Isaiah saw it, we are told, ‘in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah’. As we have seen, these were turbulent times, and the immediate future promised to be even more so. Battles were won and lost, kingdoms rose and fell, the world was an unstable and dangerous place in which people struggled to survive and make sense of their lives. History as they experienced it was characterized by constant change—intense, threatening and confusing. And so it must have remained if God had