He Will Swallow Up Death — Isaiah 25–26
After a chapter of a world breaking its covenant, Isaiah sets a table on a mountain. The veil comes off, the tears are wiped away, and the grave that swallowed everyone is itself swallowed up.
“Broken the Everlasting Covenant”
Chapters 24 through 27 are often called Isaiah’s “little apocalypse,” and chapter 24 is the dark half. The Lord empties the earth, and no rank escapes. Why? “Because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant” (Isaiah 24:5).
Now open the Lord’s own preface to the Doctrine and Covenants. What does He say is wrong with the world of 1831? “They have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant” (D&C 1:15). That is Isaiah 24:5, applied by its Author to the latter days, and the remedy follows two verses later: “I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith” (1:17). A broken covenant has to be restored before anyone sits down at the feast. That is the order of Isaiah 24–25, and it is the order of the Restoration.
Chapter 24 closes with the Lord reigning “in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously” (24:23). By verse 6 of chapter 25 we are standing on it.
A Feast of Fat Things in Zion
“And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined” (25:6). Fat and marrow were the best of the meal, and wine on the lees was aged wine. Who is invited? “All people,” not Judah only. And three times Isaiah fixes where it happens:
Isaiah 25:6–10 — the repeated setting
(6) “in this mountain” — a feast for all people
(7) “in this mountain” — the veil over all nations destroyed
(8–9) death swallowed; “Lo, this is our God”
(10) “in this mountain” — the hand of the Lord rests
Our layout, not a published structure. The repeated words show it: three anchors on one place, with the victory set between them.
On August 1, 1831, in Jackson County, Missouri — named days earlier as “the place for the city of Zion” (D&C 57:2) — the Lord quoted this verse back to His Church:
“… a feast of fat things, of wine on the lees well refined, that the earth may know that the mouths of the prophets shall not fail; yea, a supper of the house of the Lord, well prepared, unto which all nations shall be invited. … then shall the poor, the lame, and the blind, and the deaf, come in unto the marriage of the Lamb.”
Most readers go right past it. Isaiah’s feast, then Luke’s great supper where the master sends for “the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind” (Luke 14:21), then John’s “marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9) — three books, one meal, joined by the Lord in a single sentence in Zion. Is it a Millennial banquet or the gospel preached now? Both. The invitation goes out first; the table is set in full later. Every missionary carries the invitation Isaiah wrote.
The Swallower Swallowed
The King James uses two verbs in verses 7 and 8, “destroy” and “swallow up.” The Hebrew uses ONE. Both verses open with billa‘, from bala‘, to swallow:
Isaiah 25:7–8 — one verb, two objects
“And he will destroy [swallow] in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people,
and the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death in victory;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.”
What is the veil over the nations? The second pair answers: death, and the grief it brings.
Why “swallow”? Because death is the great swallower. Isaiah had already pictured the grave with an appetite — “hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure” (Isaiah 5:14). The verbs there are different, so we should not press the words together, but the picture holds. For all of history the grave has taken kings and slaves, priests and people, and never been full. Here the mouth that swallowed everyone is swallowed.
“In victory” renders lanetsach, which most modern versions give as “forever.” Both fit. Paul makes it the climax of his resurrection chapter: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54–55). Abinadi says it outright: “the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ” (Mosiah 16:8). For God is triumphant over ALL enemies, both sin and death.
John repeats the promise of wiped tears (Revelation 21:4). The Doctrine and Covenants joins veil and death as Isaiah did: “the veil of the covering … which hideth the earth, shall be taken off,” and “there shall be no sorrow because there is no death” (D&C 101:23–29).
Then read the afternoon He died: “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom … And the graves were opened” (Matthew 27:51–52). Matthew does not cite Isaiah. The veil and the grave, the pair Isaiah said would be swallowed on the mountain, both gave way at the cross.
Waiting on the Rock of Ages
“Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (25:9). Who stands on the mountain when death is swallowed? The Lord who rose. The verb for “waited” is qavah, twice here and again in 26:8. Is waiting passive? Elder Robert D. Hales answered: “In the scriptures, the word wait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust” (October 2011).
