Humanity is Hungry
Food is the first gift explicitly given by God to humanity (Gen. 1:29). In this way, Scripture depicts the human pair (and all who would come from them) as fundamentally “hungry beings.”[1] Indeed, before any curse or sinful lack, hunger—and the food to satisfy it—is the gracious gift of God to His image-bearers, constituting them as those whose life and fullness must be received into themselves from the outside.[2] Like all creation, the gift of hunger and of food was originally a means for humanity’s priestly communion with God in the temple-garden of the infant creation,[3] but, with the fall, this gift was turned in on itself.
1. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 11.
2. Schmemann, Life of the World, 14–18.
3. Schmemann discusses the priestly role of humanity with specific reference to food (Life of the World, 15-18). For a broader introduction to the concept of Eden as a temple and Adam as a priest, see especially G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), 66–80; T. Desmond Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2009), 20–31.
By hunger’s grasping desire (“…the tree was to be desired…” Gen. 3:6), insatiable soul hunger became the lot of our race, and by feasting on false food (“…she took of its fruit and ate…” Gen. 3:6), the True Food was removed forever beyond our reach. Thus, driven from the presence of God—for whom all hunger ultimately exists—mankind entered its life of death torn by a hunger deeper than their flesh, a hunger the perishing food of the thorn-cursed fields could never satisfy (Gen. 3:18-19; Isa. 55:2; John. 6:27).
With this God-hunger before our eyes (and, if we are honest, in our own souls), I want to consider how the Scripture uses the fundamental image of a meal to depict the final healing of our Edenic wound. We will turn first to Isaiah’s vision of an end-time feast at which Death itself is devoured before moving to John’s Gospel where the Isaianic meal, from which seraphic tongues would not dare to eat, finds its unimaginable consummation.
Glimpses of an Eschatological Feast
Given the essential role played by food in the human experience—both in the foundational texts mentioned above, and in the physical and spiritual life of Israel throughout Scripture—it is not surprising that the hope of final redemption would find expression as an eschatological banquet over which YHWH Himself presides and by which the mortal wound of humanity (imaged as the primal experience of hunger) is at last healed.[4] One of the clearest visions of this festal hope appears in Isaiah 25:6-9:
4. On the concept of the eschatological feast, see Johannes Behm, “δεῖπνον, δειπνέω,” TDNT 2:35
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces…It will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God…This is the LORD; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”
In these verses, the Spirit interweaves hunger and hope, picturing the final redemption of mankind as an eschatological banquet. A few points are worth noting here.
First, see the implicit association of hunger and death: as the people feast (that is to say, as their hunger is satisfied), death is swallowed up forever. To satisfy oneself at this table is to enter into a life without death.
Second, notice the striking parallelism between the experience of “the peoples” and that of YHWH: while the people feast on the rich food and well-aged wine that YHWH has provided, YHWH himself feasts on death, “swallowing up” forever the cursed veil spread over the nations.[5] Haunting glimmers of an unthinkable substitution flit across Isaiah’s vision of eschatological joy.
5. J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 322–23.
Finally, the result of the feast is the revelation of God. On that day—namely, the day in which God’s people satiate their ancient hunger at His table even as He swallows up their death forever—on that day, it will be said, “Behold, this is our God…this is YHWH.” The One True God will be climactically revealed in the fullness of His personal identity at the table where His people’s soul-hunger is satisfied and their damning death devoured.[6]
6. For a concise and accessible overview of the divine name and its association with the personal identity of God, see Richard Bauckham, Who Is God? Key Moments of Biblical Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 35–60.
Delighting in Rich Food
In Isaiah 55:1-3, the prophet returns to the imagery of the eschatological feast. Here, however, we find a further development that radically deepens the weight and wonder of the vision:
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…
In an echo of Isaiah 25:6, YHWH invites His people to “delight [themselves] in rich food” at the banquet table of His everlasting salvation. So far, we are on familiar ground. But then, in v.3, we see the radical turn. The invitation to come eat good and rich food becomes an invitation to come to YHWH Himself. Thus, the parallelism of the text indicates that the God of Israel is Himself the feast prepared and offered to His own.[7] Staggering as it may seem, the prophet envisions a day when the high and lifted up Lord of Isaiah 6 will—in some as-yet-veiled manner—give himself as the food and drink for which humanity has hungered since the Garden.[8] The exalted throne around which the seraphim veil their faces in awe will become the eschatological table around which the redeemed will gather in joy.
7. Alec Motyer makes this connection in his commentary, Isaiah : An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1999), 344.
8. Isaiah is not alone in making this connection. That YHWH Himself is the source of spiritual food and drink for his people is witnessed in other texts as well. See, for example, Deuteronomy 8:3, Psalm 36:8, Jeremiah 2:13, Hosea 14:8.
True Food, True Drink
Over six centuries after Isaiah wrote these lines, one who stood before that throne and feasted at that table would write of their synthesis in his magnum opus—his testimony to the Word become flesh. The influence of Isaiah on the theological vision of John’s Gospel is wide and deep,[9] but for our purposes it is enough to note the echoes of the prophet’s vision of the eschatological feast in John’s presentation of Jesus as the “bread of life” in John 6:22-59.
