Isaiah 63:1

The scene follows Isaiah’s great promises of restoration for Zion in chapters 60 to 62, which end with Zion’s vindication and salvation (Isaiah 62). Those chapters show the peace God means to give his people, and this one shows him removing by force everything that stands in its way. After it comes the people’s long lament and prayer (Isaiah 63:7–64:12), and the book closes with the new heavens and the new earth (Isaiah 65–66). God’s salvation, as Isaiah shows it here, includes a righteous conquest of evil and rebellion.

The prophet speaks for Israel as he watches the figure approach, and he notices where he has come from, the state of his clothes and his bearing. The word for “dyed”, châmêts, has a basic sense of something sharp or sour, and it is used of leaven, but here it describes a vivid colour. The verses that follow make plain that the colour is blood, the mark of a battle just fought and finished. The warrior is also “glorious in his apparel”. The verb hâdar means to swell up, to honour or to be high, and here it speaks of majesty and splendour, the bearing of a king coming home from a decisive victory. He comes “travelling in the greatness of his strength”, marching in a might that marks him out as divine.

The question gets its answer in the warrior’s own words: “I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” He is the LORD himself. Everything he says and does rests on righteousness, which takes in his justice, his moral uprightness and his faithfulness to his covenant. “Mighty” is rab, abundant, great or much, and “to save” is yâshaʻ, to deliver, rescue or set free, a verb that Strong’s traces to being open, wide or free. Together they declare a power to deliver that is abundant and unmatched. The strength that has just judged Edom is the same strength that saves his people, and Isaiah has already called him “a just God and a Saviour” (Isaiah 45:21). A psalm rejoices that the LORD comes to judge the earth (Psalm 96:13), and Zephaniah speaks of the LORD in the midst of his people as mighty to save (Zephaniah 3:17).

The prophet asks a second question: “Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?” The word for red, ʼâdôm, comes from ʼâdam, to be red or rosy. “Apparel”, lᵉbûwsh, is a general word for clothing, and “garments”, beged, means cloth, covering or clothes. The red is the first thing anyone would see, and it is what the prophet asks about.

Every Israelite knew the sight he compares it to. At harvest the grapes were put into a large vat, the winefat or winepress, gath, and workers trod them barefoot to press out the juice, which splashed their clothes red. The verb dârak is the ordinary word for treading, walking or marching, used here of treading grapes. The question still speaks of grapes, and the answer in verse 3 shows that the red on these clothes is the blood of the LORD’s enemies.

Scripture often uses the winepress as a picture of judgment, where those who oppose God are crushed like grapes. Joel pictures the nations ripe for judgment with the words “for the press is full” (Joel 3:13). Lamentations uses the same picture for the LORD’s judgment on Judah herself (Lamentations 1:15). Revelation speaks of the great winepress of the wrath of God (Revelation 14:19–20). Behind all of these stands the word of Deuteronomy that vengeance and recompense belong to the LORD (Deuteronomy 32:35).

The warrior’s first words of explanation are about being alone: “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me.” The word behind “none” is ʼîysh, a man or an individual, so the sense is that not one man stood with him. Treading grapes was usually work for many hands, and this press was trodden by one. He did the whole work without any helper, human or angelic.

Then the verbs gather force. He will “tread them in mine anger”, with dârak again, “and trample them”, râmaç, “in my fury”. “Them” are God’s adversaries, those who persistently oppose his will and oppress his people. The word for anger, ʼaph, is literally the nose or nostril, and it is linked with the hard breathing of anger. Fury, chêmâh, means heat, and figuratively anger, hot displeasure or even poison. The same word returns in verses 5 and 6, and in God it names a holy, righteous indignation against sin and injustice.

Then come the stains: “and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.” The word for blood here, Nêtsach, means the juice of the grape, used figuratively of lifeblood, so it carries the winepress picture straight into the answer. “Sprinkled” is nâzâh. “Stain” is gâʼal, to soil, defile, pollute or stain, a word usually tied to impurity. On the LORD’s garments it is the visible mark of a righteous victory, and of a judgment carried through to its end.

Verse 4 gives the reason for everything the warrior has done: “For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.” “Day”, yôwm, means a day or a span of time, and here it marks an appointed time that God has set. “Vengeance”, nâqâm, is God’s righteous settling of accounts with those who have defied his authority and oppressed his people. It restores the moral order he made and upholds his holiness, and it is free of the malice that drives human revenge.

The heart, lêb, is the whole inner life: the will, the mind, the feelings and the very core of a person. When God says the day of vengeance is in his heart, he means that it was purposed and settled within him, a deliberate part of his will and character.

Beside the day stands a year: “the year of my redeemed is come.” “Redeemed” is gâʼal, to redeem or to act as kinsman-redeemer, the goel of Israel’s law, who bought back a relative’s property or person from debt, bondage or danger. It is a different word from the gâʼal of verse 3 that means to stain, though the two are written alike in English letters. God calls his people “my redeemed”, the ones he himself buys back and restores to freedom, to their inheritance and to fellowship with him. A day of judgment is set beside a whole year of redemption, and “is come” tells us that the appointed time has arrived.

