Thursday, January 11, 2024

Get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city (Isaiah 25)

In Isaiah chapter 25, the prophet gives praise to God, although the nature of the praise seems off to the SAB. First of all, Isaiah praises God for destroying a city. This can seem cruel, but I think from the context of the next verse, we're talking about destroying a powerful city in an evil nation (no specific nation is named, this may not be about any specific city). Isaiah talks about God helping the poor and the needy after that, which is a bit more relatable. In verse six, Isaiah talks about God making a feast on a mountain; I assume this is Mount Zion, and it may be an end times prophecy. Then God will destroy--not the mountain, as the SAB misreads--some sort of veil that is covering the nations of the world. This may be a reference to the veil in the Temple which hides the room where the ark is kept, and God sometimes presents himself to the high priest, the idea being that the separation between God and mankind will be removed (this definitely sounds like end times stuff). God will "swallow up death in victory", meaning that people won't die anymore. This mention of wiping away the tears of everyone is echoed twice in the book of Revelation (7:17 and 21:4) which is considered largely end times prophecy. I don't know why Moab is singled out in the middle of all of this, but apparently it gets pretty severely trashed, and the last three verses seem to bookend this prophecy with more destruction of evil cities.

1 comment:

Steve Wells said...

I agree with you about verse 7 and have changed the note for it.