Chapter 5, The Vision, discusses the message of the prophets that, despite the nightmare that was the narrative history of Israel – faithlessness and exile, there is still hope for the future. God has a plan and a vision for the future of the nation. The nightmare is not the end. God has a vision that provides “symbols to the imagination” and provides new hope for the nation’s future.
The first section is about Hope and its Bases. Hope does not lie in the situation of the nation but in Yhwh’s character and promises. Hope is in Yhwh’s character. grace and compassion, and in his longstanding promises of a future for Israel. The writings of the prophets provide light in a dark and horrible time by revealing Yhwh’s future intention to bless the nation. He owns and rules the land and will return to rule over and take care of it.
Hope lies in Yhwh. It lies in Yhwh's longstanding and present purpose and intention, in Yhwh's honor, grace and compassion, in Yhwh's holiness and rights over Israel, in Yhwh's return to the people and Yhwh's insistence on reigning in its life and in its world. 351
This grace will express itself in compassion. That does not merely mean that Yhwh shows sympathy for the people. Yhwh is not merely someone who comes alongside people and comforts them in their affliction, but someone who removes the causes of affliction. 354
Christians do often speak of their activity as working for God's kingdom or as designed to further God's kingdom or extend God's kingdom. The New Testament never uses such expressions. The only thing Jesus' followers do for God's kingdom is announce it and suffer for it. 368
The reason for hope is that God will do the work of Transforming the People. The nightmare was caused by faithlessness so God must change the heart of his people. He must rebuild the “marriage commitment” that has been broken. He will do this by making his healing presence accessible to his people. This will result in the moral renewal of the nation, repentance and a reaffirming of the covenant. But this will be a “new covenant” which will transform, forgive and make fruitful the hard hearts of the nation. Israel will become what God intended from the beginning.
Healing (Deut. 32.39) is one of the First Testament's more embracing images, as it is in the Gospels. It suggests the breadth of God's concern for people's bodies and spirits. Healing is a wide-ranging image for God putting things right that were wrong... Healing would include both forgiveness of sins an deliverance from the effects of sins, both the sins of Israel and of others. Indeed, the healing of all creation is in view. 377
Forgiving people is one of the most powerful and creative acts human beings ever undertake or that God undertakes. Perhaps it is the fact that Yhwh's restoration of them involves not holding their past unfaithfulness against them that will bring about the people's inner renewal, changing their attitude to Yhwh and winning them at last to acknowledge Yhwh. 386
The prophets recognize that renewal is not merely a matter of changing individuals. Individuals are part of communities and are decisively shaped by their belonging to communities. God would not be satisfied with merely changing individuals as if individuals were self-contained entities that could, for instance, serve God separately from their being part of a community. God chose Israel as a people and wants to turn Israel as a people into an entity that glorifies God. 394
The third section deals with Israel's Response. God reaches out to Israel and they must respond with trust and obedience. Israel must accept God’s discipline and trust that God will restore them (which is not always a given in the short term). Trust involves reverence for Yhwh despite doubts, acknowledgment that God loves them despite the difficulties, trust that God will give life and restoration. Real repentance happens when the sins are owned, God is seen as being right and reparations for sin are offered.
So Yhwh's taking the risk of turning back to Israel needs to be met by Israel's turning, its willingness to accept discipline and face shame and come to trust and revere Yhwh rather than anyone else. Israel needs to acknowledge who Yhwh is and who it is. It needs to see the dynamics of the process whereby things can be put right between it and Yhwh and they can move on. 395
The experience of disaster, escape and captivity will impel such reflection that recognizes what these events say about Yhwh. They are not merely the acts of a judge; indeed arguable a judge would not be so harsh. They are the acts of someone who is heartbroken. And this realization also leads to people's recognizing the loathsomeness of their behavior. 406
For if we cannot accept God's word of grace, it is doubtful whether we have accepted God's assessment of us as wrongdoers. Our self-critique may be simply another expression of our pride, a way of evading God's assessment. If we accept God's Yes, it is a sign that it is truly God's No that we accepted. 410
When the people repent the result will be Renewing the People. The people will re-established and their fortunes will be restored. They will be rebuilt and replanted in the land. They will again belong to Yhwh as his people and again be a part of his plan for future blessing. God will make the return from Babylon a greater, complete Exodus which will result in a reunited, numerous people with a new eternal covenant. God’s Word assured that Cyrus would make the decree to return from Babylon and that the full restoration would happen in the future.
Yes. Yhwh has taken them far away from the sanctuary, but Yhwh has become a scaled-down version of a sanctuary for them in their exile (Ezekiel). It is a bold metaphor. Yhwh is capable of being present with the people far away from Jerusalem, as if Yhwh in person were the sanctuary...Further, exile will not be the end. Scattering will give way to gathering. 421
God can act in the future only in ways that take forward what God has done in the past. This new act will be an expression of God's faithfulness. The new "does not annihilate the old but gathers it up and creates it anew."... "The new thing is the surprising thing, the thing that could never have been expected." 426
When Yhwh does not make any decisions, this does not mean nothing happens, as the pointless and aimless nature of most of world history shows. But when Yhwh decides to speak, declaring that something is to happen, Yhwh's word is the effective causal agent in deciding what happens in the world. It makes things happen. 437
This will result in Renewing the Land. After the exile the land will have had its sabbaths and be ready to be fruitful again. The land will become a great place to live, a place of peace and abundance because the spirit is poured out on it. Yhwh loves his land and will not leave it a wilderness forever.
