If we choose to stay in our Babel, our comfortable religion that is man-made and untrue, God will have no choice but to deal with us for our own good, the good of His purposes for the nations and for His own glory.

In the central section of Isaiah, YHWH’s ‘servant’ will be the true sacrifice, to deal with the sin which has resulted in exile.150 In the final chapters of Ezekiel and elsewhere (e.g. the Temple Scroll), there will be a new Temple, indicating the restoration of the true cult. The Temple remains the central point of the national hope, the governing

So far, we have seen that Jesus’ kingdom-announcement, made in praxis and story, was stating a double positive claim, and a single negative one. Positively, he claimed that Israel was now at last experiencing the real return from exile, and (as we shall see) that YHWH was now at last returning to Zion. Negatively, he claimed (just as, we may stress