It is a joy and an honor to contribute to this special volume of Themelios dedicated to celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of New Studies in Biblical Theology. From the very beginning of my theological journey, this series attracted both my eye (at that point in time, with its platinum-hued exterior and crisp artwork on the front cover) as well as my heart and mind. I don’t recall which volume I first picked up and read, but eventually I picked up almost all of them! Along with the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, the NSBT series had a profound influence on my theological development.¹T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, eds., New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000). The same is true of Don Carson, under whom I had the privilege of studying while at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the early 2000s and who later helped edit my volume on Jonah published in 2011.²Daniel C. Timmer, “A Compassionate and Gracious God”: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in Jonah, NSBT 26 (Leicester: Apollos, 2011). Each of these opportunities to interact with Don was memorable.

A first snapshot, this one of Don in the classroom, is set in a doctoral seminar at Trinity focused on the relation between biblical and systematic theology. In each class session, Don would ably and effortlessly discuss various aspects of this complex methodological question and their implications. Midway through the class, the students would be given 5 or 10 minutes to form small groups, each of which would develop an impromptu analysis along the lines of biblical and systematic theology to a topic that Don would announce. I can still hear his soft Canadian accent as he called us to analyze the subject of wrath (in his pronunciation, “wroth”).

About a decade later, I again had the chance to learn from Don, in this case in his role as (then sole) series editor of NSBT. His feedback on my manuscript for the volume on Jonah began with some brief encouragements and then turned to my use of the term “regeneration” to describe the internal change of the sailors in Jonah 1. What strikes me as much now as it did then is the soft tone and gentle argumentation by which he invited me to describe that change more carefully. He began by expressing his agreement with my point in general: “I have no doubt that people cannot truly change … without the work of God taking place within them.” He then shifted, in very mild language (“Yet one cannot help but observe that … ”), to an invitation to think through the issue more deeply: “Are there no differences between the experiences of believers in the old covenant and the experiences of the new covenant [?]” A few lines later, he again indicated that we were thinking along similar lines before pursuing his encouragement to refine my position in the gentlest of terms: “I eschew the bifurcations of the more rigid forms of dispensationalism as much as you do. But I wonder sometimes if … ”³Don Carson, personal communication, July 8, 2009. Don’s patient pedagogy of this fledgling biblical theologian went on for 324 (kind) words, concluding on a decidedly understated note with, “Do you want to give this one a bit more thought?” The melding of Don’s prodigious learning with such patience and gentleness is a stellar example of the integration of Christian character, scholarship, and mentoring, and was enormously valuable to me—and doubtless to all those who interacted with him.

My main task in this article is to summarize some key features of my second contribution to the series, Egypt My People … and Israel My Inheritance.⁴Daniel C. Timmer, ‘Egypt My People … and Israel My Inheritance’: The Non-Israelite Nations in the Latter Prophets, NSBT 63 (London: Apollos, 2025). My initial interest in the prophets was related to the biblical-theological poles of unity and diversity, specifically Jonah as the “odd man out” in the Minor Prophets due to its unique record of an Israelite prophet being sent to a non-Israelite nation in an historical rather than eschatological setting. The redemptive-historical question was multifaceted: what was Israel’s posture toward the nations to be? What kinds of engagement with non-Israelites are attested during the united and divided kingdoms in particular? Why is so little that might be called “mission” evident in the OT’s historical record?

