
You make us retreat from the foe,
and those who hate us
have taken plunder for themselves.
You hand us over to be eaten like sheep
and scatter us among the nations.
read more.
You sell Your people for nothing;
You make no profit from selling them.
You make us an object of reproach to our neighbors,
a source of mockery and ridicule to those around us.
You make us a joke among the nations,
a laughingstock among the peoples.
My disgrace is before me all day long,
and shame has covered my face,
because of the voice of the scorner and reviler,
because of the enemy and avenger.
פ PeThe Lord Himself has scattered them;
He regards them no more.
The priests are not respected;
the elders find no favor.
“Son of man, while the house of Israel lived in their land, they defiled it with their conduct and actions. Their behavior before Me was like menstrual impurity. So I poured out My wrath on them because of the blood they had shed on the land, and because they had defiled it with their idols. I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered among the countries. I judged them according to their conduct and actions. read more.
When they came to the nations where they went, they profaned My holy name, because it was said about them, ‘These are the people of Yahweh, yet they had to leave His land in exile.’
From beyond the rivers of Cush
My supplicants, My dispersed people,
will bring an offering to Me.
So I asked the angel who was speaking with me, “What are these?”
And he said to me, “These are the horns that scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.”
Then the Jews said to one another, “Where does He intend to go so we won’t find Him? He doesn’t intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, does He?
He will lift up a banner for the nations
and gather the dispersed of Israel;
He will collect the scattered of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.
But from there, you will search for the Lord your God, and you will find Him when you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, you will return to the Lord your God in later days and obey Him. He will not leave you, destroy you, or forget the covenant with your fathers that He swore to them by oath, because the Lord your God is a compassionate God.
Nations, hear the word of the Lord,
and tell it among the far off coastlands!
Say: The One who scattered Israel will gather him.
He will watch over him as a shepherd guards his flock,
“Therefore say: This is what the Lord God says: Though I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone. “Therefore say: This is what the Lord God says: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
Saul agreed with putting him to death.
On that day a severe persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ:
To the temporary residents dispersed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen
So those who were scattered went on their way preaching the message of good news.
Those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the message to no one except Jews.
James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ:
To the 12 tribes in the Dispersion.
Greetings.