The promise to Abraham and the deliverance from Egypt are the determinative factors for Israel's destiny... The land is one Yhwh cares about passionately, and it will become a place for a full life, a place characterized by peace and flourishing. 439
The psalm's (72) vision of the faithful exercise of authority, of the protection of the weak, of shalom and the associated flourishing of nature was hardly ever realized in Israel,as it is not realized in the United States or Britain. Isaiah (11) once again affirms that this will not be the end of the story. 443
When the First Testament speaks of the land, it indeed refers to the actual land of Canaan, but when we look at the promises associated with this land, "our gaze is necessarily directed to the paradise lost and restored which is to be the dwelling place of this people, to the miraculously renewed earth upon which this people will some day live amid the other happily and peaceably united peoples...The one land is waiting for the other." 449
With the renewing of the land comes Renewing the City. As the people are blessed Jerusalem will be the city that becomes the center of Yhwh’s rule of the world. The purged city will be renewed, resurrected, repopulated, expanded, protected, secured and become the example of good government. Through its rule the purpose for all of creation will be fulfilled. It will become a shining city that becomes the focus of the world.
The holiness of the temple will extend in a new way through the entire city. (Zech 14.20-21)... The distinction between the everyday and the sacred disappears...It means Yhwh making the whole city holy 452
The new Jerusalem will be like a microcosm of a new cosmos. It will be as if Yhwh has determined to undo all that went wrong about the original creation and start again, not with a paradise garden but with a new garden city, a place that is a joy to Yhwh and a joy to his people. History will be over and creation's purpose will be realized. 461-462
When that light dawns, the nations will recognize what real light is. It is splendor of another league, because it is Yhwh's splendor that is dawning in this city (Is 60.1-3). The nations will recognize the tawdriness of their power, prosperity and splendor and come to admire the real light that has dawned, the splendor of the new Jerusalem that the vision of Isaiah 60 describes. 471
This leads to Renewing the Monarchy. A new king, through whom Yhwh will rule, will bring universal peace. He will rule in the power and with the wisdom of the Spirit. He will restore and protect the poor and marginalized as Davidic shepherd with the strength of Yhwh. He will be a “new shoot from an old tree.” He will not rule to gain power for himself but to humbly serve his people.
Yhwh declares this intention in the context of the failure of the monarchy while it still stands, and again in the context of the fall of the monarchy. There will be a king who comes as a new David, and new shoot from the old tree, one through whom Yhwh rules, who brings shalom, on whom Yhwh's spirit rests, who acknowledges Yhwh, who stands as a shelter from the storm, who shepherds faithfully, who before Yhwh can combine forcefulness and weakness. 476
Reverence for Yhwh generates insight, insight generates reverence for Yhwh.482
Proper acknowledgement of Yhwh (for a king or government) involves taking the necessary aggressive action to protect and deliver the weak and put down the people who take advantage of them. Only when that has happened is Yhwh acknowledged. Ultimately that acknowledgement is certainly destined to characterize the world as a whole (Isaiah 2.2-4) 484
(Zech 9.9-10) This is a king who knows how a relationship with Yhwh and with life works. It embraces faithfulness but weakness, deliverance and ordinariness. This king knows that "the king does not find deliverance through his great army" and that "the horse is a falsehood for deliverance." (Ps 33.16-17)
There will also be Renewing the Priesthood. The future of Levi and the priesthood is assured through God’s forgiveness and recommissioning. Goldingay points out the original intention of God that all the nation be priests and sees this prophecy as fulfilled in the universal priesthood within the church.
As is the case with the monarchy,in light of its failure one might have expected that Yhwh would simply abandon the idea of priesthood, and the failures do not need to be taken into account. But Yhwh abandons neither. 491
Joshua's challenge (Zech 3) is to fulfill the ministry in light of Yhwh's instructions. It is on that basis that he must exercise authority in the temple. And if he does that, he will have access to the court of heaven before which he stands on trial, like a prophet...There will be tricky decisions to be taken, but he will have the resources to make them. 496
There is a more radical promise, though one in keeping with Yhwh's original vision. As is the case with kingship, the first time Yhwh mentions priesthood in connection with Israel, it is the whole people that is the priesthood. (Ex. 19.6). 503
Goldingay concludes by asking Is the Vision the End? He answers it with a no. There is always an afterward as God will continue to grow and bless his people. After the return from Babylon there is still another return for God’s people. After the final great battle there will be another great restoration in which all of God’s promises will be confirmed. Christ is the confirmation that all of God’s promises of final blessing will be fulfilled.
In First Testament faith, thinking about the interim end is dominated by the notion of calamity, but thinking about the ultimate End is dominated by the theme of restoration, renewal and the fulfillment of the creation project... There is thus an "afterward" following on each interim end, as well as an "afterward" to follow on the ultimate End. 505
The problem of our causing a separation is a problem about the church, not about the non-Christian world. It refers to the way the church comes to be identified with the world and thus on the wrong side of the separation distinction, looking from a distance at what it is supposed to be, but separated from that. It finds that God's face is turned away to avoid listening to its prayers. 509
(2 Corinthians 1.20) suggests a different perspective on Christ's significance. He does not so much fulfill God's promises as confirm them. His life, death and resurrection are the ratification of these promises...The prominence of God's promises in First Testament faith makes clear that an orientation to the future consummation of God's purpose is intrinsic to biblical faith. 515
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