1) This passage is picked for All Saints. I think about something an old woman told me. "The only time we talk about heaven is at a funeral, and I'm too upset to hear much."

2) The New Int. Study Bible has good material in its notes on the religious views of Cananaan that may be reflected in the passage. 'm then not sure that it is Mt. Zion, the mountain of the north of Baal, now taken over by Israel's faith, or a mountain that calls up old memories.

3) One could sieze on banquet imagery all over the NT as well. In our presbytery, a form of the Emmaus walk is called the Great Banquet. See also Ex. 24:9

4) This passage is within a "little apocalypse" of chs. 24-27.

5) I'm wondering why well-aged wines is repeated. In life, we think that in life, we are not well aged, as we grasp at youth.

6) Note how v. 8 is picked up in Rev.7 and I Cor. 15:54.

7) Think of how the shroud of death hangs over our world in violence, and now maybe in the looming catastrophe of global warming.

8) In this time, Death was seen as a swallowing force, but now it is being swallowed.

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