- Name 45 of 70A Strength to the Poor, a Refuge from the Storm
- HebrewMa'oz ladal, machseh mizzerem
- In plain wordsA fortress for people with nothing, a shelter in bad weather
- Where to find itIsaiah 25:4, a song after judgment
A strength to the poor, a refuge from the storm is how Isaiah praised God in one of the most hopeful songs in the prophets: For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat
(Isaiah 25:4). The name means God is a fortress for people who have nothing, and a shelter for anyone caught out in bad weather, real or otherwise.
A song sung in the ruins
To feel the weight of this name, start one chapter earlier. Isaiah 24 is a picture of the whole earth under God's judgment. It opens, Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down
(Isaiah 24:1). Everyone goes down together, the chapter says: priest and people, master and servant, buyer and seller, lender and borrower. The music stops. The city is broken.
Then, right in the middle of the wreckage, someone starts to sing.
O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built.
Isaiah 25:1-2
A "defenced city" is a city with strong walls. "An heap" means a pile of rubble. The proud, walled city is gone. And who is left praising God? The people who never had walls of their own. While the powerful built towers, the poor lived outside them. Now the towers are rubble, and God turns out to have been the fortress of the weak the whole time.
Isaiah's own nation helps explain why this mattered. He had watched the rich in Judah buy up land and push families out. He cried out, Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place
(Isaiah 5:8). He accused the leaders of asking, What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor?
(Isaiah 3:15). The poor had nobody to take their side. This song says they did.
Fortress, thread and shelter: the Hebrew words
The word "strength" in Isaiah 25:4 is not about muscles. The Hebrew is ma'oz, and Strong's dictionary defines it as a fortified place, or figuratively, a defense. The King James sometimes translates the same word as "strong hold." So when Isaiah says God is a strength to the poor, he is saying God is their fort. He uses the word twice in a row, once for the poor and once for the needy.
The two words for the people God protects paint a sharp picture.
- Dal, "poor," comes from a root that Strong's explains as "dangling," and so weak or thin. Think of someone hanging by a thread.
- Ebyon, "needy," describes a person in real want. Strong's defines it as destitute, and the King James sometimes translates it "beggar." One lost job or one bad harvest and they are in trouble.
Then the verse turns to the weather. "A refuge from the storm" uses machseh, a shelter you run into, and zerem, a word for a heavy rainstorm or downpour. "A shadow from the heat" uses tsel, the ordinary word for shade. If you have a solid roof and air conditioning, those can sound like poetry. If you sleep outside, or work outside all day, rain and sun are the actual enemies. God says He is the roof and the shade.
The verse ends with a picture of the people who make the poor suffer: when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall
. "The terrible ones" means the ruthless, people with power who crush others. Their anger hits like a storm against a wall. And what does a good wall do in a storm? It stays standing. All that force breaks against it.
What comes after the storm
Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry place; even the heat with the shadow of a cloud: the branch of the terrible ones shall be brought low.
Isaiah 25:5
The roar of the bullies dies down the way the heat on a dry field fades when a cloud passes over the sun. The song does not end there. The very next verse sets a table.
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.
Isaiah 25:6
"Fat things" and wines on the lees
mean the richest food and the finest aged wine. The people who had nothing are now guests at God's banquet. Two verses later comes one of the greatest promises in the Bible: He will swallow up death in victory
(Isaiah 25:8).
The same care all through the Old Testament
Isaiah was not the first to say this. Long before him, Hannah, a woman who had prayed for years for a child, sang:
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them.
1 Samuel 2:8
The psalm about the ideal king says you can recognize him by how he treats the weak: For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper
(Psalm 72:12). Even David, a king, prayed, But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me
(Psalm 40:17).
He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.
Proverbs 19:17
Proverbs says helping a poor person is like making a loan to God Himself, and He always pays back.
If you are the one in the storm, or the one with a roof
If you are behind on rent, working two jobs and still coming up short, out of work, or watching medical bills eat everything you saved, this name was written with you in mind. People with money may overlook you. You may feel ashamed. Scripture says the opposite of what shame says: God takes a special interest in you, and He calls Himself your fortress. Tell Him exactly what you need. Keep working where you can, and do not be too proud to ask for help.
Poverty is not only about money, either. Grief, depression, a broken family or a long illness can leave a person dangling by a thread just as surely as an empty bank account. The word dal fits that too.
And if you have enough, this name hands you a job. God very often shows up as a strength to the poor through people. Someone near you is hanging by a thread right now.
- Tell God plainly where you are dangling. He already knows, but say it out loud.
- Notice whether you look down on anyone because of what they have or do not have.
- Choose one person or family you can help this month with a meal, a ride, a bill or your time.
This is name 45 of the 70 in the book. It follows A Sanctuary, and the next name, A Wall of Fire, pictures God protecting a city that has no walls at all. The full list is on the names of God in the Bible page.
