Isaiah 25

The song opens not with a description of God but with an address to Him: O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth (v. 1). After the vast, impersonal sweep of chapter 24 - the whole earth turned upside down - the prophet narrows everything to a single relationship: thou art my God. Worship is most itself when it stops talking about God and starts talking to Him.

And notice the precise ground of the praise. It is not only the wonderful things God has done, but His counsels of old - plans formed long ago - that have now proven to be faithfulness and truth. There is a season for everything God purposes, and from inside the waiting His counsels can look slow, even doubtful. But the prophet, standing where the plans have come to pass, can testify: what God decided in the deep past has turned out faithful and true to the last detail.

That is a particular kind of praise - the praise of someone who waited, and watched the promise keep itself.

The first wonderful thing the prophet names is an overthrow: For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built (v. 2). Isaiah does not name the city, and the silence is deliberate. It stands for every proud, fortified power that ever set itself up against God and against His people - the defenced stronghold that looked unbreakable, the palace of strangers raised by those who knew not the LORD.

The God who shook the whole earth in chapter 24 has reduced this monument of human arrogance to a heap. And the result is not merely destruction but a kind of conversion of awe: Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee (v. 3). When the unbreakable is broken, even the strong and the terrible are made to reckon with the One who broke it. The fall of the proud city is, in its way, a sermon - preached to the nations - about who actually holds the world.

Now the song turns from what God tears down to what He shelters, and the contrast is the heart of the passage: For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall (v. 4). The very same power that levels the fortress of the proud is felt by the poor as protection.

To the arrogant city God is a wrecking force; to the needy He is a refuge, a shadow, a wall. The images are drawn from a land where weather can kill - the sudden storm, the killing heat - and where the poor, who have no fortress of their own, are most exposed to both. To them God Himself becomes the shelter they cannot build. And against the blast of the terrible ones, that battering wind of cruelty driving like a storm against the wall, the LORD shalt bring down the noise of strangers and lay the branch of the terrible ones low (v. 5).

The strong who trusted in their own strength are silenced; the weak who had nothing but God are kept. This is the signature of the God Isaiah praises: His might runs toward the defenseless.

The song now climbs to a mountain and spreads a table on it: And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined (v. 6). After all the falling cities and the howling storm, this is where the chapter has been heading - not to a ruin but to a banquet.

Every detail piles on abundance. The fare is fat things full of marrow, the richest cuts; the wine is not raw but on the lees well refined, aged long and strained clear, the best the cellar holds. And the table is laid unto all people. The God who, a moment ago, was a shelter for the needy now sets out a feast for the nations - for everyone willing to come up to His mountain. This is the prophets' great picture of the end of the story: not bare rescue but lavish welcome, not survival but joy, the LORD of hosts Himself as host, and the door thrown open to all. It is the deepest answer to a hungry and frightened world - a place is being prepared, and there is more than enough.

Before the great promise comes one more act of removal: And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations (v. 7). The image is of a shroud - a dark cloth stretched not over one nation but over all, draped across the whole human family. Interpreters have heard in it more than one grief at once, and the verse holds them together.

It is the veil of mourning, the covering thrown over the face of the dead and over the heads of those who weep for them. It is the veil of blindness, the dullness that keeps the nations from seeing God. And it is the pall of death itself, the gloom that lies over everything mortal. What every culture covers in cloth and cannot lift, the LORD lifts. He does not merely lighten the shroud or trim its edges; He destroys it - tears it away entirely from off all peoples.

The mountain where He spreads the feast is the same mountain where He strips the mourning-cloth from the face of the world. And the very next words say why the shroud can finally be torn: because the thing it covered is about to be undone.

When the feast is spread and death is swallowed, the people break into the cry the whole chapter has been waiting for: And it shall be said in that day, Lo, 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 (v. 9). The little word Lo - look! - is the sound of long hope turning into sight.

For generations the people had trusted a God they could not see, leaning on counsels of old that seemed slow; now they point and say, this is our God. The hope has a face. And twice, like a refrain they cannot help repeating, they say it: we have waited for him. The waiting is not hidden or apologized for - it is named with something like pride, because it has been vindicated. Waiting on God can feel, from the inside, like wasted time and unanswered prayer.

This verse is the other end of that waiting, the moment when it turns out the wait was not in vain at all. And the joy that breaks out is worship: we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. They rejoice in Him, in the saving God Himself, now seen and known. This is the answer to every soul that has ever waited in the dark wondering if anyone was coming.

The chapter ends, as the prophets so often do, by setting the salvation of God beside the undoing of what resists Him: For in this mountain shall the hand of the LORD rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill (v. 10). The same mountain that holds the feast holds the resting hand of the LORD - His settled power, come to stay. And over against the rejoicing of the waiting stands Moab, named here as the picture of proud opposition.

Moab was Israel's near neighbor and old adversary, a people marked in the prophets by their arrogance; here they stand for everything that lifts itself up against God. Their end is drawn in deliberately humbling images - trodden down… as straw is trodden down for the dunghill, flailing to keep afloat as a swimmer spreads his hands in the water (v. 11), their pride brought down, their high fortress laid to the ground, even to the dust (v. 12).

The contrast is the point. There are finally two responses to the God of this chapter: to wait for Him and be brought to the feast, or to set oneself against Him and be brought to the dust. The salvation that gladdens the waiting is the same salvation that flattens the proud. And the same divine strength that is a refuge from the storm for the needy (v. 4) is, for the arrogant who will not bow, the hand that brings the high walls down.