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If the first narrative situates us in God’s good, evolving world that has been marred and scarred by human evil, the second narrative situates us in humanity’s oppressive, resistant world in which God is active as liberator—freeing us from external and internal oppression and forming us as the people of God. If the first narrative presents God as creator and faithful reconciler, the second presents God as liberator from external and internal oppression. But the Exodus narrative ends in motion, as it were, with “To Be Continued” on the last frame, because the former slaves, now liberated, are on a journey, en route, in transit. Where will their journey lead? The third narrative gives the answer.

If Genesis is the prequel to Exodus, the third narrative is its sequel: the sacred dream of the peaceable kingdom. Its primal form brims with fertile images of a promised land flowing with milk and honey—a powerful vision for freed slaves traveling through barren wasteland (or later, for nostalgic refugees dreaming of home). It burns brightly, but briefly, in the glory of the reign of King David. But the dream, once it moves from imagination to experience, degenerates and leaves the dreamers unfulfilled.2 Even so, the dream refuses to die, even as the descendants of Abraham live for many generations under a long list of failed regimes. Their nation is torn by civil war, sickened by corruption, threatened by a succession of powerful enemies, and eventually conquered. Its brightest and best are carried away as exiles to Babylon. Even then, under the intense pressures of dislocation and assimilation, the dream doesn’t die, but grows even more fervent.

In fact, during the exile, the dream of a peaceable kingdom becomes even more radical and all-encompassing. It now finds expression less in the language of land or space and more in terms of a day or a time. It morphs from a promised land to a promised time, the Day of the Lord, when oppressors will be overthrown, when corruption and infidelity will be replaced by virtue and integrity, and when the blessing, justice, and shalom of God flow like a river and fill the earth as waters fill the oceans. This rich collage of images, taken from Isaiah, Joel, Hosea, and Micah, deserves to be savored slowly with the imagination fully engaged:3

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more. (Isa. 2:4)

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together;

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together,

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD

as the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:6–9)

For I am about to create new heavens

and a new earth;

the former things shall not be remembered

or come to mind….

I will rejoice in Jerusalem

and delight in my people;

no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

or the cry of distress.

No more shall there be in it

an infant that lives but a few days,

or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;

for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth;

and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;

they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit;

they shall not plant and another eat;

for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,

and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labor in vain,

or bear children for calamity;

for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—

and their descendants