I'm going to go ahead now and get started with some sixth century material, which really is prophetic literature, which confronts the issues that were raised by the destruction, the final destruction of Jerusalem. What was the meaning of this event, and how could it be reconciled with the concept of Israel as God's elect? How could such tremendous evil and suffering be reconciled with the nature of God Himself? This is going to be a question that we'll return in the next lecture when we look at the wisdom literature and the book of Job and some other texts as well as we proceed to the rest of the course. In classical terms, if God is God then He's not good, if all these terrible things happened. And if God is good, then He mustn't be all powerful because He failed to prevent this evil. So that tends to be the dilemma, the way it's phrased. Now Ezekiel was a priest, and he was deported in the first deportation. You remember there was a deportation of exiles in 597, and then the final siege and destruction and deportation of exiles in 587. Ezekiel was among the deportees of 597. He was therefore in exile in Babylon during the final destruction in the fall of Jerusalem in 587. But his priestly background and his priestly interests are clearly reflected in his prophecies. He accuses the Israelites of failing to observe cultic laws, ritual laws, and his promises for the future, and his vision of a restoration we'll see center around a new temple and a restored Jerusalem and temple complex. There's a striking correspondence between Ezekiel and the priestly sources in terms of language and theme, particularly H, the Holiness Code. Now the prophecies in Ezekiel, conveniently, and unlike many of the other prophetic books, actually follow a fairly chronological order. The first section of the book consists of prophecies that were before the final destruction, between 597 and 587. And then beginning in 33 it seems that we have prophecies that followed the destruction. We hear he gets the report of the destruction, and then we see how his tone and his message changes. So in those first twenty-four chapters where you have prophecies that are delivered in Babylon before the destruction, we have three chapters that are devoted to his call and his commission as a prophet. And then we have his inaugural vision. I'll come back and talk about that in a minute, as well as many other visions and symbols. Then you have from chapters 4 to 24 oracles that are condemning Judah and Israel. There are some interesting elements within this. We have the depiction of the kavod, which represents God, departing. We'll talk about that text in a minute. We also have in chapter 18 a very interesting emphasis on individual responsibility for sin. I'll come back and touch on that as well. Chapters 25 to 32 contain oracles against foreign nations, just as we have in Jeremiah and Isaiah. Throughout Ezekiel refers to these nations as the uncircumcised. The tone here is vengeful and very gloating. And these oracles have exerted a very strong influence on the New Testament, particularly the book of Revelation. After 587 Ezekiel prophesied, and those prophecies are contained in the latter part of his book from chapters 33 to 48. So in 33 we hear of the fall of Jerusalem, and then after that oracles of promise and hope for the future. The last chapters from chapter 40 to 48 are visions, Ezekiel's visions of the Restoration, his vision of a rebuilt temple and a rebuilt Jerusalem. So the book opens with a narrative account of Ezekiel's call, about 593 or so, in a Jewish community that's on the river Chabar, which is a large irrigation canal off of the Euphrates in Babylon. And this is the first time that we hear of a call of a prophet outside the land of Israel. It's a remarkable vision, like many of the visions in the book of Ezekiel. It has a sort of surrealistic, almost hallucinatory quality. The vision itself is very reminiscent of descriptions of Baal, the Canaanite storm god. So there's a stormy wind and a huge cloud and a flashing fire. God is writing on a kind of throne chariot. He's enthroned above four magnificent creatures.  There are four huge wheels under this throne chariot, and they are said to gleam like barrel beneath a vast and awe-inspiring expanse, or dome, which gleams like crystal. One of that is the semblance of a throne that is like sapphire, and on the throne was the semblance of a human form that's gleaming like amber, and it's fire encased in a frame which is radiant all about. So this kavod, this cloud that contains or hides the fire that is Yahweh's presence. That is also the term that's used in the Torah, in Exodus, in the priestly sources, to describe the presence of God among his people, this fire that's encased in a cloud, the kavod. In Exodus 24 we read that this kavod had settled on Mount Sinai, representing God's presence. In Exodus 40 this cloud covers the tent of meeting, it fills the tabernacle, so when Ezekiel sees it now he says that it was the appearance of the semblance of the presence of the Lord. When I beheld it I flung myself down on my face, and I heard the voice of someone speaking. Notice this language. It was the semblance of the appearance of the presence. Ezekiel wants to emphasize the transcendent nature of the deity. He's having a vision of something which cannot in fact be seen or perceived, which is a kind of paradox of all of his visions. The prophet's humanity is emphasized in contrast to this transcendent divinity, and that's something that happens throughout Ezekiel. He symbolizes his humanity with this phrase, son of man, ben-adam, son of man. It simply is the Hebrew term for a mortal being as opposed to a divine being.  Now the call of Ezekiel is reminiscent of the call of Jeremiah and Isaiah. He is sent to a nation of rebels, rebels who will not be listening to him. And his commission is symbolized by a scroll that's written in the Bible. And we hear at the end of chapter 2 that inscribed on this scroll are lamentations and dirges and woes. And he's commanded to eat of this scroll and then go to speak to the house of Israel. So he swallows this scroll and all of its dreadful contents that tastes to him as sweet as honey. And then his task is spelled out in chapter 3. He is to be a watchman, one who gives warning of danger, and people will either heed him or not, but each one of them is ultimately responsible for his or her own fate. In a vision in chapter 8, an angel transports Ezekiel to Jerusalem and into the temple courts. And there he sees and gives a very vivid description of the shocking abominations. These are represented as justifying or explaining the destruction of the city. And these descriptions are characterized by more than the usual amount of prophetic hyperbole. As he watches the slaughter and the destruction that's going on there, Ezekiel sees the kavod, that is the presence of Yahweh, arise from the temple and move to the east. Chapter 10, then, verses 18 and 19. The presence of the Lord left the platform of the house and stopped above the cherubs. And I saw the cherubs lift their wings and rise from the earth with the wheels beside them as they departed. And they stopped at the entrance of the eastern gate of the house of the Lord with the presence of the God of Israel above them. And in chapter 11, verses 23 to 25, then the presence of the Lord ascended from the midst of the city and stood on the hill east of the city. A spirit carried me away and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God to the exile community in Caldea. So now he's back to Babylon. And then the vision that I had seen left me and I told the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me. So this image draws on ancient Near Eastern traditions of God's abandoning their cities in anger, leaving them to destruction by another God. The primary difference here is that God, rather than another God, is himself also bringing the destruction. Moreover, God doesn't retire to the heavens. He doesn't abandon his people. He doesn't remain behind with those left in Judah, but he moves into exile. In the book of Ezekiel, those left behind are guilty. God does not stay with them. God moves east with the righteous exiles. Then at the end of the book of Ezekiel, we're going to see a vision of a restored temple. This happens in Ezekiel 43. And here Ezekiel will see the kavod returning from the east and back to the temple. Here coming from the east with a roar like the roar of mighty waters was the presence of the God of Israel, and the earth was lit up by his presence. The presence of the Lord entered the temple by the gate that faced eastward, and lo, the presence of the Lord filled the temple. It was 43 verses 1 through 6. So just as the presence, the Divine Presence, went eastward with the exiles, so it will return with the reestablishment of Israel in her home. And what is significant here is the idea that God is not linked to a particular place, but to a particular people. And the implication then is that God is with his people, even when they are in exile. So Ezekiel preached a message of doom and judgment, like his prophetic predecessors and his contemporaries, but his condemnations tend to emphasize the people's idolatry and their moral impurity. And this, of course, makes sense of his priestly heritage. His denunciations of Jerusalem are among the most lurid and violent that you'll find in the Bible. Again, these prophecies were likely delivered between the two deportations, between 597 and then the final destruction and deportation in 587, 586. And Ezekiel warns that Jerusalem will fall deservedly. He says that rebellion against Babylon would be treason against God. He employs all kinds of very vivid metaphors to describe Israel's situation. Jerusalem, he says, is Sodom's sister, except even more vile. Jerusalem is a vine, but a wild one, or a burned one. She produces nothing of use. Purity language is employed metaphorically throughout Ezekiel. Jerusalem has been utterly defiled, and there are all sorts of images that inspire revulsion in these chapters. So destruction is the only possible remedy. There are metaphors of sexual promiscuity throughout the book. God's destruction of Israel is figured as the abuse doled out by an insanely jealous husband who is violent. And the images are disturbing. They're haunting. They're quite nightmarish. Ezekiel also engages in various dramatic signs, prophetic signs or actions to convey his message. It's something that we've seen in some of the other prophets. But his are so bizarre and so extreme sometimes that he was accused of insanity.  He doesn't mourn when his wife dies in order to illustrate the fact that Yahweh will not mourn the loss of his temple. He binds himself in ropes. He lies on his left side 390 days to symbolize the 390 years of exile of Israel. And then he lies on his right side for 40 days to the length of Judah's captivity, which he says will be 40 years. Neither of these terms of captivity turn out to be correct. But finally he shaves his beard and his hair, and he burns a third of it. He strikes a third of it with his sword, and he scatters a third of it to the winds. He just keeps a few hairs bound up in his robe. And this is to symbolize the destruction of a third of the people by pestilence and famine, a third of the people by violence, and the exile of a third to Babylon. Only a few will God allow to escape. Ezekiel makes it clear that those who ignore the warnings are doomed, those who heed will be spared. And in this he sounds the theme of individual responsibility that is so characteristic of Ezekiel. When you listen to the following passage and compare it to or think about other verses or terms in the Torah that you've studied that may relate to the same topic, how is he modifying those earlier ideas? This is all from chapter 18, various verses throughout. The word of the Lord came to me. What do you mean by quoting this proverb upon the soil of Israel?  