But Brueggemann also reminds us that while the first task of the Biblical prophets was to criticize the old order, their second task was to energize their hearers with a hope-filled vision of the new reign of God that was to come. “The riddle and insight of biblical faith,” he writes, “is the awareness that only anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy, and only embraced endings permit new beginnings.”
Walter Brueggeman