Isaiah 24–27 is often called the Isaiah Apocalypse: four chapters of cosmic ruin, the earth reeling like a drunkard, cities laid waste. In the middle of it, without warning, somebody sets a table.
What happens
"On this mountain Yahweh of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. Yahweh Theos will wipe away the tears from all faces; the reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for Yahweh has spoken. On that day it will be said: 'Behold our Theos, to whom we looked to save us! This is Yahweh for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!'"
What to notice
Ba-har ha-zeh — "on this mountain" — three times in five verses. Zion, which two chapters earlier was under siege. The location is emphatic because the feast happens here, on a specific hill in a specific city, and not somewhere symbolic. The menu is not decorative: shemanim memuchayim, shemarim mezuqqaqim, "fat things full of marrow, wine on the lees, well strained."Shemarim are the lees, the sediment; wine left on its lees and then filtered is old wine, the good stuff. This is the vocabulary of a cellar, not of a metaphor — and note who is invited: l'khol ha-ammim, for all peoples.Isaiah 25:7 is strange and worth slowing for: "the shroud that shrouds all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations" — a covering stretched across the face of every nation on earth, perhaps a mourning veil, perhaps a burial cloth. Whatever it is, it is over everyone, and it comes off. And then Isaiah 25:8, one of the great sentences in the Hebrew Bible and invisible in English: billaha-mavetla-netzach, "he swallows death forever."Bala is to swallow, gulp down — and in the Canaanite mythology Isaiah's audience knew, Mot, Death, is precisely the great swallower, boasting of an appetite that takes everything down his throat. Isaiah takes the standard epithet of Death and turns the verb around. Paul quotes it at 1 Corinthians 15:54. Then machah — "he will wipe the tear from off every face" — the verb for rubbing out, blotting a name off a scroll. Not comfort. Deletion.
The most familiar poem in the Bible, and the lectionary has chosen it because of one verse in the middle that most people never notice is a change of scene.
The selected verses
Psalm 23:1–3a."Yahweh is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul." Psalm 23:3b–4."He guides me in right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage." Psalm 23:5."You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." Psalm 23:6."Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of Yahweh for years to come."
What to notice
The psalm contains two different pictures and the seam is at Psalm 23:5.Psalm 23:1–4 is pastoral — pasture, water, paths, rod and staff. Psalm 23:5 is domestic and urban: a table, oil for a guest's head, a cup filled past the brim. The sheep has become a guest, and that is the verse matching Isaiah's mountain and Matthew's hall. And the table is set neged tzorerai, "in front of those who harass me" — not after the enemies are dealt with but in their presence, while they watch.Psalm 23:4's famous phrase is one word in Hebrew, tzalmavet, heard by the ancient vocalization as "shadow of death"; modern lexicons often prefer "deep darkness." Either way it is a place one walksthrough, and the grammar changes there — everything before is spoken about the shepherd, and at Psalm 23:4 it becomes you are with me.The psalm switches to the second person exactly where it gets dark. And the last verse is stronger than "follow": akh tov va-chesed yirdefuni, "only goodness and hesed shall pursue me" — radaphbeing the hunting verb, what an army does to a fleeing enemy. Goodness and covenant-love are not trailing behind him. They are chasing him down.
The last page of Philippians, a week after the same chapter gave us have no anxiety about anything. Paul is thanking the congregation for money — awkwardly, in the elaborate way an ancient letter had to handle a gift — and in the middle of the awkwardness he says something remarkable about himself.
What happens
"I know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me. Still, it was kind of you to share in my distress… My Theos will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. To our Theos and Father, glory forever and ever. Amen."
What to notice
Memyēmai is the word to stop on, and almost every English version buries it: it means "I have been initiated." It is the technical term for admission into a mystery religion — the rites at Eleusis, the cult of Isis — from myeō, to close the eyes or lips, which is where mystery comes from. Paul says he has been initiated into a secret, and then discloses it: chortazesthai kai peinan, being stuffed and being hungry. That is a joke with a serious edge, and Philippi would have caught it: the mysteries promised esoteric knowledge to initiates; Paul's mystery is how to have dinner and how to go without. One verse earlier, just outside today's reading, he uses autarkēs — self-sufficient — the central term of Stoic ethics. He borrows the word and then breaks it: not self-sufficiency but en tō endynamounti me, "in the one who empowers me."Philippians 4:13 has suffered more than most verses from being quoted alone. Panta ischyō — "I am strong for all things" — and the panta is defined by the sentence immediately before it: being full and being hungry, having plenty and being in want.It is not a promise about achievement but a claim about being able to survive either condition. And then the return: plērōsei pasan chreian hymōn, "he will fill up your every need" — a banquet word, and the correct answer to a congregation that has just emptied its purse for a prisoner.
The third and last of the parables Jesus tells the chief priests in the temple during Holy Week — after the two sons and after last Sunday's tenants. The pressure has been building for three parables and this one is the most violent.
