Hey, this is John at the Bible Project.

Last week, we started a conversation on the podcast about a biblical theme in the Bible,

which we're calling the exile.

It's an event that has shaped the Bible that we know and read today.

It's an event that happened in 586 BC when the Babylonian Empire came and wiped out Jerusalem

and sent many of the Jewish people out of their homeland to live as refugees in a foreign

land.

We closed that episode talking about how the Jewish people, while in exile, were desperately

clinging to this promise that God had made their ancestor Abraham, a promise that they

would have their own homeland and be a people in that land who would bless the whole world

because of their special relationship with the Creator God.

We've come so close with David and Solomon and Moses, but it's failed over and over again.

And so they've realized that in order for it to truly happen.

It's going to have to involve a new David, some kind of new deliverer, a new Moses, David

prophet, deliverer figure.

It's going to have to involve all of the sin and horrible evil and violence that are people

of perpetrated.

That's going to have to be dealt with.

And the evil among the nations is going to have to be dealt with as well.

And that's the tension that the Old Testament closes with.

So as the prophets who were living in these exile camps began to write down their hopes

and prophetic visions of who this new king would be and how this new king would deliver

...