A table set for people with no money

Twice in the Old Testament the Word is set out as a meal, and both times the guest list is the surprise.

Come, all you who are thirsty. And to the one with no money: come, buy and eat — buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

That is a shopkeeper shouting in a market, and the terms make no commercial sense at all.

Then the reproach in the next verse, which is aimed at people who do have money: why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, He says, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

And this is the chapter that ends with the rain and snow that do not return empty, from Week Three. The invitation to a free meal and the promise about the word that accomplishes are ten verses apart in one chapter.

Proverbs sets the same table with more staff.

Wisdom has built her house, hewn out its seven pillars, slaughtered the meat, mixed the wine, and set the table. Then she sends out her servant girls and calls from the highest point of the city.

And the invitation goes to a specific group: let all who are simple come in here. To those who lack judgment: come, eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed.

Which is the pattern all the way through. Isaiah calls the penniless; wisdom calls the simple; Jesus tells a parable about a banquet where the invited guests all have excuses and the servants are sent to the streets and alleys to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame — and there is still room.

So the food image in this volume has a shape. Honey is delight; milk is beginners’ nourishment; solid food is for the trained; bread outranks bread.

A feast is different from all four. A feast is not about the food. It is about being seated with the host, at his expense, when you could not have paid for the meal.

And the invitation in Isaiah is not primarily to a table at all. Read the verbs: come, buy, eat, listen, incline your ear, come to Me, hear, and your soul will live. Every one of them is about attending to what is being said.

And there is a warning in the pairing that Proverbs sets up deliberately. Folly builds a house too, calls from the same high places, and invites the same passers-by with nearly the same words. Two tables, one street, and the difference is not the volume of the invitation.

The food is the word. The price has been dealt with. And the room is full of people who would not have been asked anywhere else.

Isaiah 55:1–3 uses five imperatives in the first two verses and pairs the free offer with a covenant — I will make an everlasting covenant with you, My faithful love promised to David. The meal image and the covenant thread of Week Eighteen are joined in the same paragraph.

The seven pillars in Proverbs 9:1 have attracted a great deal of speculation — seven days of creation, seven virtues, the seven-part structure of the book. The text does not say, and the honest note is that the number signals completeness in Hebrew usage.

Proverbs 9 is deliberately structured as a pair: wisdom’s banquet in verses 1–12 and folly’s in verses 13–18, and folly calls the same passers-by with almost the same words. Two tables, one guest list, and the difference is stated in the last line: her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

The Gospel banquet parables — Luke 14:15–24 and Matthew 22:1–14 — both turn on invited guests refusing and unlikely people being brought in. Jesus is working a well-established Old Testament image, and His hearers would have known it.

Isaiah 55:2 has one of the sharpest economic images in the prophets: why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? It is addressed to people who are working and paying, and the charge is not idleness but misallocation.

Look it upH7069 קָנָה qanah, to buy, acquire · H1878 דָּשֵׁן dashen, richness, fatness · H6612 פֶּתִי pethi, simple, naive · G1173 δεῖπνον deipnon, banquet, supper

Then read Revelation 19:9 — blessed are those invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb — and note that it is the fourth of the seven beatitudes in that book, and that the angel adds: these are the true words of God.

Where this touchesIsaiah 55:1–3, 10–11 (Week Three, Day Six) · Proverbs 9:1–6 · Luke 14:15–24 · Matthew 22:1–14 · Revelation 19:9. Fire and hammer, honey, lamp, sword, seed, milk, mirror, goads and nails, gold, washing, the fire in the bones, dew, the stumbling stone, the plumb line, the trumpet, bread outranked, the polished arrow and the inheritance were the earlier self-portraits.