Quotes from John E. Goldingay

The imprecatory psalms are for us to pray, who are not victims. Indeed, if we do not want to pray them, it raises questions about the shallowness of our own spirituality, theology and ethics. Do we not want to see wrongdoers put down and punished? One

Without realizing it, they're like clay telling the potter that they know more about pottery than he does and that they can form themselves into pots on their own (Is 29:16).

The Babylon whose fall is described is then not merely the historical Babylon, Israel's conqueror, but also the symbolic Babylon. Its fall signifies the dethroning of every power opposed to God.

The first reason is their majesty and their associated arrogance (Is 13:11, 19), which fits with the earlier critique of Assyria and of Judah itself (cf. also Is 16:6).

A second reason is that, conversely, it is morally necessary for the lowly to be lifted up and the underlings exalted.

Third, Yahweh also speaks of exposing the powerlessness of the nations' so-called gods and the uselessness of their so-called insight and capacity to decide what will happen in the world (e.g., Is 19:1-17).

Most of the prophecies explicitly or implicitly incorporate some hope for the nations—for instance, by escaping judgment or finding mercy after judgment.

There is no room for Judah's thinking that its position as the people of God means it will escape if its stance toward Yahweh is no different from theirs.

Whereas we are inclined to equate the reality and the sense of the reality, these are different things—there can be a reality of God's presence and activity whether we feel it or not, and we can have a sense of God's reality and activity but the sense may be false.)

The passages also offer an assurance that God has such resistance under control and will ultimately overwhelm it.

By virtue of being created by God, the world knows how to live and is under obligation to live that way, but it has declined. It has thus "profaned" the earth, made it something God no longer wishes to have anything to do with, something God could not continue to have anything to do with without compromising who he is.

It is said that the difference between God and us is that God never thinks he is us. Genesis suggests some nuancing of that insight. God doesn't mind sharing with us the divine life and the divine image and thus the divine responsibility for the world, and eventually God will become one of us.

One question such events provoke is "What kind of God allows this to happen?" Another question we might ask is, "What kind of creatures are human beings that we should cause and allow this to happen?

the Torah itself sets obedience in the context of trust.

the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel and the way Yahweh shone his light of blessing in Israel's life was designed to become a revelation to other peoples, a means of opening their eyes and releasing them from darkness.

The idea is not that Israel returns to Yahweh and therefore Yahweh forgives it and restores it; it is rather that Yahweh forgives it and restores it, and this action must draw Israel to return to Yahweh (Is 44:21-22).

Ms. Babylon has thus come to see herself as God: "I shall always be here, mistress forever. . . . I and I alone am still here" (Is 47:7, 8). No superpower can ever imagine it will cease to be in power, but this means its pretension is quasi-divine and must be corrected.

The prophets' task is to tell their own people what God intends to do with them, not to think about what people in hundreds of years' time may need to hear, though the preserving of their prophecies implies the conviction that they have ongoing significance. Further

Our relationship with God is not contractual, so that we could fulfill the right conditions and it would have the desired results, as if our relationship with God resembled putting coins in a vending machine. It is a personal relationship, and such relationships involve freedom on both sides. Joel

Jesus' disciples are not people lacking resources, but they are poor because they belong to this people under the oppressive and demoralizing dominion of a foreign power (e.g., Lk 6:20). They are indeed thus poor in spirit (Mt 5:3). Jesus does not focus on a concern for the poor in the sense of people who lacked resources. In

The challenge to Jacob-Israel is to turn to Yahweh and be willing to submit to his intention regarding the fulfillment of his purpose, rather than continuing to insist on working with its own ideas about how that should work out (Is 55:6-13).

Memory relates to ethics as well as to spirituality (the distinction between ethics and spirituality is a Western one and does more harm than good). Memory places obligations upon you. The Israelites were to remember their experience of servitude in Egypt, and treat their servants accordingly.

The nature of the praise and prayer in the Psalms indicates how memory is key to praise and prayer.

Jesus does put radical demands before people, but so did Isaiah and so does Proverbs. The New Testament is new in the same way that Isaiah was new or that Genesis was new over against Exodus.21 While there are statements Jesus makes that no prophet or wise teacher could have made, these are statements such as the "I am" declarations in John's Gospel; they relate to his being the incarnate one and the Savior.