Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Isaiah 63:1-6
God's Judgment on Edom, Their Brother Who Rejected The Covenant, And God's Offer of Redemption to Jacob.
This startling vision of the future prepares for what lies ahead. Isaiah is aware that that includes gloom for Judah/Israel, for he remembers God's prediction concerning the future rape of the Temple and the removal to Babylon of Hezekiahs's descendants (Isaiah 39:6). Thus in the face of this huge threat he will plead for his people. But first he must set the scene.
‘Who is this who comes from Edom,
With dyed garments from Bozrah,
This who is glorious in his clothing,
Marching in the greatness of his strength?'
“I who speak in righteousness,
Mighty to save.”
With awe the watchmen of Judah gaze across the borders and see a mighty figure approaching across the wilderness, clothed in glorious and expensive clothing, and marching in great strength. He comes from Edom, Jacob/Israel's brother tribe, and from Bozrah, a city in Edom, wearing garments which appear to be dyed red. But who is He, and why is He coming?
The name Bozrah means ‘vintage', a suitable name for the whole passage, for it is a picture of the treading of the winepress. Bozrah was on the heights guarding the King's Highway and was probably concerned in the refusal to allow Israel to pass in the time of Moses. Edom had betrayed his brother.
The reply comes back, “I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” This is significant for the meaning of the passage. It is all about righteousness. It is about salvation. For Edom mercy had ceased to be an option. Their hearts had been constantly hardened and He had had to dealt righteously with Edom, for He is the Righteous One. But He comes to offer deliverance to His people. Yet why, if He is mighty to save, the bloodshed? The only reason can be that their continual and persistent rejection of the offer of the covenant. They had rejected God's Anointed One once and for all. Thus by His judgment He had spoken righteously. But now He comes to face Judah with their similar choice. For Jacob there is yet hope, for though He speaks in righteousness He is still mighty to save. Because of what the Servant has done (chapter 53) He can save them in righteousness. He is coming to offer salvation. The Bloodstained Judge of Edom will, if they respond, become the Anointed Saviour of Jacob.
“Why are you red in your clothing,
And why are your garments like him who treads in the winevat?”
The watchers have now spotted that His clothing is not just dyed, it is stained. It is stained blood-red like someone who has been treading in the winevat. Why, they ask, is He coming in blood-red, wine-stained clothing across the border? They are soon to learn that these are no wine stains.
“I have trodden the winepress alone,
And of the peoples there was no man with me,
Yes, I trod them in my anger,
And I trampled them in my fury,
And their lifeblood is sprinkled on my clothing,
And I have stained all my apparel.
For the day of vengeance was in my heart,
And the year of my redeemed has come.'
The reply comes that it is because He will have been treading the winepress, and treading it alone. It will not be an ordinary winepress, it will be the winepress of God's anger, of God's supreme aversion to sin, and the trodden grapes will be guilty people who had rejected Him and clung to sin. There will be no one to assist Him, for all will be equally guilty. There will be no one fit to help Him. So He will tread it alone. That is why His clothing will be stained, it will be because it is covered with the life-blood of the guilty. For Edom it will have been the day of vengeance (see chapter 34), a foretaste of the final day of vengeance.
But His purpose is that it should also be the year of His redeemed for those who would hear. The time has come. He is coming out of Edom not to do the same to Jacob/Israel, but in order to redeem. The year of His redeemed ones has come. The picture is twofold. It is a picture of Edom's coming doom (partly fulfilled prior to the coming of Jesus Christ) and of God's offer through it of mercy to His people. His people must take warning from it and repent. But it is also an apocalyptic one. It is a picture of God's offer to the lax world as a whole. They too must decide between the covenant or judgment. In this sense we are not to tie it down to sequences of events or particular timing. It faces the world constantly with a choice. Judgment or mercy?
‘For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redeemed has come.' We can compare this with the acceptable year of Yahweh and the day of vengeance of our God in Isaiah 61:2. The Anointed One and the Bloodstained One are one and the same and He is involved in both those scenarios. The ‘year of my redeemed' confirms that we are dealing with the Redeemer as well as the Judge (Isaiah 59:20).
