Isaiah27chapter 27

Leviathan is named with three descriptions: the fleeing serpent, the twisting serpent, and the dragon in the sea. Those exact phrases turn up in the Canaanite poems recovered at Ugarit, where a seven-headed twisting sea monster is the enemy the storm god fights. Isaiah's hearers knew the creature from the stories around them. He does not argue about the mythology; he simply says that on that day the LORD will take his sword and kill it — the chaos everyone else worships or fears is on the list of things God ends.

Then the vineyard returns, and every complaint of chapter 5 is answered item by item. That vineyard had its hedge taken away and its wall broken and was given to briers; this one God waters every moment and guards night and day so no one harms it, and if briers come up he goes to war with them himself. The one condition offered to the briers is startling: let them take hold of my strength and make peace with me.

The threshing image in the last section is exact. God is described as beating out the grain from the river of the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt — the whole span of the land Israel was promised — and gathering his people one by one, the way grain is picked out of the chaff by hand rather than swept up.

The gathering signal is a trumpet. In Israel, a ram's horn called the assembly, announced the new moon and the holy days, and rallied a scattered militia. The great trumpet blown here brings back those who were perishing in Assyria and those driven out to Egypt, and they come to worship at the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

One detail shows what forgiveness cost. The condition of pardon is that Israel grinds the stones of her pagan altars to chalk, and the sacred poles and incense altars do not stand back up. Chalk-crushing was demolition work.