What happens
"…a king who gave a wedding feast for his son… 'Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.' Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city… 'Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.' The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, 'My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?' But he was reduced to silence… 'Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside…' Many are invited, but few are chosen."
What to notice
The second summons quotes the kitchen: tauroi mou kai ta sitista tethymena, "my oxen and my fatted beasts have been slaughtered" — sitistabeing grain-fed animals, deliberately fattened. That is Isaiah's menu, and Matthew's audience would have heard the mountain feast being served. The refusals are graded, and the middle one is the most disturbing: some ameleō, could not be bothered, and go off one to his own field, another to his business.Nothing wicked is described. They had things on. Eneprēsen tēn polin autōn, "he burned their city," is the detail that has convinced most readers Matthew is writing after the year 70 — and it is a strange thing to do in the middle of a wedding, with the dinner getting cold while a military campaign is conducted. The replacement guests are gathered ponērous te kai agathous, "bad and good" — the bad listed first, with no screening described. And then the ending. The king's address is hetaire, "friend" — which sounds warm and in Matthew never is; he uses this vocative exactly three times: to the grumbling laborer in Matthew 20:13, to this man, and to Judas in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:50). The man ephimōthē — he was muzzled — the same verb used to silence a demon in Mark 1:25 and to still the sea in Mark 4:39. There is no evidence that wedding garments were issued at the door; that explanation is a later attempt to make the punishment fair. The parable is not interested in being fair. What it insists on is that the invitation was free and the garment was still required.
How They Fit Together
One banquet, four readings — and the question of what it takes to be at it
The hall filled from the road junctions — and one man put out
Four readings and one banquet, and the lectionary is asking a single question: what does it take to be at it?
Isaiah's answer is the most generous in the Bible. The feast is for all peoples, and the guest list is not screened — the only thing standing between the nations and the table is a shroud stretched over their faces, and that comes off. Then the sentence everything else in the Bible about death eventually leans on: billaha-mavetla-netzach, he swallows up Death forever. In the mythology the first hearers grew up with, swallowing is what Death does — it is his boast and his defining verb — and Isaiah simply reverses the direction. The mouth that eats everything is eaten. And then, almost domestic after that cosmic gesture, somebody goes around the room with a cloth and takes the tears off people's faces.
The psalm supplies the detail Isaiah leaves out, which is when. Psalm 23 starts in pasture and ends in a dining room, and the hinge verse says the table is laid neged tzorerai — in full view of the people who are after me.The banquet is not scheduled for after the trouble. It is set up in the middle of it, and the honor is public and pointed: oil on the head, a cup poured past the brim, in front of the enemies. And the last line has goodness and hesedhunting the psalmist down.Nothing in this psalm waits politely.
Philippians introduces the only person in the four readings who has actually been on both sides of the table. Memyēmai — I have been initiated — is mystery-cult language, and the mystery Paul has been let into turns out to be how to be well fed and how to be hungry.He is not describing indifference to circumstances but competence in both, and he names the source: not the Stoic's self-sufficiency but strength lent from outside. The man writing this is in prison and has just been sent money, and he is careful to thank them without implying he was desperate — a harder letter to write than it looks.
And then Matthew, which takes the generous banquet and makes it frightening. Everything about the invitation is free. The original guests decline — and note how ordinary most of the declining is: one to his farm, another to his business, a word meaning simply they could not be bothered. The hall is then filled with whoever is standing at the road junctions, bad and good, in that order. No one in that room is there on merit.
Which is exactly what makes the last scene so hard, and so worth not softening. A man who got in for nothing is thrown out for what he is wearing. The parable refuses to let two things collapse into each other: the invitation is unconditional, and the occasion still makes a claim on you. You cannot earn a place at the wedding, and you cannot come to it dressed for the road. When the king asks him how he got in, the man has no answer — ephimōthē, he was muzzled — and the silence is the point: there was an answer available, and he does not have it.
The garment is not left unexplained by the wider lectionary, as it happens. Yesterday's weekday reading was Galatians 3:27 — as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, Christon enedysasthe, the verb for dressing. The Church read the sentence about the garment the day before it read the parable about the garment. Paul's clothing is not a merit and not a fee; it is what you were given at the door and are expected to be wearing.
Polloi klētoi, oligoi de eklektoi.Many are invited. The mountain is set for all peoples, the shroud comes off every face, the servants sweep the crossroads. And still there is a way to be in the room and not at the feast.
A Question to Sit With
Nobody in that hall earned a place — the servants swept the road junctions and took the bad along with the good — and one man was still put out, for what he had on. I have leaned hard on the fact that the invitation is free, and I have leaned less on the possibility that the occasion still asks something of me. Not a fee, and not a merit: a change of clothes. If somebody asked me this morning how I came to be here, would I have an answer, or would I be muzzled?