Isaiah63chapter 63

Isaiah 63:1-2

Who is this that cometh from Edom: The chapter opens as a watchman's dialogue, a challenge shouted at a figure returning from Edom's capital Bozrah with garments dyed red, glorious in apparel and travelling in the greatness of his strength. The answer comes in the first person, I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save, identifying the traveler as the Lord himself returning from a completed act of judgment on Edom, the nation descended from Esau and a recurring figure for hostility to Zion. Delitzsch reads the dialogue form as deliberate drama, the prophet staging a question so the answer can be heard rather than merely reported. Verse 2 presses the watchman's second question, why the red stain, setting up the explanation the next verse gives in the speaker's own words.

Isaiah 63:3-4

I have trodden the winepress alone: The speaker answers plainly: he trod the winepress alone, with no one from among the peoples standing beside him, treading them in anger and staining his own garments with their blood. The winepress figure is a war image throughout the prophets, and this exact vocabulary of blood-stained garments and a trodden press is the language Revelation 19:13-15 wears when it pictures the returning Christ, the New Testament's own borrowing of this scene's words. Verse 4 supplies the reason, the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come, judgment on the oppressor and redemption for the oppressed arriving in one hour. Barnes notes that the vengeance and the redemption are not two separate acts but one act seen from two sides, Edom's fall and Zion's rescue.

Isaiah 63:5-6

And I looked, and there was none to help: The speaker recalls looking for a helper and finding none, no one to uphold the work of judgment, so his own arm brought salvation and his own fury upheld him, the same lone-actor language chapter 59:16 used earlier in the book of a Lord who saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor. Verse 6 repeats the treading and the drunkenness of judgment in slightly different words, the peoples brought down to the earth by the same anger just described. Gill reads the repetition as emphasis rather than a new scene, the speech circling back before the chapter turns to a wholly different voice at verse 7. Henry connects the solitary work to the ordinary Christian reading of the cross, a redemption accomplished without human help or human merit contributing anything.

Isaiah 63:7-9

I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the Lord: The voice changes without warning from the warrior returning from Edom to a worshipper reciting Israel's whole history of mercy, the lovingkindnesses of the Lord and the great goodness toward the house of Israel rehearsed as praise rather than complaint. Verse 8 gives the ground of it, God calling Israel my people, children that will not lie, and becoming their Saviour on that footing. Verse 9 carries one of the chapter's most read lines, in all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them, the older writers reading the angel of his presence as the same figure who led Israel through the wilderness under other names earlier in the Pentateuch, named as their reading rather than settled. Delitzsch notes that he bare them, and carried them all the days of old pictures a shepherd's or a father's carrying, not a ruler's distant governing.

Isaiah 63:10

But they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit: The praise turns on itself in one verse: they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit, and the same love recounted a breath before is met with hostility that turns God from a saving friend into a fighting enemy. The verse is among the Old Testament's clearest namings of the Holy Spirit as a person capable of being vexed, grieved by unfaithfulness rather than merely an influence, and later writers who argue the Spirit's personhood point back to it. Gill reads therefore he was turned to be their enemy as covenant language, the same God who fought for Israel against Egypt now fighting against Israel for the same reason, unfaithfulness provoking the same jealousy either direction. Barnes places the verse at the hinge of the whole recital, the pivot between remembered mercy and the plea for mercy that follows.

Isaiah 63:11-14

Then he remembered the days of old, Moses: The people's own memory answers their present distress, looking back to Moses and asking where is he that brought them up out of the sea, that put his holy Spirit within him, the same Spirit just named as vexed now recalled as the one who once dwelt among them without provoking rebellion. Verses 12 through 14 walk through the Exodus in compressed review, the right hand of Moses, the divided water, the horse in the wilderness that did not stumble, and the Spirit that gave the people rest as a herd is led down into a peaceful valley. Delitzsch reads the whole unit as a rehearsed liturgy, the kind of historical recital the Psalms use to argue from what God has done to what he might do again. The double purpose clause, to make himself an everlasting name, to make thyself a glorious name, frames the Exodus as an act done for God's own name as much as for Israel's rescue.

Isaiah 63:15-16

Look down from heaven, and behold: The recital becomes a direct plea, look down from heaven, asking where the zeal and strength just remembered from Moses' day have gone, and whether the Lord's mercies toward his people are now restrained. Verse 16 answers its own question with the confession the chapter is remembered for, doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not, thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer, thy name is from everlasting. Henry notes that natural descent from Abraham is set beneath a fatherhood that does not depend on it, the plea reaching past the patriarchs to God as the more original father. The double naming, father and redeemer, joins the two claims the chapter has been making, one who begets and one who buys back at a cost.

Isaiah 63:17-19

O Lord, why hast thou made us to err: The prayer grows bold enough to ask why God let them wander from his ways and hardened their heart from his fear, language the older commentators read as describing the Lord's judicial withdrawal rather than an author of the sin itself, a hardening that follows persistent rebellion rather than causing it. The plea for return is grounded in ownership, thy servants, the tribes of thine inheritance, not in any merit of their own. Verse 18 laments that the people of thy holiness held the land only a little while before adversaries trod down the sanctuary, and verse 19 closes the chapter on the rawest line of the prayer, we are thine, thou never barest rule over them, they were not called by thy name. Gill reads the closing verses as the hinge into chapter 64's still bolder prayer, the plea only intensifying from here.