“Send forth Your light and Your truth.” (43:3)

Israel is described by Isaiah as an or goyim, “light of the nations.” By the example of their behavior, Israel is charged with the responsibility to teach the non-monotheistic world about belief in one God. In the ancient worldview of the Hebrew prophets, there were God-followers and there were idolators. The former were moral because of their adherence to God’s revealed scripture, and the latter were immoral because they ignored God’s instructions to the world. In our world we have multiple monotheistic God-following religions and many ways to follow God, all of them true. The job of religious people is to show that the way we live our lives is illumined by one of those sets of truths.