The prophets of Israel had a dual role according to scholars: to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. When the people got comfortable they forgot about God and following the ways of God. The prophets would pound away at themes of repentence, renewal, conversion. Shape up or there will be consequences, they prophets proclaimed. When the consequences came they were worse than anyone imagined: the kingdom destroyed, the temple leveled, Jerusalem razed, the king dead, The people were ripped from their homes and livelihoods and taken into a foreign land where they knew no one or nothing. It was then that God sent a different kind of prophet, a comforting prophet. Ezekiel from exile wrote about a restored Israel. I will make with them a covenant of peace; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will multiply them, and put my sanctuary among them forever. No matter how dire things seem God is not finished with us yet. The will of God will not be mocked so even in the valley of darkness, trust in the Lord.
