For the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater
than the punishment of Sodom,
which was overthrown in a moment,
and no hands were wrung for her. (Lamentations 4:6)

Sodom, for all her wickedness, got wiped out in a flash but Israel, for her unfaithfulness, suffered long under siege and exile and foreign rule. God directly eliminated Sodom but used the instrument of Babylon to punish Israel. God didn’t have the covenant relationship with Sodom that he had with Israel; he had not given his oracles to Sodom, he had not promised to raise up Eve’s seed from Sodom, his promise would flow through Abraham’s seed, not through Sodom’s gates. When Sodom’s wickedness was full their time was over. When Israel’s wickedness was full it was time for their exile till the land had its rest. As far as the nation goes, what purpose does God have to bring Israel back? What promise is he yet to deliver if Jesus has come and they rejected and killed him?

Well, there is still hope. God didn’t punish Israel after Jesus’ death and resurrection they way he’d punished Sodom; that is, fire didn’t fall from heaven and consume Jerusalem. Instead God, as he had done in the first exile, used the instrumentality of a nation, this time Rome, to scatter the Jews and level Jerusalem. So if the pattern noticed above holds, then there is still a future for Israel and Egypt and Assyria and Rome and the rest of the nations since he didn’t wipe them out after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

While it is true that God doesn’t change, it is also true that his purposes for different nations and people are not uniform. At the same time, he doesn’t pretend he didn’t see sin. Jesus died for his people and their sins are atoned for, but when entire nations act wickedly he deals with them as well. Just like in Israel, those who trust him are saved but the nation may be doomed to fall even if it doesn’t involve fireballs from the sky. The promise of Revelation 5:9-10 shows this to be so. There were people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” but there weren’t nations standing there.