Note the reversal of the order, compared with Isaiah 61:2, of the day of judgment and the year of redemption. Here Edom is to be judged and cease as a nation before the Anointed One comes. Their judgment as described in chapter 34 will by then have become a reality. But there will be another day of vengeance for others (Isaiah 61:2), after the coming of the Anointed One, a day or days which would be still future when Jesus came. This confirms that both the day of vengeance and the year of redemption apply over time and not just at one particular point in it. Edom will have had its day of vengeance. Others will yet face it in the future. But always redemption is on offer.
The contrast between the two figures of the Anointed One and the Bloodstained One is deliberate. The Anointed One comes to bring deliverance and salvation, but also to introduce the day of vengeance, the Bloodstained One wreaks judgment and vengeance, but also comes to introduce the year of salvation. Both are two sides of the same assignment, righteousness revealed in judgment on guilty rebels and in salvation for the repentant redeemed. The Anointed One and the Bloodstained One are one and the same in action and motive. He Who Himself endured the winepress for the redeemed (Isaiah 53:10), will tread it continually to punish the guilty on their day of vengeance. And after each warning will come the offer of deliverance to those who will respond.
So now the stark choice lies before God's nominal people. Will they submit to His covenant and become His true people, or reject the covenant, link themselves with Edom as brother rebels, and receive full punishment at their day of vengeance? It is the choice between the Anointed Saviour and the Bloodstained Judge.
‘And I looked and there was none to help,
And I wondered that there was none to uphold,
Therefore my own arm brought salvation to me,
And my fury it upheld me.
And I trod down the peoples in my anger,
And made them drunk in my fury,
And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.
The fact that He will look and there will be none to help is repeated, stressing its importance (compare Isaiah 63:3; see also Isaiah 50:2; Isaiah 59:16; Isaiah 41:28). In all the world there will be no one, not even someone like Isaiah, who can stand with Him to carry out His work. No other will be righteous in themselves, no other will be qualified (compare especially here Revelation 5:4 where again only One was found worthy to bring forth judgment). The idea of ‘wonder' is a human expression to bring out the fact of it. So He will have to do it all on His own. It will be the Anointed One having dealings with the world.
‘Therefore my own arm brought salvation to me.' It will be His own arm that will bring salvation to Him. This is in contrast with Isaiah 63:14 where Moses was supported by Yahweh's arm. Here is a greater than Moses. By His own mighty working as the suffering Servant He will shape and fashion ‘salvation' so that it will be available for Him as the Redeemer to dispense to His own. But in contrast also is His fury. In the very nature of things the Deliverer must also be the Judge of those who reject deliverance.
And it will be His own ‘fury', His own aversion to sin, that will uphold Him in the carrying out of judgment. He will be Judge and He alone. There will be no other. As He alone is righteous enough to be the Saviour, He alone is righteous enough to be the Judge. And He affirms firmly, and without apology, that He will carry out His judgment faithfully. We may withdraw in horror at the thought expressed here, and it is right that we should do for we are sinners too. But as the righteous Judge of all the world He, and He alone, is in a position to do it and declare it righteously. And it is necessary to declare it in all its awfulness so that men might take note and repent.
‘Made them drunk in my fury.' That is He will make them drink to the full with the cup of His wrath (Isaiah 51:17; Isaiah 51:21). The picture will be exacted to the full that it may be a sufficient warning to God's people.
This apocalyptic imagery depicts things as seen from Heaven. As so often in Scriptural prophecy the vivid detail is to portray an idea. It is describing the seriousness of Yahweh's judgment. But in fact after many judgments the disappearance of Edom was more mundane. Under John Hyrcanus in 1st century BC they were forced to be circumcised and absorbed among the Jews. The winepress was truly trodden and all traces of Edom vanished. Then followed the coming of the anointed One in Jesus.
This vivid picture then leads into the final Chapter s. We may see all of this as God saying to His people and to the world, “There were two brothers, one was Edom and the other was Jacob. One rejected God's covenant and suffered the appalling consequences. And now the choice lies with the other.” What will be Jacob's response to the coming of this Mighty Saviour and Judge? Isaiah's response to the picture so presented is to plead for his people. He knows that there will yet be judgments to come but he prays that these judgments will not be final like that portrayed on Edom. He prays that there will at last be mercy, and in the end he receives the promise that it will be so, and further that through the remnant of them receiving salvation it will also become salvation available to the world.