As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no longer be current among you in Israel. Consider, all lives are mine. The life of the parent and the life of the child are both mine. The person who sins only he shall die. A child shall not share the burden of a parent's guilt, nor shall a parent share the burden of a child's guilt. The righteousness of the righteous shall be accounted to him alone, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be accounted to him alone. Moreover, if the wicked one repents of all the sins that he committed and keeps all my laws and does what is just and right, he shall live, he shall not die. Is it my desire that a wicked person shall die, says the Lord God? Rather that he shall turn back from his ways and live. So too, if a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does wrong, practicing the very abominations that the wicked person practiced, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds that he did shall be remembered. Because of his treachery he has practiced, and the sins he has committed. Because of these he shall die. Be assured, O house of Israel, I will judge each one of you according to his ways, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn back from all your transgressions. Let them not be a stumbling block of guilt for you. Cast away all the transgressions by which you have offended, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit that you may not die, O house of Israel. For it is not my desire that anyone shall die, declares the Lord God. Repent, therefore, and live. It's an important Torah idea that Ezekiel is rejecting or contradicting here. And that's the Torah principle of collective or even intergenerational punishment. It's found most famously in the Second Commandment the decoration that God punishes children for the sins of their fathers under the fourth generation. Now, we need to note that we're talking about divine justice here and not human justice. As we saw in our study of biblical law in the sphere of human justice, only the guilty are punished in Israelite law. You don't have, you know, literal punishment. Someone kills someone's son, then their son is put to death. That idea is rejected in biblical law. But God operates according to a different principle, a principle of collective responsibility. And that principle is understood in the early sources quite positively, that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children is an expression of God's mercy. Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7, describes God as merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, and thus tolerating sin, though not completely clearing the guilty. As a mercy, he spreads out the punishment over three or four generations. So this notion is tied up with the aspect of God's mercy. But evidently there are some who found this idea unjust, and other biblical passages try to bring a different sense of justice to this picture. And they emphasize that the third and fourth generations themselves must be wicked. That seems to be the case in Exodus 20, verse 5. The book of Chronicles, which is a rewrite of the historical material, the historical narrative in the book of Kings, rewrites that material in a manner that never explains a catastrophe on the basis of guilt incurred by someone other than the one experiencing the catastrophe. In other words, it rejects the Deuteronomistic historians' device of delayed punishment, which you'll remember we discussed. It changes the narrative account so that no one is in time committed by someone else. It isn't the sin of an earlier generation that's finally visited upon a grandson or a king of a later generation. So it seems that after 586, or certainly in Ezekiel's case, some accepted the idea that the nation was suffering because of the accumulated guilt of previous generations, notably the Deuteronomist, but for others, the idea of accumulated guilt and intergenerational punishment seemed to lose some of its explanatory power, perhaps because the destruction and the exile seemed devastatingly severe punishments that didn't fit the individual crimes. So Ezekiel is one who rejects the doctrine of collective responsibility in the operation of divine justice. In Chapter 18, he responds to the idea of suffering for the sins of one's ancestors by declaring that God isn't going to work that way anymore. God will no longer punish people collectively. Each one will be judged individually. Only the sinner will be punished. And that's a major departure from Exodus 34 and even from the contemporaneous Deuteronomistic view. And at this point I think we would do well to remind ourselves of the nature of the biblical text. In the opening lecture I asked you to set aside certain presuppositions about the biblical text. One of them is that it is a uniform or unified text with a single doctrine or theology. I asked you to remember that the Bible isn't a book, it's a library, it's a library of works that originate in vastly different historical periods, vastly different historical situations. It responds to a variety of shifting needs and events and reflects a range of perceptions about God and His relation to creation and to Israel. It isn't a book of theology, that is to say, rational argumentation in support of certain doctrines about God. And it most certainly doesn't speak with a single voice on points of theology or matters that are of traditional concern to the discipline of theology. Doctrine isn't its concern. Understanding and making sense of the historical odyssey of the nation of Israel in covenant with God, that is its concern. And so we're going to find many different interpretations of the meaning of that history and the nature of that God and the meaning of that covenant. And certainly there are some basic points of agreement, but even some of the most basic points of agreement do not pass without some contestation. So, for example, the basic point that humans are free moral agents, this seems to be clearly assumed throughout most of the books of this little library, but there are some isolated episodes that would appear to contradict even that most basic assumption. God hardens Pharaoh's heart. God seals the people's ears sometimes so that they will not hear the message of the prophets or will not understand them until a later day. To be sure, there are only a few of these contradictory passages, but they do exist. And so here we find also a major shift in the Exilic period away from the tendency to see divine justice working through collective or intergenerational punishment to the idea of the individual's culpability before God. I shouldn't say a shift away. We see a rising, a dialectic. This isn't a linear progression. These are different ideas coming out at different times and receiving emphasis at different times. But this kind of polyphony then didn't impinge upon the authority of the Hebrew Bible for the nation of Israel, because the Bible's authority doesn't derive from some supposed consistency or univocality. That's a modern notion and it's based on Hellenistic ideals of truth as singular. Western culture, influenced by Greek philosophical traditions, defines truth in monistic terms, only that which contains no contradiction is true and only that which is true is authoritative. The notions are somewhat alien to the ancient non-Hellenized world. The Bible doesn't strive to present philosophical truth. It presents the best efforts of sages and prophets and scribes and visionaries to respond to and to explain the crises of the nation over a period of centuries. And its authority derives from the explanatory power of its insight into and understanding of God's governance of the world and his plans for Israel. So those insights and those understandings may shift and even stand in contradiction with one another. But they're not mutually exclusive and their contradictions don't affect their authority, their ability to explain, to console, their ability to nourish the faith of a people, convinced that God would never desert them, no matter how difficult it may be to understand his interactions with them. So back to Ezekiel now. And in chapter 33 we learn that a fugitive from Jerusalem brings news of the fall of Jerusalem. So it's about 587, 586. And when he hears this, Ezekiel exchanges his message of doom for a message of hope. Before the fall of the city, his task had been to shatter the people's illusions. He wanted to shake them out of their complacency, and now reduced to despair and remorse. The people are reduced to despair and remorse, and his task is to offer reassurance and hope. God is going to initiate a new beginning. Though Israel's punishment was deserved, it was not, according to Ezekiel, a sign of the end of the relationship between Yahweh and his people. And a new Israel would rise from the remnant of Judah and Israel. And he expresses this restoration by means of many metaphors and visions. So chapter 34 condemns the shepherds. This is a very common ancient Near Eastern metaphor for the leadership of a people. A king is always a shepherd and so on. So chapter 34 condemns the shepherds of the people and promises to set up in the future one shepherd of the House of David to be prince among the people. Chapter 36 uses metaphors of purity and cleansing. Israel will be cleansed from the impurities of the past. She'll be given a new covenant of the heart. This is verses 24 and 25 in chapter 36. I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land.  I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your fetishes. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow my laws and faithfully to observe my rules. There's echoes here of Jeremiah also. And then you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. So we have, again, this almost utopian redesign of human nature that we heard in Jeremiah, one in which the problems that are associated with the exercise of free will may be obviated. Another metaphor that's used for the restoration of a new Israel out of the remnant of the old is a metaphor of revival from death. And this is found in chapter 37, a very, very famous passage, Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. The hand of the Lord came upon me. He took me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the valley. He led me all around them. There were very many of them spread over the valley, and they were very dry. And he said to me, oh, mortal, can these bones live again? I replied, oh, Lord God, only you know. Very diplomatic answer. And he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, oh, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. And thus said the Lord God to these bones, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live again.  And I will put breath into you, and you shall live again. And you shall know that I am the Lord. I prophesied, as I had been commanded. And while I was prophesying, suddenly there was a sound of rattling, and the bones came together, bone to matching bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had grown, and skin had formed over them. The breath entered them, and they came to life, and stood up on their feet, a vast multitude. And he said to me, oh, mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, our bones are dried up, our house is gone, we are doomed.  