25:1 O LORD, you are my God!
I will exalt you in praise, I will extol your fame.
For you have done extraordinary things,
and executed plans made long ago exactly as you decreed.
25:2 Indeed, you have made the city into a heap of rubble,
the fortified town into a heap of ruins;
the fortress of foreigners is no longer a city,
it will never be rebuilt.
25:3 So a strong nation will extol you;
the towns of powerful nations will fear you.
25:4 For you are a protector for the poor,
a protector for the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm,
a shade from the heat.
Though the breath of tyrants is like a winter rainstorm,
25:5 like heat in a dry land,
you humble the boasting foreigners.
Just as the shadow of a cloud causes the heat to subside,
so he causes the song of tyrants to cease.
25:6 The LORD who commands armies will hold a banquet for all the nations on this mountain.
At this banquet there will be plenty of meat and aged wine—
tender meat and choicest wine.
Kenneth Bailey (Through Peasant Eyes) comments on the importance of this passage (vv6-9):
‘In this remarkable text a number of important themes are brought together. Salvation is described in terms of a great banquet, which shall be for all the peoples/nations. The gentiles will participate after God has swallowed up death and their veil. The people swallow the banquet, God swallows up death and the covering. The veil is not removed, rather it is destroyed. Ordinarily the nations who come to the Lord must come bringing gifts (cf. Isa. 18:7; 60:4–7; Ps. 96:8). Here the banquet is pure grace—the participants from the nations bring nothing. The food offered is rich fare of the kind that is the food of kings. Verse 9 is often seen as a separate piece of tradition. Yet it is attached here by the editor and thus the waiting for the God who comes to save is emphasized. There is also the striking occurrence of five cases of “all” in verses 6–8.’
Bailey adds that in the intertestamental period the idea of the eschatological messianic banquet was developed, but with muted reference to the inclusion of the Gentiles.
Aged wine…choicest wine –
AV ‘wine on the lees’
NIV ‘aged wine…finest of wines’
NRSV ‘well-aged wines…well-aged wines strained clear’
Some advocates of total abstinence claim that the expression here describes a wine that has been preserved with a view to avoiding fermentation. The argument is then extended to apply to the wine used at the Last Supper, which may (it is suggested) have been preserved by this or another method.
Far from being unfermented (and therefore non-alcoholic), however, the wine described in this verse would have been stronger that usual:
‘This refers to wines that were kept long in kegs and had the dregs mixed with them, and were therefore old and strong. They were refined or filtered by being strained through a cloth sieve, thus separating the liquor from the lees. Most of their old wine was turbid and required straining before it was fit to drink. The NIV renders this passage as: “a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines.” This rendering presents the thought that the wine was not simply old but deliberately aged until it reached its peak of flavor.’ (New Manners and Customs of the Bible)