9. On this, see, for example, Catrin H. Williams, “Isaiah in John’s Gospel,” in Isaiah in the New Testament: The New Testament and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken (London ; New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 101–16.
In his 2015 study on the role of Jewish feasts in the Gospel of John, Gerry Wheaton locates John 6:27 as the “keynote” for John’s exposition of Jesus’ provision of bread and subsequent identification of Himself as the bread of life.[10]
10. Gerry Wheaton, The Role of Jewish Feasts in John’s Gospel (Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 106.
Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life…
Significantly, Wheaton argues that Jesus’ call not to labor for food that perishes but for food that endures to eternal life evokes YHWH’s invitation to “come” and eat good, soul-vivifying food in Isaiah 55:1-3.[11] This, in conjunction with broader verbal and conceptual resonance between John 6 and Isaiah 25:6-9 and 55:1-3 (also 10-11)[12] strongly indicates that John intends the bread discourse in chapter 6 to be received through the interpretive lens of the Isaianic eschatological feast.[13]
11. Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, 106.
12. Wheaton, Jewish Feasts, 106.
13. For Wheaton’s conclusion along these lines, see Jewish Feasts, 108. On these connections, see also George Beasley-Murray, John (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 88; Andrew Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 216.
Through this lens, Jesus’ presentation of Himself as the “food that endures to eternal life” takes on qualities of a theophany—identifying Him as the visible presence of Isaiah’s festal Lord. YHWH alone is the life-giving feast of His people (Isa.55:1-3; cf. Jer. 2:13, Hos. 14:8), but now, Jesus declares that all who are “taught by God” (Isa. 54:13) will come to Him as True Food and True Drink. In claiming for Himself the identity of the eschatological feast, Jesus also claims the identity of Israel’s Lord. But He goes further.
The eschatological feast is not merely Jesus Himself, it is His flesh and blood (John 6:51-59). Whatever sacramental connotations may be present here, it is certain that the reference to “flesh” and “blood” refers to Jesus given in death on the cross.[14] Lifted up in the supreme self-gift of His death, Jesus is Himself the food of the human soul, feasted upon by the believing gaze that receives precisely this one as the Son and Revelation of God (cf. John 6:40 together with 6:54).[15] The great end-time banquet of Zion over which YHWH presides as host and, in some mysterious way, is Himself the feast is thus transposed to Golgotha, where the rich food of the Word’s incarnate flesh and the aged wine of His own uncreated life are laid in love upon the festal board of the cross and received as life by the open mouth of Johannine faith.[16]
14. On the interplay of eucharistic resonance and Jesus’ impending death in the language of “flesh” and “blood,” see especially, Maarten J.J. Menken, “John 6:51c-58: Eucharist or Christology?,” in Critical Readings of John 6, ed. R. Alan Culpepper (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 183–204.
15. That believing sight of Christ is the primary eating in view is a well-known reading of this passage, see for example, Carson, John, 297, who notes Augustine’s evaluation that “the one who believes, eats” (Augustine, Homilies on John, 26.1).
16. In this way, we find a likely Johannine reading that links Isaiah 53, 54, and 55. Those who are “taught by God” (Isa. 54:13), are those who receive the Suffering Servant in his sacrificial exaltation (Isa. 53:1-12), as the eschatological feast of YHWH Himself (Isa. 55:1-3).
The Table of the Cross
That John intends this “festal” reading of the cross is further suggested by his well-known depiction of the crucified Christ as the true paschal lamb.[17] The critical verse to note is John 19:36, in which John—at the climax of his Passion Narrative—points to Jesus’ unbroken bones as fulfillment of the Pentateuchal command that the bones of the paschal lamb should not be broken (Exod. 12:46; Num. 9:12).[18] What the Baptizer anticipates at the beginning, the Evangelist thus reveals at the end: “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29).
17. The recognition of John’s depiction of Jesus as the paschal lamb is almost universal in the scholarship. A few helpful overviews of the theme may be found in Paul Hoskins, “Deliverance From Death By The True Passover Lamb: A Significant Aspect Of The Fulfillment Of The Passover In The Gospel Of John,” The Journal Of The Evangelical Theological Society 52.2 (2009): 285–99; Dorothy Lee, “Paschal Imagery in the Gospel of John: A Narrative and Symbolic Reading”,” Pacifica 24.1 (2011): 13–28; Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 452–54; J. K. Howard, “Passover and Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel,” Scottish Journal of Theology 20.3 (1967): 329–37.
18. On this reading of John’s citation, see especially Maarten J. J. Menken, “The Old Testament Quotation in John 19,36 Sources, Redaction, Background,” in The Four Gospels, 1992, ed. F. Van Segbroeck et al. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 2102–6, John 19,36. Menken convincingly argues that the Pentateuchal provisions for the paschal lamb and the unbroken bones of the righteous sufferer were already linked prior to John’s Gospel in Jubilees 49:13 (“Sources, Redaction, Background”, 2116).
