Isaiah 25

Today’s Passage: Isaiah 25

Coming out of the wide, world-shaking judgment of chapter twenty-four, where the whole earth was laid low, the prophet suddenly lifts his head and bursts into song. Isaiah 25 is one of the great praise chapters of the book, and it belongs to a stretch scholars sometimes call Isaiah’s little apocalypse, chapters twenty-four through twenty-seven, where the prophet lifts his eyes past all the near threats of Assyria and Babylon to the very end of all things. Here the song moves in three swells. First a personal outburst of praise to God for His faithful wonders, for the way He has toppled the proud fortress and sheltered the poor. Then the mountaintop promise, the highest note in the chapter, where the LORD of Hosts spreads a lavish feast for all peoples on His mountain and swallows up death itself forever and wipes the tears from every face. And then the glad answer of His people, waiting no longer but rejoicing, saying at last, this is our God, and He has saved us.

As you read, hold this: The God who judges is the God who saves, who will spread a feast for all peoples, swallow up death forever, and wipe away every tear, turning the long wait into rejoicing.

Isaiah 25:1 (BSB)

¹ O LORD, You are my God! I will exalt You; I will praise Your name. For You have worked wonders—plans formed long ago—in perfect faithfulness.

Hear how the song begins, not with a doctrine but with a claim of belonging: O LORD, You are my God. Everything that follows flows out of that one glad relationship. The prophet does not merely observe that God is great; he takes hold of Him, You are my God, and then his whole heart pours upward, I will exalt You, I will praise Your name. And see what stirs the praise. It is the wonders God has worked, and the marvel is that these wonders are no sudden improvisation. They are plans formed long ago, carried out in perfect faithfulness. Our God is not making it up as He goes. Before the foundations of the earth were laid, He had already purposed to shelter the poor and to overthrow the proud and to swallow up death, and every step of it He performs exactly, faithfully, to the letter. That is a God worth exalting with the whole voice.

Isaiah 25:2–3 (BSB)

² Indeed, You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin. The fortress of strangers is a city no more; it will never be rebuilt. ³ Therefore, a strong people will honor You. The cities of ruthless nations will revere You.

The first of God’s wonders that the prophet praises is a startling one: You have made the city a heap of rubble. This is the proud, cruel city of chapter twenty-four, the stronghold of every arrogant power that has ever ground down the weak, and the LORD has leveled it so completely that it will never rise again. We must not read this coldly, as if it were mere destruction. It is justice. The fortress that men built to shelter their oppression He has torn down, and the result is not despair but reverence. Therefore, the prophet says, a strong people will honor You. Even the ruthless nations, seeing at last that there is a God who cannot be defied forever, will come to revere Him. When human pride is finally broken, the door swings open for even the hard of heart to bow. The God who judges is drawing worship out of the very nations He has humbled.

Isaiah 25:4–5 (BSB)

⁴ For You have been a refuge for the poor, a stronghold for the needy in distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like rain against a wall, ⁵ like heat in a dry land. You subdue the uproar of foreigners. As the shade of a cloud cools the heat, so the song of the ruthless is silenced.

Now the song turns to the tenderest reason of all for praising God, and it lets us see whose side He is on. He has been a refuge for the poor, a stronghold for the needy in distress. The same strength that flattens the tyrant’s fortress becomes a hiding place for the ones the tyrant preyed upon. Think of how the prophet piles up the images of shelter: a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, and then that lovely picture of a cloud drifting over parched, exhausted land to cool it. To the poor man caught out in the open with the storm of the ruthless beating against him like rain against a wall, God Himself is the wall, the shade, the cover. And the raging of the powerful, all their boasting and their song of triumph, He simply silences, the way a cool cloud quiets the blistering heat. Here is a God the lowly can love, for He does not stand aloof from their troubles; He becomes their shelter.

Isaiah 25:6 (BSB)

⁶ On this mountain the LORD of Hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all the peoples, a feast of aged wine, of choice meat, of finely aged wine.

