Quotes from John Goldingay

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

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.

What is distinctive and engaging about Jesus is not the novel things he says but the way he says things. He is creative not so much because he says things that are completely new but because he speaks with such authority.

Prayer does not have to be theologically correct. It is a conversation.

In none of the Gospels does Jesus tell his disciples to extend the kingdom, work for the kingdom, build up the kingdom, or further the kingdom.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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).