You shall know, O my people, that I am the Lord.  Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and have acted, declares the Lord. So in the interpretation that follows the vision, we're told that the bones symbolize Israel now in the state, in exile. In their despair they're crying, our bones are dried up, we're dead. Our hope is lost. And God promises to raise Israel from the grave, which is the metaphor for exile, and restore her to her own land, as one people, north and south, with one prince, to rule over her. This text has often been decontextualized and cited as an Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible source, for the doctrine of literal resurrection after death, as if it's speaking about literal resurrection. But I think in its context it's quite clear that it is one of many metaphors that Ezekiel uses throughout this section for the redemption of the community from exile, the restoration of the people back in their own land. At the center of the restored community that Ezekiel envisions is a new Jerusalem, and at its center is a rebuilt temple, and it's described in great detail in the last nine chapters of the book. In Ezekiel's Utopian vision, the land is equally allotted. It's divided up and equally allotted among all twelve tribes now, who will be brought back. And Jerusalem lies in the center, with twelve great gates, one for each tribe, surrounding it. It's the—this temple is the source of a never-ending river that gushes forth from it, a river that will make the dead sea flow with fresh water again. Ezekiel sees Zadokite priests presiding in the temple. They are assisted by Levites who are just menials, they're sort of demoted in his vision, and he insists no foreigners will be permitted entry. And we're going to see that that's a view that wasn't shared by others in the post-destruction era. While Ezekiel believed that God would restore a purified Israel to its land under a Davidic monarchy, and he prophesied to this effect, he, like Jeremiah, also maintained that a relationship with God was possible in the meantime, a relationship outside the chosen land. And the Jewish diaspora, right? Diaspora refers to a community living outside of its homeland. The Jewish diaspora was a new thing. It was a religious national body of a type that had not been seen before. You had a people remaining loyal to their God while in exile from their own land, and what was believed to be God's land. Without worshiping him cultically or by means of sacrifice, remember the only legitimate site for an altar or for sacrifice to God is Jerusalem. And in time slowly a new worship will be fashioned, one without sacrifice, one that consists of prayer and confession and fasts and other kinds of ritual observances. Three times a day Jews will pray and they'll pray in the direction of Jerusalem. Worship in synagogues eventually will come into being. And the importance of the Sabbath will grow, the Sabbath as a memorial of the covenant and a symbol of Jewish faith. And so you also find, beginning, shortly after this period, for the first time, non-Jews are joining themselves to Yahweh, adopting this religion of Israel out of religious conviction, not simply because they may be residing in the land and have to follow the God's laws. This is outside the land. You have people choosing to opt into this community. So, again, we see that as the history of the nation of Israel came to an end the history of Judaism, the religion Judaism begins. So, in Ezekiel we've seen one response to the national disaster and the exile, the idea that while suffering and punishment are fully deserved, a relationship with God remains possible. God is with His people, even in exile. A second response to the destruction and exile can be in the anonymous writings that are appended to the book of Isaiah. I mentioned these writings briefly. We'll be able to look now at what's been called Second Isaiah. So, there are two discrete units of material that are appended to Isaiah. Chapters 40 to 55 are referred to as Second Isaiah, and chapters 56 to 66 are referred to as Third Isaiah. And these chapters differ from Isaiah proper, the eighth-century prophet, in several ways. It's clear, first of all, that these parts of Isaiah were written after the exile. Two large parts of Isaiah, Third Isaiah were written after the exile, all of Second Isaiah. And Isaiah proper was clearly written in the eighth century on into the early seventh century. Jerusalem is referred to as destroyed. The audience that's addressed is living in exile. Babylon is the oppressor, not Assyria. It is the oppressor in the time of Isaiah proper. So, the appended materials even seem to know of the overthrow of the Babylonians. That's going to happen in about 539, when Cyrus of Persia will conquer the Babylonians. We have passages that express some euphoria over this, because Cyrus, of course, authorized the Jews to return from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. There are also all kinds of stylistic differences between First Isaiah and Second and Third Isaiah. Second and Third Isaiah, for example, have no biographical data, and First Isaiah has quite a bit. These materials also have a different theology of history, a different understanding of history, a different attitude towards foreign nations, and a very strong renewed emphasis on monotheism. And these also mark it as different. Among the scrolls that were found in the caves at Dead Sea, we have a very large and very famous Isaiah scroll, which is now in a museum in Jerusalem. And on the scroll there's a gap after Isaiah 39, and a new column starts with Isaiah 40. So, it seems to signal some sort of implicit recognition that there's a difference between these two sections. They're not the same units, not the same author, perhaps. So, we're going to talk right now about Second Isaiah, because this is a holy post-destruction work. The more inaugural oracle that occurs in Chapter 40 is an oracle of consolation, it's an oracle of comfort. And the prophet sees a straight and level highway prepared in the wilderness for a dramatic procession of Yahweh the shepherd, who will lead his people back to Jerusalem. Very, very famous, made very famous by Handel's Messiah, actually. So, Chapter 40, taking from various verses in this chapter. Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and declare to her that her term of service is over, that her iniquity is expiated, for she has received at the hand of the Lord double for all her sins. A voice rings out, clear in the desert a road for the Lord, level in the wilderness a highway for our God, let every valley be raised, every hill and mount made low, let the rugged ground become level, and the ridges become a plain, the presence of the Lord shall appear, as one shall behold, for the Lord himself has spoken. A voice rings out, proclaim. Another asks, what shall I proclaim? All flesh is grass, all its goodness like flowers of the field, but the word of our God is always fulfilled. Behold, the Lord God comes in might, like a shepherd he pastures his flock. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them in his bosom. Gently he drives the mother's sheep. So this highway will appear, leading the exile straight to Jerusalem. All of the topography will be flattened and God will lead them as a shepherd leads the lamb. Why? Because the word of the Lord is always fulfilled. So what this voice is proclaiming is a literal return from exile. God's opening a highway. He's leading his flock home like a shepherd in a new exodus. And this is an idea that's so important that it recurs at the end of the unit as well in Chapter 55, the idea of a new exodus. A second key theme that sounded at the beginning and end of the unit again. So it happens in Chapter 40 and again in Chapter 55 is this idea that the word of our God is always fulfilled, or in some translations the word of our God stands forever. This idea is the essence of the Israelites' hope during the period of captivity and exile. And it appears in the First Oracle. It's beautifully restated in the Last Oracle. Chapter 55, verses 10 through 12. So the everlasting word of the Lord is guaranteed fulfillment specifically to bring his people home in a new exodus. These are ideas. They form an envelope or an inclusio, that kind of literary structure where something is mentioned at the beginning and again at the end to form an inclusio or an envelope around the entire unit of 2nd Isaiah. We see also in 2nd Isaiah an extreme monotheism. The monotheism is explicit, of course, in Isaiah. Implicit, I'm sorry, implicit in Isaiah, but it becomes quite explicit in 2nd Isaiah. As we've seen, to come to terms with the destruction of 587 entails the acceptance of the idea that Israel's punishment was deserved and that Yahweh controls, and Yahweh's control of history means he controls not only Israel but all other nations as well, and can use them for his purpose, including punishing Israel. There's no power other than Yahweh. So referring then to the rise and fall of nations, Isaiah 41 verse 4 states, Who has wrought and achieved this? He who announced the generations from the start, I the Lord, who was first and will be with the last as well, the first and the last, which is a way of saying everything, all-inclusive, there is nothing but me. Isaiah 44 satirizes those nations who make and worship idols and ridicules the folly and stupidity of ascribing divinity to that which one has created with one's own hands. In Isaiah 41 God states his case against these vain and useless idols. He summons them to answer for themselves, show that they are gods by announcing something that will occur, announcing what will occur and seeing if it comes true. Let them approach and tell us what will happen, tell us what has occurred and we will take note of it, or announce to us what will occur and we may know the outcome, foretell what is yet to happen, that we may know that you are gods. Do anything, good or bad, that we may be awed and see why you are less than nothing. Your effect is less than nullity. One who chooses you is an abomination. But this is only half the picture, because not only are the gods of the nations no gods, but Yahweh is the true God of all of these other nations. So who raised Cyrus of Persia from the north to sweep through the ancient Near East and conquer the Babylonians? No one but Yahweh. Isaiah 41, I have roused him from the north and he has come, and he has trampled rulers like mud, like a potter treading clay. The things once predicted to Zion, behold, here they are. So in these passages, the author of Second Isaiah is drawing the logical conclusion, perhaps, towards which Israelite religion has tended from its inception. Yahweh, once the Canaanite deity, then the God of Israel's patriarchs, then the national God of Israel is here, the Lord of universal history. The only real God Second Isaiah is claiming, is the God of Israel. Second Isaiah is also quite well known for the servant songs that it contains. The famous servant songs, these occur scattered in chapter 42, chapter 49, chapter 50, and then most extensively 52, 13 to 53, 12, so much of 52 and 53. The identity of this servant, I'll read some of these passages in a minute, but it refers to this servant, God's servant. And the identity of the servant has been a puzzle to biblical interpreters for centuries. Sometimes the servant is referred to as a collective figure, sometimes the servant is referred to as an individual figure. In chapter 49, the servant is referred to or described as a prophet with a universal message, rather than a message for the Israelites alone. But then there's some ambiguity here. The servant is first identified, or the prophet, the servant or prophet, is first identified as Israel herself. So in chapter 49, verses 1 to 3, The Lord appointed me before I was born. He named me while I was in my mother's womb.  