Why does the Lord declare that the days are coming when it shall no longer be said that the Lord brought his people out of Egypt, but out of the north country?

This following passage (Jeremiah 16:14–21) contains a number of different oracles that speak of both judgment and restoration. It seems these oracles have been brought together here to remind Judah, and the reader, that the covenant always included the promise of restoration, but knowing this only makes the judgment that is coming to Judah all the more tragic, because it could have been avoided if they had been willing to turn to a merciful God in repentance.

The passage starts in Jeremiah 16:14–15 with a description of someone taking an oath. The Hebrew verb yeamer literally means let it be said, and it refers to the act of taking an oath and with the phrase hay YHWH, translated as as the Lord lives, the Lord himself is invoked as the guarantor of the oath¹ . Up until this point in Israel’s history the Lord who was invoked in this way was the Lord who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt. He is the Lord who showed himself in the Exodus to be both powerful and faithful as he saved his people from slavery under Pharoah and brought them into the promised land. But now, declares the Lord, the days are coming when his name will be invoked in a different way because of what he is about to do in the future. He will be known as the Lord who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them. The Lord is going to do something even greater than the Exodus by bringing the exiled remnant of Judah back to their own land that I gave to their fathers. This promise of restoration does hold out hope to Judah, but it is also a word of warning. Something greater and more terrible than slavery in Egypt is about to happen to the nation because the Lord is going to have to do something more powerful than the Exodus .²