The first return to Palestine began in the time of Zerubbabel.
This was about 538 BC. Most agree that this was the first return of the Jews to Palestine and was prophesied by many prophets. But there were other things also.
Isaiah 14 talks of a return of the Jews to their own land. This was written before they had lost their land. First Isaiah pictures many gentiles becoming Jews.
“For Yahweh will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the foreigner shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.”
Isa 14:1
Of course there have been many converts to Judaism, down through history. In New Testament times there was the mass conversion of the Turkish Khazars in the eight century AD, which gave the modern Jews much of their “gentile” blood. Aside from this, though, no mass cleaving of gentiles to “Jacob” has been noticed. Then Isaiah says, before they went into captivity.
“2 The peoples shall take them, and bring them to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of Yahweh for servants and for handmaids: and they shall take them captive whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.”
Isa 14:2
This seems to be the context of the foreigners cleaving to Jacob in the previous verse. As has been pointed out, the Jews did return to Palestine beginning in 538 BC. However, the foreigners did NOT bring them to Palestine, as picture in Isa 14:2. The Persians under Cyrus merely allowed them to return back home. Also the Persians never were taken captive by the Jews, and the Jews NEVER “ruled over their oppressors,” that is to say, the Assyrians and Babylonians. So what is this? A failed prophecy? Or does it not speak of the first return which began in 538 BC, but of a second return such as is spoke of Isaiah 11 and Zechariah 10 and other passages.
Micah goes further and says of Jacob,
“They will rule the land of Assyria with the sword,
And the land of Nimrod in its gates.
He will deliver us from the Assyrian,
When he invades our land,
And when he marches within our border.”
Mic 5:6
Jacob/Israel will rule over Assyria? With the sword? This does NOT picture a spiritual rule of the Jews. This would mean that one day Israel would not only rule present day Syria (which is before you could get to Assyria/modern day Iraq), but also Iraq and more. There are a few of Assyrian descent even to this very day. Many of them became Christians in the early centuries of the Christian age, which is also forecast by Isaiah in other passages. So this pictures an hegemony over the Mid-East by Israel. Well it has not happened yet!
Clearly there are many national prophecies of Israel which have not happened yet.
The premillenialists have also noted many of these prophecies, and in many of these particulars are quite correct.
Scriptures are from the World English Bible WEB, a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901.