Isaiah 25:6. The Lord of hosts will make a feast. Here the prophet is speaking of the abundance of the Gospel. This is Martin Luther’s thought: In that time when the Gospel will be preached, God will prepare a feast of fat things; that is, Jerusalem, fat with great and many people, will be laid waste, and God will prepare this feast, namely, of the rich and powerful Jews. For all peoples, for the Romans and others. A feast of lees, not of grapes. He says that it will be a fat feast. All the fat animals will be devoured, and all the wine must be drawn out down to the lees. This means that this people of Judea is to be altogether exhausted and destroyed.
A feast of fat things full of marrow. He repeats what he has already said above. The inner and choicest part of the barley is called marrow; it is also called fat. He has fed them with the fat of the grain. Thus among this people He has oppressed princes, kings, and nobles, not just the common people.
Wine on the lees well refined for “grapes squeezed out.” This means that everything is devoured and drained to the last dregs and remnants. Thus by this comparison he most aptly pictures the total reduction of Judea.
- And He will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all the peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He wants to say: “This will be the fruit of the Gospel, that He will remove from us every appearance of chains. And we rise with Christ. ‘We have passed out of death into life’ ” (1 John 3:14). But he speaks of death and the things that pertain to death figuratively.
The appearance of coverings, which means that all nations are wrapped up in death. From this appearance of death and from death itself and from all evils we are set free by faith in the Word and through the Spirit. “The appearance of the covering” refers to death and all its evils. However, he calls it “the appearance of the covering” and shows that its appearance and bonds have easily been made subject to Christ” (Luther’s Works, v. 16, p. 196-197).