Chapter 26 turns that trust into a song for “a strong city” whose walls are salvation, and in it is the verse many members know by heart: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength” (26:3–4). The promise of verse 3 becomes the command of verse 4.
Hebrew has no word for “perfect” here. It says the word twice, shalom shalom — the way Hebrew raises a word to its highest degree, as the seraphim did with “holy” in Isaiah 6. Whose peace is doubled? The one whose mind is “stayed,” leaned on, the Lord. And “everlasting strength” is literally “a rock of ages.” The divine name is doubled too, Yah Yahweh, which the translators gave as “the Lord Jehovah.”
Then a line for anyone worried about grace and works: “thou also hast wrought all our works in us” (26:12). Who did the works? We did, and He wrought them in us — “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do” (Philippians 2:13). Latter-day Saints do not add works to grace. We let grace work.
“Thy Dead Men Shall Live”
First Isaiah writes an epitaph for the “other lords” who had ruled Israel (26:13–14). Set it beside verse 19 and the repeated words show a deliberate reversal:
Isaiah 26:14 and 26:19 — antithetic parallel
“They are dead, they shall not live;
they are deceased, they shall not rise” (14)
“Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise.
… and the earth shall cast out the dead” (19)
Same Hebrew both times: methim (dead), yichyu (live), qum (rise), rephaim (the departed). What was denied the oppressors is promised His people.
Verses 17–18 set it up. Israel was “as a woman with child” and “brought forth wind.” They could not deliver themselves. Then the earth “shall cast out the dead” — the ESV reads “the earth will give birth to the dead.” The labour Israel could not finish, God finishes. The grave becomes a womb.
Whose is “my dead body”? The Hebrew as it stands reads nebelati, “my corpse”; many modern versions change it to “their bodies.” The Church’s chapter heading keeps the text and reads it plainly: “Jehovah will die and be resurrected—All men will rise in the Resurrection.” His people rise together with His body because His rises FIRST — “Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23).
And it happened. The first resurrection began with Christ. Saints came out of the graves “after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many” (Matthew 27:53). Samuel the Lamanite had foretold it in America (Helaman 14:25).
Now a detail that deserves far more attention than it gets. The risen Lord had just told the Nephites “great are the words of Isaiah” (3 Nephi 23:1). Then He asked for their records, looked them over, and asked about this very prophecy — that “many saints … should arise from the dead, and should appear unto many … Was it not so?” They said it was. “How be it that ye have not written this thing?” And He commanded that it be written (3 Nephi 23:9–13).
Of everything He might have checked, the resurrected Christ checked the record of the resurrection. The Lord who said “thy dead men shall live” made sure there was a written witness, on two continents, that they did.
“Enter Thou into Thy Chambers”
“Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast” (26:20–21). Where have we heard this? On the first Passover night: “none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning” (Exodus 12:22–23). The Hebrew words differ; the scene does not. A people shut in their houses while judgment passes outside.
How long? “A little moment.” Set against a resurrection, all of it is short. Israel was safe that night not because of the walls but because of the blood on the door.
Key References
- D&C 1:15–17 — Isaiah 24:5 in the Lord’s preface.
- D&C 58:6–11 — the feast of fat things, given in Zion in 1831, with the order of the invitation.
- 3 Nephi 23:6–13 — the Savior checks the Nephite record for the saints who rose.
The Veil, the Tears, and the Grave
What can any of us do about death? Nothing. We can grieve it. We cannot swallow it. Isaiah names what covers the whole race — the veil over the nations, the tears on every face, the grave that takes all — and gives every one of them to the Lord ALONE. “For the Lord hath spoken it.”
The feast has already been announced, and the invitation of D&C 58 is still going out to the poor and the lame and the blind, which is to say, to us. The guest does not cook the meal. He comes, he waits upon the Lord, and he keeps his mind stayed on the Rock.
Stand at a graveside with Isaiah 26:19 open. “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust” is a command addressed to the dead, and one day they will obey it.
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