of normal, or even extraordinary, human progress, and so most scholars agree in distinguishing them from ordinary hopes for a better future by calling them “eschatology.”2 Although the word literally means “doctrine of the end,” the OT does not speak of the end of the world, of time, or of history.3 It promises the end of sin (Jer. 33:8), of war (Mic. 4:3), of human infirmity (Isa. 35:5–6a), of hunger (Ezek. 36:30), of killing or harming of any living thing (Isa. 11:9a). One of the distinctive features
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