In short order, my interest in Jonah led me to the book of Nahum, often thought to be radically at odds with Jonah.⁵See, for example, Aaron Schart, “The Jonah-Narrative within the Book of the Twelve,” in Perspectives on the Formation of the Book of the Twelve: Methodological Foundations – Redactional Processes – Historical Insights, ed. R. Albertz, J. Nogalski, and J. Wöhrle, BZAW 433 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 109–28, especially 116–18. I eventually became involved in the Book of the Twelve section of the Society of Biblical Literature, where my continued interest in unity and diversity led me to take up the theme of non-Israelites across the Minor Prophets in a volume focused on the synchronic-diachronic tension in academic biblical studies.⁶Daniel C. Timmer, The Non-Israelite Nations in the Book of the Twelve: Thematic Coherence and the Diachronic-Synchronic Relationship in the Minor Prophets, BINS 135 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). The specialized nature of the volume meant that it would likely be read by a few dozen people at most, but I could not think of a suitable way to translate my work into a more accessible and useful form until David Firth’s Including the Stranger appeared in NSBT a few years later.⁷David G. Firth, Including the Stranger: Foreigners in the Former Prophets, NSBT 50 (London: Apollos, 2019). Chiding myself for my thick-headedness, I promptly proposed a volume on non-Israelites across the Latter Prophets, and Don Carson again offered support and encouragement as the project took shape.

Egypt My People reflects my continued interest in the OT prophetic corpus in general, and particularly in the various ways that non-Israelites figure there. With the exception of Hosea, which includes no oracles of any kind concerning foreign nations, and perhaps Obadiah (unless “to rule Mount Esau” in Obadiah 21 refers to Edomite survivors), every book of the prophetic corpus connects both judgment and salvation with non-Israelites. Part of the volume’s raison d’être is to make sense of this diversity with respect to the fates of non-Israelites, which—apart from Jonah—are set in broadly eschatological settings. Essentially, this involves recognizing the different ways that the biblical texts characterize or describe non-Israelites who are condemned and those who are the subjects of oracles of salvation. Not surprisingly, the latter group is routinely described as undergoing profound spiritual transformation and/or coming to enjoy an element of deliverance that is akin to descriptions of the renewed Israelite remnant. Notable examples include the adoption of restored Sodom (alongside Samaria) by restored Judah as its daughters in parallel with the provision of atonement (Ezek 16:53–63) and the permanent inheritance of a portion of the restored land of Canaan by non-Israelite sojourners (47:21–23).

Alongside its exploration of unity in diversity, the volume also explores how oracles concerning the nations function in our present redemptive-historical epoch (when was the last time you heard a sermon based on an oracle against the nations?). The ways that the prophets characterize the nations was crucially important in helping me develop this biblical-theological and hermeneutical path. It took a bit of time for me to find this path, and even more to explore it; eventually, I decided to write an article to ensure that my thinking was sufficiently clear and convincing before continuing.⁸Daniel C. Timmer, “Constructed Identities and Dueling Ideologies: Reading Ancient Israelite Foreign Oracles as Ideological Critique,” BibInt 32 (2024): 445–66. In doing so I built on the insights of H. C. P. Kim, “The Oracles against the Nations,” in The Oxford Handbook on Isaiah, ed. L.-S. Tiemeyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 59–78; Moshe Weinfeld, “The Protest against Imperialism in Ancient Israelite Prophecy,” in The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 169–82; and others. Along the way, I came to realize that an important element in making biblical-theological sense of the prophets’ pronouncements concerning the nations is the supra-ethnic nature of the oracles themselves. That is to say, the oracles do not condemn Assyrians for being “Assyrian” ethnically or for simply being members of the nation of Assyria. Rather, the condemnations of a state or nation for various sins described in moral, religious, and ultimately theological terms primarily have in view a subgroup within that nation that acted in those ways rather than its entire population.

There are numerous examples of this selectivity within a particular nation or group in the prophetic books: the pride of the Assyrian monarch and the destruction of his army (rather than of all of Assyria) in Isaiah 10; the condemnation of Edom’s political and military actors for pride and violence and the contrasting preservation of Edomite women and children whom Yahweh will preserve and care for (Jer 49:7–22); and Nahum’s persistent focus on Assyria’s king, military personnel, and diplomats, all of whom God commits to bringing down, in contrast to the population of Nineveh, which survives the fall of the city and of the empire (Nah 2:10). The frequency of this distinction within a single foreign nation led me to conclude that OT oracles against the nations do “not usually present those groups as simple political entities with homogeneous populations that are equally implicated in the sins for which the prophets condemn them.”⁹Timmer, Egypt My People, 7. Throughout this article, many of my comments are based on the corresponding discussion in the volume.

