You're listening to the Bible Project Podcast.

I'm John and today I'm going to continue a conversation with Tim where we talk about

the biblical theme of the day of the Lord.

In the first episode we introduced Babylon as this key biblical image that represents humanity's

corporate evil that oppresses the vulnerable and evil that God is not going to put up with.

In episode two we show how ancient Egypt is a bigger, battered Babylon.

They enslave and kill a minority population, ancient Israel, in order to consolidate their

power.

And God won't have any of it.

He rescues Israel and destroys the king of Egypt.

This moment in Israel's history is referred to as the day.

In the third episode, the last one we looked at how Israel, the freed people, go from

being oppressed to gaining power and becoming the oppressor.

Israel's become a new type of Babylon.

And so in this episode we're going to look at how Israel's prophets react to this new reality.

We're going to read some of their politically charged poetry which is often confusing

to us modern readers.

They almost entirely wrote in poetry.

The language about the day of the Lord uses poetry and metaphor as its main way of talking.

To read poetry literally is to violate the author's intention.

We'll discuss how behind any corrupt human system is a mysterious and dark reality called

evil.

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