Gispen also takes ממלכת in this verse both as passive: ‘the service that was required of them as subjects of God’s kingdom was thus priestly in nature’, and at the same time as active: ‘Then Israel would be a kingdom also in the sense that they would rule with him …’88 These observations could have merit. Perhaps no single perspective is adequate to do justice to such a complex passage. The choice of a unique expression with inherently ambivalent meaning may well be a literary device to entice the