Now the chapter climbs to its glorious height. On this mountain, the mountain of the LORD, the very place where His people came to worship, He will spread not a ration for survivors but a lavish banquet, and the guest list takes the breath away: for all the peoples. This is no narrow, closed table. The God who was refuge to the poor of Israel throws open His feast to the nations of the whole earth. And look how the prophet lingers over the richness of it, aged wine and choice meat and finely aged wine again, as if he cannot say it plainly enough. This is the language of overflowing generosity, a King celebrating the end of the long war with the best He has and inviting everyone in. When we come to the New Testament and hear the Lord speak of many coming from east and west to recline at the table in the kingdom, and of the wedding feast of the Lamb, we are hearing this mountain banquet at last set down. God’s final word to a hungry world is not a sentence but a supper.

Isaiah 25:7–8 (BSB)

⁷ On this mountain He will swallow up the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; ⁸ He will swallow up death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face and remove the disgrace of His people from the whole earth. For the LORD has spoken.

Here is the summit of the whole chapter, and I would have you slow down and take in every word. Over all the peoples of the earth there lies a shroud, a dark sheet of grief and mortality, the pall that covers every funeral and shadows every joy. And on His mountain, at His feast, the LORD reaches out and tears that covering away. He will swallow up (בָּלַע) bala, pronounced baw-LAH. Strong's H1104, to swallow up, to engulf, to consume. It is a vivid, almost violent word, the very picture of one thing being wholly consumed by another. Elsewhere in Scripture it is the earth opening its mouth to swallow rebels, or the sea swallowing an army. And here Isaiah turns that fierce word upon death itself. Death, the great swallower, the grave that has gulped down every generation since Adam and never once been satisfied, is here itself swallowed up, engulfed, consumed forever by the God of life. The eater is eaten; the grave is emptied. No half measure lives in this word. God does not merely postpone death or soften it; He takes it down whole and it is gone. That is why the prophet’s song soars: the last enemy meets a stronger appetite, and the LORD wins. death forever. Read it again, for there is no sweeter line in the Old Testament. Not restrain death, not delay it, but swallow it up, gulp it down whole, and forever, so that it never rises again. And then, in a gesture so gentle it can undo you, the sovereign Lord GOD, the God of all power, stoops down and with His own hand wipes away the tears from every face. The strongest being in the universe does the tenderest thing imaginable. Every disgrace His people ever bore He removes; every tear ever wept He dries. And lest we fear it is too good to be true, the prophet nails it down: for the LORD has spoken. His word has settled it, and His word cannot fail.

Isaiah 25:9 (BSB)

⁹ And in that day it will be said, “Surely this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He has saved us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited. Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”

And now we hear the answer of the redeemed, the glad shout that goes up from the feast when death is gone and every tear is dried. Surely this is our God, they cry, and there is a whole lifetime of trust in that word surely. They had waited, sometimes through long dark years when nothing seemed to be coming, and here at last is the God they were waiting for, and He has saved us. Notice how the waiting is not wasted or regretted; it is vindicated. Twice they say it, we have waited for Him, this is the LORD for whom we have waited, as though savoring that their hope was not misplaced after all. And out of that vindicated waiting bursts the invitation the whole chapter has been building toward: let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation. This is what turns waiting into worship. The saints who trusted God in the dark find, in the end, that He was worth every moment of the wait, and their patience blossoms into pure joy.

Isaiah 25:10–12 (BSB)

¹⁰ For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain. But Moab will be trampled in his place as straw is trodden into the dung pile. ¹¹ He will spread out his hands within it, as a swimmer spreads his arms to swim. His pride will be brought low, despite the skill of his hands. ¹² The high-walled fortress will be brought down, cast to the ground, into the dust.

The song closes by setting the two destinies side by side one last time, and we should not flinch from it. Upon the mountain of the feast the hand of the LORD will rest, a hand of blessing and protection settling like a covering over His people. But over against that rested, sheltering hand stands Moab, named here as a picture of proud human resistance, the nation that had long looked down on Israel and trusted in its own strength. And Moab is trampled down like straw stamped into the mire. The prophet gives us that almost pitiable image of a man flailing his arms to swim in the muck he is being pressed into, all his cleverness and skill unable to lift him, because the one thing that undoes a man before God is the very thing Moab clung to: pride. His high walls come down into the dust. Here is the whole message of the chapter in miniature. The proud fortress falls, and the humble find refuge; the arrogant are brought low, and the poor are seated at a feast. And the difference between the two is not strength or skill, but whether a soul will bow before the Holy One of Israel and wait for Him, or lift itself up and be brought down.