I wonder sometimes if we church folks, we Respectable Religious people, if we don't doubt that such power is enough for us. They come walking home, and nobody needs to threaten or yell or kill to accomplish the homecoming. God just turns on the light, and the lost and exiled ones are drawn to it, like children awakened in the pre-dawn darkness when a light goes on in Mom and Dad's room. God doesn't need a sword or a gun or a missile or even the rattling of a saber. But when God calls the people home-and with them, all sorts of other outsiders from "the nations" beyond, too-God doesn't need an army to do it. Their arrogant and narcissistic king Nebuchadnezzar did what the rulers of empire do, and he took and pillaged and destroyed, and he carried with him the best and the brightest of Judah's future as captives to live in his empire. The exiles had been carried off, of course, at the point of a sword by the Babylonian Empire. It's funny to me-this homecoming scene that the prophet imagines is all God's doing, and it is all described in terms of the gentle power of light, rather than the coercive force of an army.
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