In the same way, oracles of salvation for the nations are characteristically addressed to a portion of the non-Israelite state or group in question. (The same is true of oracles to Israelite audiences, as the use of terms in the semantic fields of “remnant” or “remainder” makes clear.) Almost as a rule, the empirical extent of each group is difficult to determine with precision. This is the case, for example, with “Egypt” in Isaiah 19. Although the nation’s leaders and idols are at the center of Isaiah’s critique, different images of its deliverance include an undetermined fraction of the population (“five cities,” Isa 19:18) as well as—so it would seem—the entire country after its judgment, as suggested by the merism of an altar in the middle of the country and a pillar to YHWH at its border (Isa 19:19). Similar ambiguity as to the extent of the non-Israelite “remnant” continues throughout the prophetic corpus, as does the authors’ consistent emphasis on the spiritual, moral, and behavioral features that constitute this group’s new identity. Thus Joel announces salvation for all those “who call on the name of YHWH” (Joel 2:32), Amos foretells the integration of “the remnant of Edom and all the nations over whom my name is called” (Amos 9:12), and Micah foretells that nations that had previously opposed Israel/Judah will submit to YHWH and fear him when they witness his astounding deliverance of his people in a second exodus (Mic 7:14–17).

In light of the prophets’ repeated announcements of salvation and judgment concerning non-Israelite “nations,” the reader often has no choice but to recognize the “nation” in question as a bipartite whole. Since one part of the same political entity is the subject of an oracles of salvation and the other the subject of an oracle of judgment, ethnic or national identifying features are simply irrelevant. In other words, those who are condemned are condemned for what they do (that is, in moral and theological terms), not for what they are (that is, in ethnic terms). In the same vein, salvation is announced to non-Israelites regardless of their ethnicity—and despite their being without the covenantal and other advantages Israelites enjoyed (Rom 9:4–5). As a result, an oracle that nominally focuses on a non-Israelite nation is in fact relevant to anyone, anywhere, regardless of ethnicity or nationality, that matches the description of those to whom the prophet announces future judgment or salvation.

On this basis, Egypt My People takes a final hermeneutical step in light of the ideological focus of many of the oracles against the nations. Following its varied and widespread use in the social sciences and politics more generally, ideology has become a useful concept in biblical studies for circumscribing the “network of ideas” that leaders of states—and especially of empires—developed and promulgated to serve political and religious ends.¹⁰See, for example, Shawn Z. Aster, Reflections of Empire in Isaiah 1–39: Responses to Assyrian Ideology, ANEM 19 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2017). In the oracles against the nations, ideology helpfully circumscribes a fairly consistent list of sins that are alleged against royal and military figures in particular as those who represent the portion of the nation that a prophet condemns.¹¹See, for example, Tamás A. Bács and Horst Beinlich, eds., Constructing Authority: 8th Symposium on Egyptian Royal Ideology, Königtum, Staat und Gesellschaft 4.5 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017); Juan C. M. García, “Egypt, Old to New Kingdom (2686–1069 BCE),” in The Oxford World History of Empire, ed. Peter F. Bang, C. A. Bayly, and Walter Scheidel, 2 vols.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 2:13–42; Mario Liverani, Assyria: The Imperial Mission, trans. A. Trameri and J. Valk (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2017); and David S. Vanderhooft, “Babylonian Strategies of Imperial Control in the West,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 235–62. While the term “ideology” draws attention to the intentional and often distorted nature of the realities described by such texts, from another angle ideological texts are simply calculated expressions of ideas and beliefs that make up worldviews. But whereas a worldview is a particular way of knowing and thinking about what exists, what human beings are, and how we should live in light of the nature and telos of what exists, an ideology additionally “serves to recommend, justify or endorse collective action aimed at preserving or changing political practices or institutions.”¹²Michael Freeden, “Ideology,” in Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000), 381.

