prepared to proclaim that he was lord of universal history and of nations beyond their own. It was an astonishing claim for this people who were apparently helpless before the great empires of their day: … many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD [Yahweh], to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
