Parshiot Behar–Bechukotai, which we read this week, present the covenant between God and Israel in stark and dramatic terms. The Torah promises blessing, prosperity, security, and divine presence if the nation remains faithful to God’s commandments, while warning of devastation, suffering, destruction, and exile should it abandon them. Because these curses are described with such intensity and detail, Jewish tradition developed the custom of reading them quickly and in a subdued tone.

Yet despite the severity of these warnings, the section concludes with a message of hope. If Israel confesses its sins and returns to God, He will remember His covenant with the patriarchs and the Land (Leviticus 26:42). Since the covenant with the patriarchs includes both the promise of descendants and the promise of the Land , remembrance of the Land necessarily implies the eventual return of the people from exile. Indeed, the ingathering of the exiles becomes one of the Bible’s great recurring themes (see, for example, Deuteronomy 30:4; Isaiah 11:12, 43:5–6, 56:8; Jeremiah 3:14, 16:14–15, 30:10–11, 31:7–24, and others).

But this raises a fundamental question. For a nation whose identity, history, and religious life revolved around its land, how were the Jews meant to survive spiritually and nationally in exile? What would repentance and return to God look like in practical terms while living far from their homeland?

Surprisingly, most biblical passages that speak of exile and return do not address this issue directly.

The first biblical figure to........

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