He hid me in the shadow of his hand, and he made me like a polished arrow. He concealed me in his quiver, and he said to me, You are my servant, Israel, in whom I glory. And yet in verse 5 it would seem that this prophet, servant, has a mission to Israel, to bring her back to Yahweh. And that would imply that the servant or prophet is not Israel. Verse 5, And now the Lord has resolved, He who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring back Jacob to himself, that Israel may be restored to him. Then the mission is expanded a little bit in verse 6, For he has said, It is too little that you should be my servant, in that I raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel. I will also make you a light unto the nations, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. Chapter 50, quite famously, refers to the servant as rebellious and as persecuted. Verse 6, I offered my back to the floggers, and my cheeks to those who tore out my hair. I did not hide my face from insult and spittle. But it's the famous and difficult passage in Isaiah 53 that most movingly describes the suffering and sorrow of God's servant. 53 verses 3 to 11. He was despised. We held him of no account. Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, our suffering that he endured. We accounted him, plagued, smitten and afflicted by God, but he was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities. He bore the chastisement that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. We all went astray, like sheep, each going his own way, and the Lord visited upon him the guilt of all of us. He was maltreated, yet he was submissive.  He did not open his mouth, and his grave was set among the wicked and with the rich in his death, though he had done no injustice and had spoken no falsehood. But the Lord chose to crush him by disease, by himself and offering for guilt. He might see offspring and have long life, and that through him the Lord's purpose might prosper. There have been many attempts to equate this man of sorrows with all kinds of figures. Early on, Jesus's followers saw Jesus as a suffering servant of God in Isaiah. The New Testament writers specifically borrowed passages from Isaiah, particularly this chapter, chapter 33, when constructing their narratives of Jesus, taking those verses and using them in describing his story. So, he is depicted as the innocent and righteous servant who suffered for the sins of others. In the teachings of Paul, however, you have a different use of these verses. Christians generally are identified as a servant who suffers with and for Jesus. Despite these later theological interpretations, the anonymous writer of Second Isaiah wasn't writing about a remote Nazarene teacher and charismatic healer who would live more than five centuries later. Examined in its original context, it appears most likely that the servant is Israel herself, described metaphorically as an individual whose present suffering and humiliation is due to the sins of other nations, but whose future restoration and exultation will cause astonishment among those nations who will then be humbled to Yahweh. But there are problems with even this interpretation, and you should be aware of that. This has never been solved satisfactorily. The main problem with interpreting Israel as the servant is the verse that describes the servant as having a mission to Israel. It seems a little odd to say that Israel bears a mission to Israel. But this problem can be solved if we remember that Israel was often divided in prophetic rhetoric. So, perhaps the writer envisions a mission of one part, the righteous part, to the other, the part that has gone astray. Leaving aside this difficulty, the more prominent motif in the servant song of Isaiah is that the servant has a mission to the world. That's the more prominent motif, and that is a role that would suit Israel quite well. Furthermore, you have the phrase, Israel my servant, appearing in Second Isaiah about eight times. So, the idea of Israel as God's servant to the nations is clearly a part of Isaiah's conceptual world. And since we're dealing with poetry rather than a rigorously consistent metaphysical treatise, it shouldn't be too surprising that sometimes a servant is spoken of as a group, collectively, sometimes as an individual. The same holds true of Israel in general, by the way, throughout much of the literature. Sometimes Israel is spoken of in plural terms, and sometimes as a single individual. So, in its original context, it's likely that the servant refers to Israel herself. If the servant is Israel, then we can see how Second Isaiah is another response to the events of 587. And it's ultimately a positive interpretation, a positive response. The punishment that Israel suffered, even if excessive. Remember, Isaiah 40 claims that Israel has suffered doubled for her sins. So, it's been an excessive punishment. But that punishment isn't meaningless. It will lead to redemption. Israel will be healed by her wounds. God's word will not return unfulfilled. And in addition, suffering leads to a new role for Israel among the nations. Second Isaiah expresses a new self-awareness that is taking hold in the exile. Israel saw itself as the faithful servant of Yahweh, a servant whose loyalty to God in this dark time would serve to broadcast the knowledge of God throughout the nations. So, Israel was chosen from the womb to serve God's universal purpose. Israel suffered unobserved by others, but eventually this would make possible the recognition of God by those others, where once God covenanted with David to lead his people Israel. He now covenants with Israel to lead the nations of the world in God's way. It's an expansion of God's purpose. And this is an idea that appears in Isaiah 55 verses 3-5. Incline your ear and come to me. Harken, and you shall be revived. And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the enduring loyalty promised to David, the covenant and loyalty that was promised to David. I'm now transferring to you. As I made him a leader of peoples, a prince and commander of peoples, so you shall summon a nation who you did not know, and a nation that did not know you shall come running to you for the sake of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel who has glorified you. So God makes an eternal covenant with Israel, like that he once concluded with David. And the function of the institutions of the Old Order are transferred to the nation as a whole. What kings and priests and prophets did for Israel, Israel will now do for the whole world. As the mediator between the only God and the nations of the world, she is a light unto them, and all will ascend to her because from her will come Torah, instruction in the divine will, and salvation. This is the idea of universal mission that comes out of 2nd Isaiah. When we come back on Wednesday, we're going to take a look at what I think is probably the single most profound book in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Job. And again, I'll remind you that final paper information will be available on the classes server tonight. I want you to have it in time to be able to ask questions of your T.F. or myself about the assignment. It's pretty detailed, so sit and read through it carefully. Be there later tonight.


Talk about entitlements, you know, there is a real crisis right now regarding U.S. debt and the ability of the U.S. government to pay back the debt. The Congress literally has to raise the debt limits so that the government can issue more debt so it can pay back the previous debt. Not only pay expenses, pay entitlements, pay for all the things the government pays for, but also to be able to pay to pay back the debt that expires and to pay interest on the debt. And without issuers of new debt it is almost impossible, with some exceptions of some gimmickry the Treasury might be able to do, but it's impossible really to pay off of the U.S. debt and and you might see the U.S. government actually default on its debt that is not pay its creditors. Never happened in U.S. history. One indication that this is a real threat, that the market at least, markets really believe that this is a real threat, is that the cost of insuring America's debt against the fault skyrocketed. Now you can, using credit default swaps, buy in a sense insurance that if, that pays you if the U.S. defaults on the debt. Now usually these credit defaults props are super cheap because the probability that the U.S. government will actually default on debt is assumed to be close to zero. But right now the price to buy this insurance, to buy these credit default swaps, CDSs, on U.S. Treasury bonds is actually higher than to buy insurance against Greek bonds, Mexican bonds, Brazilian bonds. In other words, the U.S. is more likely to default on its debt, not because the U.S. doesn't have the money to do it, not because the U.S. can issue debt, but because of kind of the political stalemate that we're in, the kind of political jockeying of our system. The probability of the U.S. defaulting on its debt is higher right now than Greece, Mexico, or Brazil.  Now, I think Kevin McCarthy is using this as Republicans used it in 2011 or 2012 to try to get a Democratic president to agree to spending cuts. Obama ultimately agreed to that. And in the last six years of the Obama administration, from 2012 until 2010, really, so this was in 2011. From 2011 until 2017, actually saw as a percentage of GDP U.S. spending stabilize and actually go down after the spike of the stimulus package post financial crisis. Kevin McCarthy is trying to do the same thing now with Biden. Biden is resisting. They're playing chicken to see who will give. You know, it's hard to tell. I think ultimately they will cut a deal. I think Biden ultimately will agree to spending cuts, just like Obama did. But we will see. I mean, some of the economists advising Biden are far more committed to big government spending than I think economists were during the Obama era. And Biden's agenda is kind of linked to a lot of spending. So we'll see what happens. But it is interesting. I don't think I ever thought I'd see U.S. credit default swaps selling at a higher price in Greece, Mexico, and Brazil.  And by the way, again, Trump is not helping here because Trump is saying entitlements off the table. Kevin McCarthy can't count entitlements. So what is Kevin McCarthy? You have to cut a lot because he can't cut the fence and he can't count entitlements. He has to cut a lot of everything else. And that is a tricky political position. Once you actually look at the details of what's being cut for the Republicans. And it's tricky to get a deal with Biden. But you know, I view this as theater more than anything else. And it's interesting to watch and interesting to see how convoluted all this becomes and how they entangle themselves in this. I don't think at the end a huge amount of damage is done to the U.S. economy one way or the other. However, this is settled. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to youronbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.


