Quotes from John 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.