The year likely echoes the Jubilee laid down in Leviticus 25. Every fiftieth year land went back to the families it first belonged to and Hebrew slaves went free, and so the Jubilee pictures God’s great act of setting his people free and giving them back their inheritance. Isaiah has already joined the two times, promising both a year of the LORD’s favour and “the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:1–2).

The day of vengeance belongs with what the prophets call the Day of the LORD (Joel 2:31), God’s decisive coming into history to judge evil, which Zephaniah calls the great day of the LORD (Zephaniah 1:14–18). Isaiah has spoken of judgment since his call (Isaiah 6), and of the restoration and comfort of God’s people (Isaiah 49:8–13). A psalm says that with the LORD there is full redemption for Israel (Psalm 130:7–8). Both the day and the year come at the time God has fixed, and his word accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11). In his one plan, his wrath serves his purpose to redeem.

Verse 6 completes the LORD’s answer: “And I will tread down the people in mine anger.” “Tread down” is bûwç, a different verb from the dârak of verses 2 and 3, meaning to trample, literally or figuratively. “The people” are the nations that stand against God and his people, and the anger is ʼaph once more.

“And make them drunk in my fury”: the verb is shâkar, to make drunk, and the fury is chêmâh again. God’s wrath overwhelms his enemies so that they reel like drunken men, confused and helpless, with no strength left to resist or escape. The psalms and the prophets speak of a cup of God’s wrath that he gives the wicked and the nations to drink (Psalm 75:8, Jeremiah 25:15).

“And I will bring down their strength to the earth.” “Bring down” is yârad, to go down or bring down. “Strength” is Nêtsach, the same word as “blood” in verse 3, the juice of the grape used figuratively of lifeblood. The KJV renders it “strength” in this verse, and the word carries the winepress picture to its end, with the lifeblood of God’s enemies brought down to the ground and their opposition finished.

For a people suffering under the power of foreign nations, this was assurance that God saw their affliction and would act on their behalf. Deuteronomy promises that God will avenge his people and make atonement for his land and his people (Deuteronomy 32:43).

The wrath in these verses is God’s holy and righteous answer to persistent sin, unrepentant rebellion and the oppression of his people. Human anger is often stained by malice or impulse, and God’s wrath is always perfectly just and controlled, with no evil in it. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne as surely as his love and mercy (Psalm 89:14). A psalm calls God a righteous judge (Psalm 7:11), Nahum says that he is jealous and avenges (Nahum 1:2–3), and Paul writes that God’s wrath is revealed against all unrighteousness (Romans 1:18) and that a day of his righteous judgment is coming (Romans 2:5–6). Because God is both loving and just, he will bring unrighteousness to an end. His compassion reaches those who repent and turn to him, and his judgment falls on those who defiantly oppose him and harm his people.

The warrior of these verses is the LORD, and the New Testament shows that God carries out his judgment through the Son: “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). Revelation draws on this very passage when Christ rides out to judge, “clothed with a vesture dipped in blood”, and “he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Revelation 19:11–16). Jesus himself spoke of the Son of Man coming in his glory to judge the nations (Matthew 25:31–33), and after the final judgment comes the new heaven and the new earth (Revelation 21:1–4). The blood on the warrior’s garments in verse 3 is the blood of his enemies, and so these verses look ahead to Christ’s second coming.

His first coming was marked by humility and sacrifice, as Isaiah foretold of the suffering servant (Isaiah 53). God sent his Son into the world to save it (John 3:17), and Jesus came as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), shedding his own blood for our redemption (Hebrews 9:22). In the synagogue at Nazareth he read the words of Isaiah 61 and proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favour (Luke 4:18–19). He is the true kinsman-redeemer, the goel, who has redeemed us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13), in whom we have redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7), and who has reconciled all things through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20). On the cross he triumphed over the powers of darkness (Colossians 2:15). The day of vengeance waits for his return.

The LORD’s words “there was none to help” also fit the cross. No human arm was strong enough and no human will pure enough to make atonement, and Christ did that work alone. God made him to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), he entered once into the holy place by his own blood (Hebrews 9:12), and he has delivered us from the power of darkness into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13–14). There he bore the full wrath of God against sin for his people, and in that sense the cross can be seen as a treading of the winepress on our behalf, so that those who believe in him escape the judgment these verses describe. Being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:9). The one who is mighty to save through his sacrifice is the one who will come again to judge.

These verses give us a God who sees every wrong done to his people and has fixed a day to set it right. When evil is strong and the oppressor has his way for a time, the day of vengeance is still in the LORD’s heart, and it will come. The stains on his garments are also a solemn warning, because his patience, vast as it is, comes to an end for those who persist in rebellion against him.

They show us, too, where our salvation rests. The LORD looked and found none to help, so his own arm brought salvation, and that is why it is sure. It rests entirely on his power and his righteous character. For those who belong to him, the warrior from Edom is the Redeemer whose year has come, and the strength that brings down his enemies is the strength that is mighty to save. Isaiah looks ahead to the end of all this warfare, when the nations will beat their swords into plowshares under the LORD’s rule (Isaiah 2:4).