Good governance. The word and how. The word governance derives ultimately from the Greek verb kubanyo, meaning to stay. It's occasional use in English to refer to the specific activity of rule in a country. According to Wikipedia, governance is all the processes of interaction, be they through laws, norms, power or language of an organized society over a social system, be they family, tribe, former or informal organization, territory or across territories. Governance objective. The main function or aim a governance system tend to achieve, be it of a country, society or an organization is summarized by the following. Decision making, creation of laws or constitution, enforcement, creation of access, occasional management of resources, justice delivery, security, achieving good governance. Good governance is a guarantee of the expectation of the governed. It employs fairness and upholding common values above individual interests. Joseph Robinette Biden Junior, the 46th and current president of the United States, once said that fighting corruption is not just good governance, it's self-defense, it's patriotism. This means that everyone from those in the position of authority or in the government to those at the grassroot level in a nation should make their personal responsibility to protect their nation or society from the shackles of parochialism, safe agrandizment and personal gain at the expense of common national values and progress. In order for a governance system to be viewed as good for its people, the following should be attained. Empathy in dealing with different constituents of the governed. There should be a healthy balance between equity and equality, inclusiveness and fairness. No national of a nation is more national than any other national of that nation but within and outside the reach of that nation. Putting it in local context, no Nigerian is more Nigerian than any other Nigerian but within and outside Nigeria. Thus, good governance should ensure that every constituent of the governed is expected and factored in fairly in decision making and planning. Provision of enabling environments, high integrity quotients and transparency, open to constructive criticism and feedback, building strong institutions. In conclusion, let us ponder on these words of Raghuran Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Strong government does not mean simply military power or an efficient intelligence apparatus. Instead, it should be mean, effective, fair administration, in other words, good governance. When you talk about good governance, I think my experience, I have not had good governance as I was born. I have not experienced one, let me put it that way. I have seen it in other countries but I have not experienced one and it is unfortunate, very much unfortunate. Every patriotic Nigerian wants to see a better Nigeria. Every patriotic Nigeria wants the fact that whoever I am putting into voting for in that election would give returns on or would deliver on all the things that he is promised, he more has promised. So it begs the problem that we don't get to see good governance in Nigeria which is so unfortunate. We always refer to countries like Singapore, we refer to countries like the United States and we always want to become like them but realize that the foundation is that we have to be conscious of the fact that we are putting in the right people in power that way we can then demand for good governance and also there is a thing of where most times we tend not to even demand for good governance we assume that we will get it but it doesn't happen.  I feel you're concerned because when in this situation I believe that good governance is a process. So I want to specifically through two pointers to Victor and their remote conversation.  What can you see in this situation where the government of Nigeria as seen by various administrations before this current one find it difficult to deal with feedback. In this case, feedback would come in terms of maybe social media banter or protests. There is always a recurring decimal in regards to we don't want to look feedback. The next thing is we send the law enforcement agent to clamp them down. So what can you see about the government and the next thing is that Raymond is going to talk more about creating an enabling environment especially for the offshoot of tech, technology, young people participating in tech. So Victor, I want to hear your thoughts on that. Thank you so much Elijah. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. So when people taste power, I was speaking to a young chap and said listen if you're getting there, how are you sure you're going to make a difference really? We don't know. When you squeeze something, I said that before when you squeeze something, when something goes through pressure the real content comes out. So you don't even know if you are corrupt until you taste power. So we can just be tweeting, oh we need to get the old guys out and everything but when you get in there I mean look at the answers and all of that. Like there was division, even the answers. Some people were for this group, so we were for this group, who started the answers. I mean it was just a war around who started the answers movement. Who cares about who started it? So someone is trying to say oh I am the pioneer, I am the initiator of the answers. This is just answers. So why did I become the governor of the president? I mean so I think why most of our leaders in power do not take feedback very in good faith or seriously might be from what I said earlier which is when you taste power and it goes back to personal values. Family is the smallest unit of a nation. Cell is the smallest unit of life to fix the societal decadence, the moral decadence, the governance decadence. We need to go back to family because the guys that couldn't pass Waik, the guys that jumped friends in class, the guys that are terrorizing people in streets, young guys that will end up in power in the next few years. So if you don't do something about it, if you don't fix that values from the grassroots, then they're going to go run for power. And they say I mean bad things continue to happen when good people do nothing. So because of the way the polity is so structured, good people do not want to go risk their lives. So what happens is the guy that couldn't pass Jamp, the guy that couldn't pass Waik, the guy that was a dropout would end up becoming the governor. And what happens, what kind of values has he built or has he or she built from that fundamental? So let's go back to the roots, to the fundamentals, the grassroots and begin to incorkit proper value system. I think that's how we can begin to create that chain of good governance. Can I see something? Sure, sure. Rima, just hold on a bit before you respond. The lady wants to say something. So I mean in addition to all Vita said, I'm thinking we need to build institutions. Because the truth is, regardless of whether you bring in... I mean if you take this crop of politicians to a country that has solid institutions, they would not... They would not survive. They would not be corrupt. They would not do anything because they know the consequences of the actions. And it's the same thing. But I just love you right now for saying that. Thank you very much. I was having a conversation with someone yesterday and I mean a senior person and she was saying that because it was a struggle around a particular person. And she said, it's not something that actually struck me. She said, you know, the issue that we have with this person, you can also do the same thing if we don't put structure. And then just hopefully understand the fact that we need to ensure that we set up structures due to institutions that can help us push what we want in terms of a correction free economy for holding people accountable to whatever it is that they promise, the electorates. So let me say something very quickly. I'm very excited to talk about this. For one, I am one person that never, ever, ever shout about corruption. I don't believe there is corruption. I don't believe that. I simply believe that there are no consequences for action. All over everyone in the world we have corruption. I mean, I've been privileged to travel to 14 countries and all these countries, none of them is an angel. None of them have sent field governance. But the difference is that they have set up system to ensure that people are severely or adequately punished for every action, for every decision. I think the problem we have back home in Nigeria is that there are no consequences for action and it's not just about the people in government and I think we also need to because when they talk about corruption, people think it's about the politician that was elected 3-4 years ago. No, corruption is about the driver who jumps the traffic lights. Corruption is about the individual who is asking for money before he can submit a file. Corruption is about the policeman on the road who saw somebody with a device, a gadget, a laptop and he's asking the person to give money or else he's threatening to kill the person. Corruption... Remont, thank you very much. Well, it's important that we build strong institutions that can stand the test of time beyond individual sentiments because if we focus more on the individuals we sabotage the system. So the institution is more important than the individual. Join us again next week on another edition of the Advocates. The Advocacy continues on our social media platforms. On Facebook at plusTVAfrica, hashtag the AdvocateNG and Instagram at plusTVAfrica, hashtag the AdvocateNG. To catch up with previous workers, go to plusTVAfrica.com slash the AdvocateNG. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel plusTVAfrica. Join us next week, same time, the station. Let's keep advocating for a better society.


So I made a video a while ago called Lucid Transcendence. It's basically where I hacked my lucid dream and I was able to do this and kind of dissolve the dream state. And this is something that was basically ignored. You know, I made this video a long time ago, several years ago on this channel for whatever reason, it kind of got ignored. And I think it's a really cool experience. And I just want to kind of talk about it a bit more now, basically. So essentially what I did with Lucid Transcendence was I was able to firstly become lucid and then become aware of the dream itself, right? So everything within the dream was my mind, become aware of the dream itself and then dissolve the dream state into white awareness. So this kind of felt like pure white light, but not the kind of light that you would imagine, you know, when you turn on a light switch, not that kind of light. It was more kind of like a warm light that sort of encompassed everything. It was kind of like within me and everywhere else as well. And then I felt every emotion that you can imagine at all at the same time. So the emotions would be like excitement, fear, anger, love, joy, everything. Kind of all combined into one, like one mega emotion. It's kind of weird to even think about really. And this lasted, it felt like hours, but realistically it was probably just a few minutes and I've spoken about time dilation and stuff like that. You know, it's just kind of crazy when we get into timelines and alternate dimensions and all this kind of stuff. Felt like a long time. It felt like several weeks, hours and weeks, but really it was just me being aware of the dream scene. And that's why I called it Lucid Transcendence because I was kind of transcended or rose above the main dream scene, the main lucid dreaming experience. And I just wondered if anyone else has had an experience like this. If you've done something like that where you're kind of lucid, so you start off by being lucid, but then you kind of dissolve the dream so you're not really seeing anything. There's no dream scene or dream characters at this point, but you're not awake yet either. You're kind of in this in between state where you're not lucid. Well, you are lucid, but you're not really seeing much of a dream. And so your subconscious is not really putting in those stimulus from its memories and things like that, but you're also not awake either. So you're kind of in this in between state where you're completely aware, I would say more aware and more clear and conscious, more focused at least than I am in waking life, but I was still asleep, very weird experience. So I just wondered if anybody else has had something like that. And I think what this shows is that our consciousness is outside of our bodies. It doesn't have to be connected to something like the state of being awake or the state of being asleep and dreaming. I think consciousness goes beyond that and we can be with our consciousness in more than one place at the same time. We can by locate in many ways. And I think we're only really now starting to become aware of the possibilities of what we can actually do. I think this is gonna become more and more kind of obvious as time goes on.


