Scripture Daily

Context No. 1434 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 25:6-12: in context

6In this mountain, the LORD of Armies will make all peoples a feast of choice meat, a feast of choice wines, of choice meat full of marrow, of well refined choice wines. 7He will destroy in this mountain the surface of the covering that covers all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations. 8He has swallowed up death forever! The Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces. He will take the reproach of his people away from off all the earth, for the LORD has spoken it. 9It shall be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God! We have waited for him, and he will save us! This is the LORD! We have waited for him. We will be glad and rejoice in his salvation!” 10For the LORD’s hand will rest in this mountain. Moab will be trodden down in his place, even like straw is trodden down in the water of the dunghill. 11He will spread out his hands in the middle of it, like one who swims spreads out hands to swim, but his pride will be humbled together with the craft of his hands. 12He has brought the high fortress of your walls down, laid low, and brought to the ground, even to the dust.

Isaiah lifts his eyes to what God will finally do. On this mountain, he says, the LORD will make for all peoples a feast of rich food and well-aged wine. He will destroy the shroud that covers all peoples, the veil spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and take away the reproach of his people from all the earth. And in that day it will be said: behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us; this is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

This is one of the great promises of scripture, and it is worth letting each part of it land. God will make a feast, not a bare survival but a banquet of rich food and good wine, for all peoples, an image of joy and abundance and welcome. He will swallow up death forever, not merely postpone or soften it but destroy it, the last enemy undone. He will wipe away the tears from all faces, personally, tenderly, every tear, from every face. This is the future toward which the whole story of God is moving, and it is not a grim endurance but a feast, not the mere absence of suffering but a positive and overflowing joy, with death itself abolished and every grief comforted by God's own hand. And notice the response Isaiah puts in the mouths of those who see it: we have waited for him, and he will save us. Twice they say it, we have waited for him, and the waiting is vindicated; the long patience of hoping in God, through all the trouble of the present, is answered at last in the feast and the wiping away of tears. There is strength here for the present waiting. The tears are real now, and death still stalks, and the reproach still stings; but this is not the end of the story. The end is a feast, and the abolition of death, and God's own hand drying every eye, and the glad cry of those who waited and were not disappointed. To hold that promised end in view is to find strength to wait through the present.

Do I hold in view the end toward which God is moving, a feast for all peoples, death swallowed up forever, every tear wiped from my face by his own hand, and does that promised joy give me strength to wait through the tears and trouble of the present?

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