My attempt to show that attending to the prophets’ critique of ideology is a theologically and homiletically helpful approach begins with a survey of the royal and imperial ideologies of ancient Egypt, Neo-Assyria, Babylon, and Persia that notes their distinctive traits as well as the fundamental elements they have in common. The latter category includes the belief that the empire or state was established and is now maintained by the will of the gods, the contrastingly disordered and dangerous nature of states and empires outside its borders, and the moral goodness of the empire’s actions undertaken with the goal of extending its control (and thus justice and order on its own terms) as far as possible beyond its present borders.

The chapters of the book that are dedicated to individual prophetic books (chapters 3–17) pursue most of these lines of analysis simultaneously: unity and diversity in the prophets’ presentations of the future judgment and salvation of non-Israelites, the hermeneutical significance of the prophets’ focus on the ideologies of the nations (part of which) they condemn, and some of the ways that the New Testament traces the fulfillment of these texts in Jesus Christ, the Christian church, and its mission in the world. The fulfillment of Amos 9:11–12 in the book of Acts is a classic example, so much so that David Peterson proposes that the second half of the book of Acts is “a commentary on Amos 9:11–12 (LXX).”¹³David G. Peterson, “Luke’s Theological Enterprise,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, ed. I. Howard Marshall and David G. Peterson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 531.

The final chapter of Egypt My People explains how one moves from appreciating the prophets’ critiques of the ideologies of various ancient Near Eastern nations to critiquing contemporary ideologies of various kinds on the same theological grounds. It then applies that method to a variety of contemporary issues. As such, it proposes a method for developing cultural apologetics or biblical critical theory that draws on the biblical prophets in particular.¹⁴Christopher Watkin offers valuable insights on prophets in his Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022). Taking a hint from Augustine’s City of God,¹⁵Mehmet Ciftci, “Saint Augustine and the Theological Critique of Ideology,” New Blackfriars 99 (2018): 20–29. I first consider the larger context of modern and postmodern thought in the West as the larger setting for contemporary ideologies. I then describe and synthesize some exemplary Christian critiques of and responses to contemporary ideologies that advocate certain beliefs and actions with respect to the human being (including moral autonomy, gender fluidity, the role of artificial intelligence, and transhumanism), the material world (including consumerist, commercial materialism and the phenomenon of advertising), and, of course, political paradigms, against the backdrop of the increasingly clear failure of political liberalism due to the destructive effects of secular thought.

Building on constructive Christian proposals with respect to these contested domains within especially western cultures—and with an eye to the homiletical and meditative use of the prophets—the volume concludes by drawing attention to the fundamentally individual manifestation of sinful ideology as multifaceted idolatry. “If idolatry can be described as the expression of disordered desires and loves or a ‘way of relating’ to them, ideology formulates a way of seeing [and acting in] the world that corresponds to those disordered loves.”¹⁶Timmer, Egypt My People, 252; citing Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 311, with a nod to David Naugle’s excellent work on disordered loves that draws upon Augustine: Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). Over against the prophets’ condemnation of individual and collective sin, their message of God’s coming salvation points to the gospel as God’s appointed means of restoring proper beliefs and actions in fallen human beings and reconciling them to himself. His kingdom, which the Spirit’s re-creative work establishes, is the only realm in which human beings can truly flourish, even while living in a world that is scarred by sin and opposed to truth. My closing encouragements to laypersons, theologians, and preachers alike “to explore, share, and apply the rich theology of these texts to themselves and their world” sketch some lines along which all readers can better hear, respond to, and live in light of the neglected but strikingly rich and relevant treatment of non-Israelites in the prophetic books of the OT. May it be so!

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