I'm here with my co-host today, Stu Miniman. This is the Cube Silicon Angles Continuous Production. We're here two days live at IBM Edge, at the Mandalay Bay. This is the second year of Edge. More than doubled from last year, we were in Orlando and we've got about 5,000 people here this year. A lot of good buzz, a lot of good technical talk, a lot of good business talk. The flavor between hardware and software, systems and storage and software and really showcasing IBM's new vision, vision for the future, what they see as this new type of IT, the storage as a platform. Alex Yost is here, he's the Vice President of Business Line Executive within IBM's server business. Alex, welcome to the Cube. Thank you so much for having me here guys, good to see you. Yeah, so what are you doing here at Edge? What are you talking to customers about? What are you hearing? What's the buzz? Our clients today are investing in their data centers, but more importantly, what they're investing in is their business. So if you went to the main ten session, one of the things you heard about is when we talk to CEOs and CIOs, the importance of IT to customer businesses. Because what customers are looking for is how do they run their businesses more efficiently and more effectively? How do they use IT to do that? Well, the fact of the matter is it's not by putting out server RFPs, it's by running those applications better. And so what they're after from us is, guys, how do you make our IT more effective for us and for our business? And so we're spending a ton of time talking to people about exactly that topic.  And you remember that seminal article and book, always saying he got it wrong. But for a long time, Alex, it felt like he got it right. Because nobody was buying anything back in the post-911 days. What changed? Because everywhere you go, you're seeing what you just mentioned, is people are trying to get more competitive advantage out of IT. What has changed to flip that switch? Well, what changed is that customers are recognizing the value of mobility, they're recognizing the value of workforce enablement, they're recognizing the value of big data. You can't do that without the IT systems to make it happen. And so getting those things online for your company, whether that's on-premise or off-premise, is a big priority for customers because you think about it. Every single industry is looking for it. How did they out-innovate their competition? And IT plays a huge role in that. Yes, okay. So those are some of the factors that are driving IT decisions today. How is that affecting your strategy at IBM? Well, the way it affects our strategy at IBM is, you know, you heard Tom Rosimilia talk about it. The money that we're spending on innovation is all around helping clients to get the most out of their IT spend. So clients are looking for how do they optimize big data? Well, Flash technology plays a big role in that. Optimized systems play a big role in that. Customers are coming to us and they're saying, we know we have to adopt this or that application set. How do we do that with the staff that we have on board today? Number one, our staff is overworked. Number two, our staff isn't expert yet in doing that. So if we can provide them with reference architectures, if we can provide them with systems like an SAP HANA offering that give them the capability to get up and running more quickly, then they can devote their IT staff to innovation for their company instead of keeping the lights on. I met with a client not too long ago and they said, you know what? 70% of our staff is eligible for retirement right now. Well, the fact of the matter is when they look at that, what they see is, holy cats, how are we going to innovate if our IT staff is ready to retire? What's our strategy? Another guy said to me, you know what? It burns me up when I see a senior engineer in my staff replacing a hard drive. Senior engineers doing tasks like that instead of innovating, enabling mobility, enabling social networking, enabling business innovation, changing a hard drive is not where technology needs to be driven in the company. Well, when you guys announced your expert integrated systems, I thought Mills did a very good job of laying out the IT labor problem, I'll call it, the percentage of time that people spend in systems and storage management. And I think somebody at the main tent yesterday showed some IDC data in that regard as well. So the numbers are quite astounding. So talk about that a little bit and talk about how and if you guys are able to move that needle. We can absolutely move that needle and you move that needle with innovation. Some customers are looking to build all new data centers. Terrific. But that's a minority. Those customers are looking to take the data center that they own and make it more productive. So if we can give them systems that offer fabulous performance, but offer performance and capability to get up and running quickly, that's where the innovation really matters to them. So the combination of terrific hardware with the investment that we're making in flash, with the integration of tiered storage capability, with simplified management so you can go to a single management console and manage multiple devices and make them work well together to integrate power and UNIX systems with x86 systems, giving them the capability to do more with less time investment. That's innovation that matters for clients and makes their staff more productive. Innovation that gives them the capability to run applications more quickly is also important to them. So just faster systems. We've got great innovation around that. And then finally the other piece is how do I acquire quickly without having to go through training my staff on how to size for this application environment or that? So for example, reference architecture for a VDI type environment that tells them if you want to deploy 100, 200, 500, 1,000 VDI desktops, what's the architecture that IBM recommends that is pretested and qualified with the VDI vendor of my choice? That gives them real innovation and capability. So how are you spending your time these days, specifically with customers, what product lines? Talk about that a little bit. I spend a ton of time with customers because clients are the most important source for telling us where their business problems are. So number one is obviously with clients. Number two is spending time on innovation. Whether that's innovation with our own firm and the work that IBM is doing or innovation with partners and taking the best of what they offer. And then the third piece is spending time with business partners because business partners deliver terrific value for customers. They're experts on industries, they're experts on applications. Bringing that value with IBM to customers is a tremendous advantage for those customers. Alex, I wonder if we can talk a little bit about the MSPs as a big focus on the show here. I look at the enterprise market, of course, BladeService help drive, a lot of the adoption of infrastructure, virtualization, now you've got the pure systems model. So you said most customers aren't going to build a new data center, but the service providers have such a growth pattern that it's almost like they're building a new data center every six months or a year. So how is that discussion going between the enterprise and the service providers and even the cloud solutions and how do you go between those two? The MSP market is very vibrant and what we're seeing is that clients are adopting MSP service providers application as a service across their business and it's interesting to see the adoption patterns. We recently had a customer advisory council and I asked the clients, you know, what is your adoption of cloud service provider content and capability? And one guy said, well, we're not going to be going to a public cloud because our industry is highly regulated and we can't do that. The next guy to talk says because our industry is highly regulated, we're adopting a cloud service provider because they're experts in providing applications for our industries and staying compliant in our industry. And so what we're seeing is there's a lot of firms that are aware of it and evaluating it, they're adopting at a different pace because it's what's relevant to them and to their business. So IBM strategy is to help clients by enabling them to adopt cloud internally or to adopt an internal strategy or to go entirely to it as a service type environment. But we've also got terrific offerings for the MSPs. A lot of those MSPs provide content that is specific to an industry. That content may be based on IBM I, may be based on x86, may be based on power systems. A lot of those MSPs are looking for how quickly can we go from the investment is onsite to we're monetizing that asset. So we've got programs for MSPs so that they can monetize assets, IBM assets, very quickly from the time that they decide that they need it to the time that they're up and running with it. And so those programs are very valuable to MSPs. Okay, can you talk a little bit about kind of that transition from kind of the Blade system to the pure system, pure flex architecture. A recent industry number shows that Blade server revenues are down in general. So Blade Center's been a great workhorse for IBM for many years, but it looks like this is really IBM's bet on the next generation architecture. And how does that kind of fit to the cloud models that we were just talking about? Well, clients today are looking for more value than just great hardware. And so I'm here to tell you that the flex system and pure flex hardware offering is based on over 15 years of innovation and development in the Blade server marketplace. It has the fastest backplane. It's got the most power and cooling. It's got the ability for the most memory processors in the industry. It's unsurpassed in terms of technology, but that's not enough. Clients are looking for how quickly can I get up and running? How do I simplify the management deployment in a cloud environment, in a virtualized environment, or in a specific application environment? And so with pure systems what we're offering to customers is a variety of offerings that give them the ability and whether it's an application as a service or whether it's a platform as a service, giving them the capability to specify their operating environment and get up and going very quickly. Because if we can minimize the amount of time that skilled IT staff spend on the rudimentary tasks of up and running and deployment and management and maintenance and get them into innovation, customers get value. And that's where we think they'll choose us. Absolutely huge trend on convergence. I'm wondering if you can talk to kind of the blurring of the line between server and storage that we've been seeing over the last few years. And where do you think that trend is going and how does IBM address that? Well, you probably saw in some of the main 10 sessions the increasing demand and requirement for storage. I think Tom Rosamilia said that 90% of the data in the world was created in the last two years. And so the incredible demand for storage is super important. But if you think about big data, if you think about accessing that information, it's the interaction between the server device and the application running on the server and that storage that gets people access to that data quickly and easily so they can really do something with it. Because having the data, having the storage without being able to use it is a lot less valuable. And so what we offer to clients is the capability to manage the server and the storage together using our FlexSystem Manager so that you get a truly integrated system that gives clients not only that integrated system, but it gives them the control from a single point of management and simplifies their job. So Alex, we were talking before about the labor component. Talk a little bit more about what customers want to spend their time on. We talked a little bit about how they're spending their time today. Talk a little bit more about that because you said it burns one of your customers when they see a senior systems engineer changing it out of disk drive. How are they spending their time patching whatever they're doing today and how do they want to spend their time? Well, you're right. A lot of the time today is spent on what many customers will say, keeping the lights on. Where they want to spend their time is on innovation. The big tasks that IT managers have been given by their executive management are enable mobility, enable clients to access us and our business easier and more quickly, enable us to use big data, enable us to use technology to differentiate us in the marketplace. And so whether it's oil and gas and doing exploration, whether it's an automobile manufacturer looking to shorten the cycle time to produce or manufacture an automobile, or whether it's a retailer looking for better information about their customers, they're all looking to use technology to innovate, use technology to give them a business advantage. They can't do that if they're spending the time keeping the lights on in the data center. So we give them the tools to run their systems with less effort so that they can use those valuable IT staff to do something else. So how are customers re-skilling? And are they? Is that an organizational challenge for them? I mean, just can't flip a switch overnight and say, okay, all of a sudden you're going to do these higher value tasks. Can they?  Well, at the end of the day, most of our clients have very skilled IT staffs and they're skilled in their specific industry. They're skilled at the things that their business does, but they're caught up doing a lot of those maintenance tasks. If we can free up that time, frequently what we find is that those customers have plenty of skills and capabilities to do the innovation. They just need the time to get it done. Do they get a raise? I think they get a raise in terms of their own personal job satisfaction because I don't know about you, but keeping things running is not nearly as cool as bringing something to the business that will add value. I met with a customer in the financial industry the other day and that customer told me that when they bring a new application forward, they actually monetize each of those applications and they say, this is a $5 million application. This is a $4 million application. And what they mean is, our company is going to make $5 million in profit once we get this thing out the door. You know what? That's a heck of a lot more job satisfaction than, I kept the server farm running today. Well, and then you can quantify the value you're bringing to the organization. If you can get it in a month earlier, it starts to get big. Exactly. Excellent. All right, Alex, well listen, thanks for stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights about what customers are doing. I really appreciate your time and good seeing you again. Great to see you guys, thank you. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be right back with our next guest. We're live from Edge. This is theCUBE and we'll be right back after this word.


