The remnant is a recurring theme throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bible.
The Anchor Bible Dictionary describes it as "What is left of a community after it undergoes a catastrophe".
The Remnant of a Remnant
According to the Book of Isaiah, the "remnant" (Hebrew: שְׁאָר, romanized: sh'ár) is a small group of Israelites who will survive the invasion of the Assyrian army under Tiglath-Pileser III (Isaiah 10:20–22). The remnant is promised that they will one day be brought back to the Promised Land by Yahweh (Isaiah 11:11–16). Isaiah again uses the terminology during Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem (Isaiah 37).
The concept of the remnant is taken up by several other prophets, including Amos, Micah, Jeremiah and Zephaniah. In Jeremiah 39–40, the "poor people, who had nothing",[2] who remained in Judah when the rest of its population were deported to Babylon, are referred to as a "remnant".[3] The post-exilic biblical literature (Ezra–Nehemiah, Haggai and Zechariah) consistently refers to the Jews who have returned from the Babylonian captivity as the remnant.
New Testament[edit]
New Testament verses which refer to a faithful "remnant" (Biblical Greek: λεῖμμα, romanized: leîmma) include Romans 11:5, where Paul refers back to Old Testament examples,[4] and Revelation 12:17 ("And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ").