Isaiah25chapter 25

Isaiah 25:1-3

The oracles against the nations give way to a psalm of praise, O Lord, thou art my God, I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name, the singular voice of the redeemed answering everything chapters 13 through 24 have announced. Thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth ties the song directly to the burdens just finished, what looked like ruin unfolding is now read as a plan long determined and now proven trustworthy. A defenced city becomes a ruin never rebuilt, the same fallen city theme carried from chapter 24, while strong and terrible nations are brought to fear and glorify the God who brought their rival down. Praise here is not detached from judgment, it is judgment's own fruit in the mouths of those who watched it land.

Isaiah 25:4-5

The song turns from what God has done to the poor city's rival to what he is to the poor themselves, a strength to the needy in distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, protection named in the plainest terms the chapter uses anywhere. The terrible ones whose blast was like a storm against the wall are brought down the same way heat is brought down by the shadow of a cloud, force answered not with greater force but with shelter. Barnes reads the poor and needy here as more than an economic class, the whole company of those who have nowhere else to turn. The branch of the terrible ones brought low closes the pair, the powerful humbled precisely where the powerless were sheltered.

Isaiah 25:6-7

The feast is set on this mountain, the same Zion just named in the previous song, and its guest list is deliberately as wide as the judgment already described, a feast of fat things unto all people, not one nation set above the rest. The vail spread over all nations is destroyed in the same verse, a covering that has kept the nations from seeing clearly, and the older writers, Henry and Delitzsch among them, read the vail's removal as this book's own anticipation of the gospel opening to the Gentiles, a reading the church has carried rather than a formal citation the New Testament makes. The feast of wines on the lees well refined pictures abundance fully prepared, nothing thin or unfinished offered to the guests. A mountain that once held only Israel's altar now holds a table set for every nation the burdens had judged.

Isaiah 25:8-9

The chapter's summit states what the feast finally accomplishes, he will swallow up death in victory, a sentence Paul quotes directly at 1 Corinthians 15:54 for the resurrection's own triumph, verified. In the same verse the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces, language John carries forward almost word for word at Revelation 21:4 for the new creation, both ends of the New Testament reaching back to this one verse for their own climactic promises. The rebuke of his people is taken away from off all the earth, judgment's opposite pronounced as completely as judgment itself was pronounced in the chapters before. Verse 9 answers with the waiting confession, lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation, recognition rather than surprise, a people who knew who they were waiting for.

Isaiah 25:10-12

The universal feast on Zion stands beside one particular judgment named at last, Moab trodden down under him even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill, the specific target the burden section has been circling since chapter 15. Moab's own effort to escape is pictured as futile motion, he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim, strength spent without gaining ground. Their pride and the spoils of their hands are both brought down together, the two things a proud nation trusts stripped away in the same verse. The fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust, closes the whole burden section on the same note it opened with, the height of human confidence brought level with the ground its people stand on.