Live from Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering Google Cloud Next 17. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live in Palo Alto for theCUBE, special two-day coverage here in Palo Alto. We have reporters, we have analysts on the ground in San Francisco analyzing what's going on with Google Next. We have all the great action. Of course, we also have reporters at Open Compute Summit, which is also happening in San Jose, and Intel's at both places. We have Intel Senior Manager on the line here on the phone. Lisa Spellman, Vice President and General Manager of Xeon Product Line, product management responsibility as well as marketing across the data center. Lisa, welcome to theCUBE coverage, and thanks for calling in and dissecting Google Next, as well as teasing up maybe a little bit of OCP around the Xeon processor. Thanks for calling. Well, thank you for having us. It's a busy week and we're all over, so we'll do this on the phone, and next time we'll do it in person. Love to. Well, more big news is obviously, Intel has a big presence with the Google Next, and tomorrow there's going to be some activity with some of the big name executives at Google talking about your relationship with Google, aka Alphabet. What are some of the key things that you guys are doing with Google that people should know about? Because this is a very turbulent time in the ecosystem of the tech business. You saw Mobile World Congress last week. We've seen the evolution of 5G. We have network transformation going on. Data centers are moving to a hybrid cloud. In some cases, cloud native is exploding, so all new kind of computing environment is taking shape. What is Intel doing here at Google Next? That's a proof point to the trajectory of the business. Yeah, I like to think it's not too much of a surprise that Google given all of the work that we've done together over the last several years in the tight engineering and technical partnership that we have. One of the big things that we've been working with Google on is as they move from delivering cloud services for their own usage and for their own applications that they provide out to others, but now as they transition into being a cloud service provider for enterprises and other IT shops as well. So they've recently formed, they just in the last week or so did a nice announcement about the partnership that we have together and how the Google Cloud Platform is now in the market and available for customers. And we very much value the one we have with Google where we have that need to provide. So you don't just look at it as a one-off project or a one-time investment, it's an ongoing continuation and evolution of new products, new features, new capabilities to continue to improve their total cost of... Well, Lisa, this is your baby, the Xeon, codename Skylake, which love that name. Intel always has great codenames, by the way. We love that, but it's real technology. Can you share some specific features of what's different around these new workloads? Because we've been teasing out over the past day and we're going to be talking tomorrow as well about these new use cases, because you're looking at a plethora of use cases from IoT Edge all the way down into cloud-native applications. What specific things is Xeon doing that's next generation that you could highlight that points to this new cloud operating system, the cloud service providers, whether it's managed services to full-blown, down-and-dirty cloud? So, Atong, but really it's very specific workload acceleration for things like high-performance computing workloads. And high-performance computing is something that we see mirroring of that workload specifically driving benefit from the new platforms and seeing really strong performance improvements. You can use these installed workloads that can move to the most optimized hardware for whatever you're trying to drive. Some of the other things that we've talked about and announced is we'll have our next generation of Intel Resource Director Technology, which really helps you manage and provide quality of service within your applications, which is very important to cloud service providers, giving them control over parts so that they can deliver the best yet for. And then the other one is Intel Omnipath architecture. So again, some capability of the product line will continue to roll out in the middle of this year, but we're excited to be able to offer an early version to then do that full-scale enterprise validation over the next several months. So I got to ask you the question because this is something that's coming up. We're seeing a transition. Obviously the digital transformation has been talked about for a while. Network transformation, IOTs all around the corner. We got autonomous vehicles, smart cities, on and on. But I got to ask you though, the cloud service providers seems to be coming out of this show as a key storyline in Google Next as the multi-cloud architecture has become very clear. So it's become clear. It's not just this show, but it's been building up to this. It's pretty clear that it's going to be a multi-cloud world. As well as you're starting to see the providers talk about their SaaS offerings, Google talking about G Suite, Microsoft talks about Office 365, Oracle has their apps, IBM's got Watson. So you have the SaaSification. So this now creates a whole nother category of what cloud is. If you include SaaS, you're really talking about Salesforce, Adobe. On and on the list, everyone is potentially going to become a SaaS provider, whether they're unique cloud or partnering with some of the cloud. What does that mean from a cloud service provider? What do they need for application support requirements to be successful? So Intel, we are talking about if it's a lot of the airtime or focus, but SaaS is actually the bigger business. And that's why you see people moving towards it, especially as Enterprise IT becomes more uncomfortable with using SaaS applications. Maybe first they started with uploading their expense report tool, but over time they've moved into more sophisticated offerings that free up resources for them to view their most critical or business critical applications that they require to stay in more of a private cloud.  And then the musical because people are demanding just more and more services, working so close to multi-generations that we deliver on those demanding workloads. The other thing that we see the providers focusing on is what's their differentiation. So that we'll look through whatever their key workload is or whatever their key market is, the silicon features so that they can have a differentiated offering into the market about what capabilities and services they'll provide. So it's an area where we continue to really focus our efforts is drive the TCO down to the point of what's going to. It's interesting the definitions also are probably I would agree with you the cloud service provider is a huge market when you look at the SaaS because whether you're talking about Uber or Netflix for instance, examples people will know about in real life. You can't ignore these new diverse use cases coming out. Like for instance, I was just talking with Stu Miniman, one of our analysts here at Wikibon and Riot Games could be considered a cloud, right? I mean, because it's a SaaS platform, it's gaming. So you start to see these new apps coming out of the woodwork. There seems to be a requirement for being agile as a cloud provider. How do you enable that? I mean, what specifically can you share if I'm a cloud service provider to be ready to support anything that's coming down the pike? Stick with the near term, how much we've expanded and we have there, but we've gone a lot of variety. So again, I mentioned Xeon 5. Xeon 5, a typical Xeon, but specific workload acceleration targeted a high performance computing and other analytics workloads. And then you have things at the other end, you've got Z on D, which is really focused at more front end network workloads, lower power and more focused on cold and warm storage workloads. And again, that, hey, we're not just sticking there for everything, we're thinking into a lot of other silicon innovation. So I don't know if you guys have had PGA group and driving and delivering cloud and network acceleration through FPGAs. We've also introduced new products in the last year, like Silicon Photon across and through. So FPGA, that's the Alchera stuff, we did talk with them, they're doing the programmable chips. You need the workload to accelerate, but once you have it, it is a very powerful performance gain for you. So the cloud service providers are a perfect market for that as are the con service providers because they have very sophisticated, again, go back to the workload, understand what they need and added all these different things, different new products to the cloud together with Intel CPUs and Intel Ethernet and Intel FPGA and Intel Silicon Photonics, you can start to see how the whole package, when it's designed together under one house, can offer a tremendous amount of workload acceleration. I got to ask you a question, Lisa, because this just comes out, but as you're talking, I'm just in my mind visualizing a new kind of virtual computer server. The world is, the cloud is one big server. So it's a design challenge. And what was teased out of Mobile World Congress, I was very clear was this new end to end architecture, you know, reimagined, but if you have these processors that have unique capabilities that have use case specific capabilities, in a way you guys are now providing a portfolio of solutions so that it almost can be customized for a variety of cloud service providers. Am I getting that right? Is that how you guys see this happening where you guys can go to someone and say, hey, just mix and match what you want and you're good? Well, and we try to provide a little bit of people who have their options to choose, but like with the work of one cloud service provider another one that is a company called Nervon, if you're going to be using your business, then you're going to want to use something like the silicon that we acquired. You'll want to use something like Xeon with late Crest to get that for frameworks and the libraries and all of that that actually give you something that can. On the competitive side, we've seen the processor landscape heat up on the server and the cloud space. Obviously, whether it's from a competitor or homegrown, foundry, whatever, you know, fabs are out there. I mean, so Intel's always had a great partnership with cloud service providers. Vis-a-vis the competition in context to that, what are you guys doing specifically and how you'd approach the marketplace in light of competition? So let's take all competitor story, but when you look at new products and new generations in market since the last major competitive X86, we give our customers the choice to optimize for their workloads. So you can go up to 72 cores with Xeon 5. That's important. You can go with those two cores with Adam. If that's what works for you. So it's just an example of how we try to kind of address all of our customer segments with the right product at the right time. And IoT certainly brings a challenge too when you talk about network edge. That's a huge, huge growth area. I mean, you can't deny that. That's gonna be amazing. You look at a car as a data center these days, right? So, I mean. A data center on wheels. Data