Daily Verse Daily Verse by Faithlife | Isaiah 25:6

[Lori Jane]

 

[Lori Jane]

25:6 on this mountain Yahweh of hosts Compare the nations’ trek to the mountain of Yahweh in 2:2–4 and its establishment in 11:9. Yahweh will dwell visibly again on His mountain (4:5). He will teach them (2:3), judge them (2:4), and provide richly for them. The mountain is Zion, Yahweh’s dwelling in Jerusalem. See note on 1:8.

Zion Another name for Jerusalem, “Zion” symbolized God’s choice of the city as His dwelling.
God’s care for Zion is a major theme in Isaiah. Isaiah addresses the question of whether God will preserve the city precisely because it is His special dwelling, or whether He will allow it to be purged and purified through judgment.​

Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (Is 25:6). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

 

[Lori Jane]

Zion​

Zion is a symbol or metaphor for the historical city of Jerusalem. But behind this metaphor lies a complex cluster of interlocking themes of immense theological significance. In various parts of the Scriptures we find the following concepts associated with the city of Zion: the temple as Yahweh’s dwelling place; the covenant people of God, both as the apostate Israel under judgment and the purified remnant who inherit God’s blessings; the royal Davidic kingship leading to the idea of the Messiah; the world center from which God’s law will be promulgated and to which the Gentile nations of the world will flow; the renewed heavens and earth, where peace and prosperity will reign. We will look only very briefly at some of the images generated by these themes.​

Our starting point is the historical city of Jerusalem, the Canaanite city captured by David (2 Sam 5:6), who made it his political and religious capital. He installed the ark of the covenant there (2 Sam 6), but it was his son Solomon who built the temple. Yahweh made his dwelling there and chose Zion for himself, though it was recognized that even the heaven of heavens cannot contain the presence of the infinite God (1 Kings 8:27).​

In both OT and NT, the city stands for the people of God. In Revelation 21:9 the Holy City is the bride, the wife of the Lamb. In the OT what happens to Zion, in blessing or cursing, is a microcosm of Yahweh’s purposes for his people. In Isaiah’s day, at the time of the eighth-century b.c. Assyrian crisis, the city was left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons (Is 1:8), totally surrounded but not captured. This led to the false ideology of the inviolability of Zion. The prophetic word for Hezekiah and Ahaz did not have eternal validity. Jeremiah rebuked those who trusted with facile optimism in the words “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (Jer 7:4). And God’s judgment fell on the city, and it was captured and desecrated by the Babylonians.​

It is characteristic of the prophets that they oscillate rapidly between references to historical Zion under judgment and references to the glorified Zion in the last days. In Isaiah 2:2–4 (par. Mic 4:1–3), Mt. Zion is portrayed as the seat of Yahweh’s world government; peace will prevail, Yahweh’s word will issue from it, and all the Gentile nations will flow to it. Yahweh will reign from there, the city of the Great King (Ps 48:1–8). It is like Mt. Zaphon in the far north, the mythological mountaintop, the dwelling of the Canaanite pantheon of gods. But those who inhabit this eschatological Zion will be the saved remnant (Is 4:2–6), who have been purged by fire and washed clean (see Cleansing) so as to be perfectly consecrated to the Lord. The symbol here of the Branch, later to become a technical term for the Messiah (Jer 23:5), probably refers to this elect remnant.​

Yahweh himself is the King who reigns from Zion (Ps 132:13). But he has installed his own king on Zion, his holy hill (Ps 2:6). The continuing Davidic dynasty is a result of the promise to David through Nathan’s oracle (2 Sam 7). But the failure of the historical kings of Judah led to the projection of the ideal Davidic king into the future concept of the Messiah.​

The ideas of a gloriously renewed creation, centered on the exalted city of Zion, presided over by the messianic King, are found linked together in Isaiah 11. Similar passages are found in Isaiah 66. “They will neither harm nor destroy in all my holy mountain” (Is 65:25 NIV), and the land will be irrigated by a supernatural stream flowing from Mt. Zion (Ps 46:4; Ezek 47:1–12; see Water).​

Perhaps the most striking image used to describe Zion is the metaphor of a woman. She is the daughter of Zion, that is, the Lady Zion (Is 1:8). Even here there is a wide range of connotations, with different nuances appropriate to differing historical and theological contexts. Isaiah uses the covenantal concept of marriage (Is 1:21). She is the faithful city, loyal to her covenant partner Yahweh, bound to her husband by ties of loving obligation; but she has become unfaithful, a prostitute, with all the connotations of degradation, disloyalty, impurity and judgment.​

In the later context of the Babylonian exile, Zion likens herself to an abandoned wife (Is 49:14). She is like a bereaved and barren mother (Is 49:20–21) who stands amazed in incomprehension at her spiritual offspring. This theme is repeated in Isaiah 54:1, 6—a wife deserted, distressed in spirit, a wife who married young only to be rejected. But abandonment is not to be the last word, for she will be no longer called deserted but will be given a new name, Hephizbah, “my delight is in her” (Is 62:4).​

Finally, in Isaiah 66:7–9 Zion is pictured as a pregnant woman in labor and then as a nursing mother, giving suck and dandling her infant on her knees. This miraculous birth—no labor pains—portrays the rebirth of the nation after the exile. Nothing like this has ever happened before—a picture of the curse removed in the new Eden (see Garden). So will Zion’s spiritual offspring inhabit the earth.​

Perhaps one of the most dramatic uses of Zion imagery appears in Hebrews 12. Here Zion is contrasted with that other theologically significant mountain, Sinai. The latter represents a formal, legal relationship with God, while Zion stands for a relationship of grace. The author encourages his readers to come to Zion to join the fellowship of other saints and the worship of the living God: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven” (Heb 12:22–23 RSV).​

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Ryken, L., Wilhoit, J., Longman, T., Duriez, C., Penney, D., & Reid, D. G. (2000). In Dictionary of biblical imagery (electronic ed., pp. 980–981). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.