Behold, the eyes of the Lord Yahweh are on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the surface of the earth; except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob," says Yahweh.
"The house of Jacob ..." is not a mere distinction between the northern and southern kingdoms, for the term stands for "the righteous remnant" of both kingdoms; the true antithesis is between the "sinful kingdom" (8a) and "house of Jacob" as a "divine kernel in the nation, by virtue of its divine election, out of which the Lord will form a new and holy people."[21]  This "kernel" is the "righteous remnant," the true Israel of God, who were never, in fact, identifiable as "the kingdom."  Elijah and the 7,000 who had not bowed to Baal represented the totality of that remnant during the reign of the wicked Ahab (1 Kings 19:10;  Romans 11:4). This righteous remnant was the remnant formed by the true believers in both the secular kingdoms of Israel and Judah, in the same sense that "the sinful kingdom" refers to the same two secular kingdoms.