These words recall God’s instruction to Israel through Moses in Deuteronomy 12:5, Deuteronomy 12:11, that is, that as his people would settle in their individual inheritances in the land of promise, God himself would also settle in his chosen place. That place would be where the tabernacle would be pitched and so where the Lord would reside among his people and the gospel of reconciliation (that is, how God can dwell among sinners) be daily proclaimed. That place was initially Shiloh and eventually Jerusalem (Zion, Psalm 132:13). It was the sordid condition of the city of Jerusalem that had prompted Nehemiah’s grief and prayer (Nehemiah 1:3).
9 but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’