center on wheels. So that's been one of the fun things about, you know, my role even in the last year is that growing partnership, even inside of Intel with our IoT team. The other thing is like, if you look it in the data center space, I haven't worked with to optimize their architecture and get that workload acceleration. And now we have the chance to put that same playbook into play in the IoT space. So it's a, being a ton of standards to still be building kits to be put together. You know, we don't just throw something out to the market and say, good luck. We actually put the ecosystem together around it so that it performs. And I think that's kind of what you see with, I don't know if you guys saw our Intel Go and that whole like product offering for what you need for truly delivering automated vehicles. Well, Lisa, I got to say, it's a, you guys are, you know, have great formula. Why fix what's not broken? Stay with Moore's law. Keep that cadence going. But what's interesting is you are listening and adapting to the architectural shifts, which is smart. So congratulations. And I think, you know, as the cloud service provider world changes, certainly in the data center, it's going to be a turbulent time but a lot of opportunity. And so good to have that reliability. And if you can make the software go faster, then they can write more software faster. So. And that's what we've seen. Every time we deliver a step function, improvement in performance, we see a step function improvement in demand. And so the world is still hungry for more and more compute. And we see this across all of our customer bases, you're more affordable. They come up with new innovative different ways to do things, to get things done and new services to off drives us. Is that desire to continue to be the backbone of that industry innovation? If you could sum up the bumper sticker what that step function is, what is that new step function? Oh, when we say step functions of improvements, I mean, we're always looking at targeting, you know, over 20% performance improvement per generation. And then on top of that, other capabilities beyond it. So it might not, and then you're also getting a new capabilities like security features added on top. So you'll see more and more of those types of announcements from us as well. Where we kind of highlight that you can continue to address, you know, again, the only needs that are out there. So we're all trying to say, stay a step ahead. All right, Lisa Spellman, VP of the GM of the Xeon product family as well as marketing and data center. Thank you for spending the time and sharing your insights on Google Next and giving us a peek at the portfolio of the Xeon next generation. Really appreciate it. And again, keep on bringing that power to Moore's Law. More flexibility. Thank you so much for sharing. We wrap up more live coverage here in Palo Alto after the short break.


Thank you Mr. Speaker. Thank you and remember for your contribution. Mr. Speaker, on the basis of debt Mr. Speaker, very soon we will be coming to parliament if a debt management act Mr. Speaker to put some order in what we inherited Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there is in our debt portfolio there are two items that we never mentioned Mr. Speaker. That is the payables and the direct and the DFCs. We never mentioned Mr. Speaker. And our tickets are coming home to Rose Mr. Speaker because all these short term election roads that were built at interest rates of 5% Mr. Speaker during that time when interest rates were pretty low Mr. Speaker now we have to consolidate it in a debt management act debt management bill Mr. Speaker so we will be coming to parliament very shortly with the debt management act Mr. Speaker. Also the payables to local suppliers which again is not part of our total debt portfolio we have to break it because of that because of this bill Mr. Speaker so very soon we have become the parliament to take a position to do something with what we have been done years ago what we have been done to give a true idea of the debt of the country these debts had to be included in our debt portfolio but they would not put in our debt portfolio because of the very skillful economic management of the country these debts were kept out Mr. Speaker but right now we have to take the position have the courage to show the true picture right Mr. Speaker come Mr. Speaker again there is another item that we have left out Mr. Speaker land acquisition we have taken people's land and we haven't paid them and I know that is in each in the cabinet that discussion comes up all the time we have taken people's land and we haven't paid it there is about 60 million dollars of land that we have acquired and we haven't even included the interest on that land but we have taken it and we haven't included it in our debt we owe the university of the Cindy's our alma mater a school that some people are saying is irrelevant but it's a school that is the essence of our west indian culture is the essence of us as west indians they visit the west indian speaker it's a school that give opportunity to many people who never have had the opportunity to go to university Mr. Speaker we owe that school about 27 million dollars we have to pay it we have said to the people of St. Lucia that we are going to pay if we visit the west indians we are not going to discard it we are going to treat it as if it doesn't exist all these have to be brought into a debt management bill which will have the courage to pass this permit so Mr. Speaker I thank ten members for allowing us the approval to go to the RSMG to raise that finance and we hope to continue Mr. Speaker to continue positive signs of the solution economy real Mr. Speaker there's never been a time over the last three or four years where this economy has looked as positive as it is looking now Mr. Speaker there's not been a time and the facts the facts will show Mr. Speaker this economy is trending in the right direction Mr. Speaker it's trending in the right direction and this as the investment projects come on stream you will see what real management of an economy is all about Mr. Speaker not managing by talk not managing by innuendo management by reality on the ground the lowest unemployment rate in the country from since 2010 and this statistic is not taking isolation we've compared it to the labor force so it's not a matter there was some time when the unemployment member of the micro sense Mr. Speaker because the members is leading the house in this statistical review when it came to the unemployment there was a caveat that indicated that the unemployment numbers are not comparable to any other previous year and so while I would expect the member can say that he thinks it is a certain unemployment level his own statistics department has indicated that the numbers are inaccurate and should not be used to compare to previous years Mr. Speaker the socio-economic review says that unemployment rate for this year was the lowest from 2010 member of Kastri Kis this member from New South Mr. Speaker I'm going to rise on a point of order again while the member from Kastri Kis would like to think that's the case but the reality is his own statistics at the index says that this rate that is uncompareable to any number in the previous years because of the way that they accumulated that Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker what is the point of order I am supposed to rule on you are quoting the department of statistics he is quoting the economic and social review what is the sir no but your point of order would have to be that the social and economic review is being misquoted you can't bring that's exactly what I have said Mr Speaker no you are saying that the statistical department I apologize if in fact you've misinterpreted what I've said and I appreciate that that seems to be commentating these days in the social and economic review where it has the unemployment number is at the bottom of that page Mr Speaker there is a note from the statistical department indicating that those that is not a comparable number to years previously because of how they accumulated the number so all I am saying is that I have no difficulties to remember wanting to quote a number but to make a comparison to that number the previous years when in the social and economic review at the bottom of the page on the unemployment number it clearly indicates to cannot make that comparison please proceed Mr Speaker for the year 2010 since the year 2010 the unemployment rate was the lowest of the year 2010 Mr Speaker the agriculture Mr Speaker agriculture I stood on the point of order again Mr Speaker I am asking you to rule in fact if you want to get the social and economic review we can take a recess so you can see through yourself I have made a ruling I am asking you to proceed so you have accepted that what the information he is saying is accurate that the social review says what he says he says yes but at the bottom of the page it has a category he didn't say that he said what it said if you want to make a note please proceed Mr Speaker no Mr Speaker yes Mr Speaker it is very clear the very clear social and economic review that it says that that is I will make a matter of you next time you wish to make a matter once you are going to breach the rules I have ruled the member of the castries east will continue the point of order is over thank you Mr Speaker the same way that our agriculture output was the highest for long time manufacturing was the highest for long time agriculture was in the negative now agriculture this year was highest so manufacturing output increased tourism increased Mr Speaker the value of our deposits increased Mr Speaker there is growth everything and there was the largest economic growth 18.1% so Mr Speaker these are the things that we cannot dispute Mr Speaker the figures show that management of the management of the economy under this government has been better than under the previous government and the figures show it figures show it the government's cash flow show Mr Speaker the figures show it the government's cash flow show Mr Speaker and this year we experience surplus on both the current account and the premium account they can this this thing Mr Speaker all these things are to create are to create dive versions but we are diverting nowhere that is not going to take us off you are not going to make me disrespect the speaker I am not going to disrespect the speaker I am not going to walk out I am not going to get vexed and run cry I am going to sit down here I am going to debit the facts and if you want so all this all this thing you are doing to try to impress the gallery the people show what they think about you already they beat you they have shown it and you have to wait you have to wait to contest another election so you can go and you can knock the table you can jump you can scream you lost the election and you will stay lost for a while and what you are doing we are not impress anybody we are not impress anybody we are not impress anybody we are not impress anybody so don't come here and believe you can and don't believe you can come here and make up and pretend to make a mockery of this parliament Mr Speaker, you are not going to like voters you are not going to get like voters you are not going to like voters so Mr Speaker thank you thank you very much Mr Speaker and I thank members for the support thank you Mr Speaker