The presence of the kingdom—in the Hebrew Bible!

God’s plans and purposes did not do something to the Israelites (other than give them a status as his people); his plans and purposes worked through them. His plan was not to cleanse them of their sins, provide for their eternal life, reconcile them to God, impute righteousness to them, or take their sin on himself. Instead, what he did was establish his kingdom on earth and dwell among his people as king. In the process, as we can see in hindsight, he was establishing what kind of God he was, so that when Christ appeared claiming to be God, people would have a way to understand that what he meant was not the same thing that the Greeks and Romans would have believed was represented by the word “God.” The Israelites were not anticipating incarnation, but they were to understand that their concept of their God was supposed to be slightly different from the understanding of other gods that both they and their neighbors shared.—Walton and Walton, The Lost World of the Torah, 159 (emphasis original)