Intriguingly, the texts calling for the preservation of the bones of the lamb—the very texts that John says are achieved in Jesus’ death—appear not in the context of the lamb’s sacrifice, but of its being prepared and received as a meal.[19] In a startling subversion of expectations, the Scripture John tells us is fulfilled at the cross speaks not of the lamb’s sacrificial slaughter or its redeeming blood, but its being eaten.[20] In this way, the Gospel’s oft-noted paschal motif finds its summation in the transformation of the cross to a banquet table and the revelation of the Pierced One as the covenant meal, solidifying the “festal” interpretation of the cross anticipated in chapter 6 and intimated across the body of the text (cf. John 2:1-11; 4:10-14; 7:37-39).
19. See especially Hamilton’s commentary on Exodus where he notes Exodus 12 as one of two chapters in the Bible that are “heavily about eating” (the other being Genesis 3, touched upon above). Victor P. Hamilton, Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 180.
20. This is not to suggest that a sacrificial nuance is not present in John’s presentation of Jesus as the paschal lamb. It certainly is. However, the purpose of the present article is to emphasize the ‘meal-element’ of that presentation—which seems to be John’s primary emphasis as well. On the sacrificial elements of Jesus’ death as paschal lamb, see especially Hoskins, “Passover Lamb”; D.A. Carson, “Adumbrations Of Atonement Theology In The Fourth Gospel,” The Journal Of The Evangelical Theological Society 57.3 (2014): 518–20; Keener, John, 452–54.
Come and Eat
In John 6, amidst literary echoes of the Isaianic feast at which YHWH is both host and meal, Jesus declares Himself—given in death, received by faith—to be the true Food and Drink who alone gives life to the world. This vision of the Crucified as eschatological meal is further clarified when John’s invocation of Exodus 12:46 (cf. Ex 12:10 (LXX), Num 9:12) calls readers to recognize the Pierced One not merely as lamb, but as feast—as one who is to be received as food. Aware of and drawing upon the scriptural imagery of YHWH’s eschatological feast, John thus crafts his Gospel, and supremely his passion narrative, so as to present the Pierced One of 19:34-37 as Himself the consummation of this theme.
Humans are fundamentally hungry beings; you are fundamentally hungry. This is not a flaw, it is by design. We were created—physically and spiritually—to live by, be sustained with, and rejoice in that which comes from outside of us, on something that we need to actually take in to ourselves and make part of ourselves. With the Fall, this disposition of soul was twisted, leading us to feed on anything and everything except that True Food for which we were made. We fill the tank with gravel instead of gas and wonder why the vehicle is torn to shreds from the inside out.
John’s presentation of the Pierced One as Feast is not merely a fascinating example of the Christocentric hermeneutic through which the apostolic mind reads Scripture, it is also a direct answer to the soul-hunger of the human race—to your soul’s hunger and mine. Weaving elaborate typological connections (as beautiful as these are) is not the Evangelist’s goal. Rather, he seeks to give his audience God. John labors with all the power of the Spirit and all the wisdom of his advanced years to call his readers to satiate their inmost longings on that Feast for which “desire” itself—in all of its myriad expressions—was created and in which alone it finds its appointed consummation.
And what is this Feast? It is this: That YHWH God is wholly, only, fully and forever who He declares Himself to be in the Pierced One who is Risen. This—Christ Himself, known as the revelation of God, received into our inmost being, fed upon continually by faith such that His beauty, His identity, His love, are woven into the molecular constitution of our souls—this is the Feast toward whom every desire of our hearts strains and in whom our every longing finds its End.
Yes, it is precisely in “looking upon” (John 19:37) this Pierced One as John presents Him—stripped for our shame, crowned with our curse, slain by our death, and yet pouring down the new life of the Spirit as the One who stands risen beyond all death—and believing in this one as the revelation of the Father that we come to feast at the eschatological table and delight ourselves in the good food that is YHWH God Himself.
Here, exalted on the heights of Zion in the radiance of His sufferings is the feast of rich food and well-aged wine, prepared for all who will turn to Him (Isa. 25:6).
Here is the unimaginable substitution of YHWH for humanity—the thrice-holy Lord feasting upon the curse (Isa. 25:7, cf. Gen. 2:17) even as He gives Himself as feast to the accursed unto their everlasting life (Isa. 55:3; cf. Gal. 3:13).
Here is the unbroken Lamb—both slaughtered meal and the standing host (cf. Rev. 5:6), offering his own flesh and blood as nuptial feast with the hands whose wounds swallow up the bride’s every tear (Isa, 25:8; Rev. 5:6, 7:17).
And here, precisely in the love that gives itself without reserve as feast to the undeserving, YHWH God is definitively made known to all the cosmos (Isa. 25:9; John 8:28). Upon the resurrection-illumined table of the cross—where faith receives the seraph-humbling Lord of Isaiah 6, given in the festal immolation of the enfleshed Word as the all-satisfying food of Isaiah 55—the One True God declares the gift of Himself as the most fundamental reality of Himself and, in receiving Himself thus given, the ancient God-hunger of the human soul is satisfied unto eternal life (Isa. 55:3; John 17:3).
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him…This is YHWH…let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (Isa. 25:9).
