Isaiah63chapter 63

The opening scene is a winepress, and every detail is what treading actually looked like. Grapes were tipped into a shallow floor cut into bedrock, and men trod them barefoot, holding onto ropes or a beam for balance; the juice ran through a channel into a lower vat. The treader's legs and clothes ended the day stained dark red to the waist. There was normally a work song and a crowd. Isaiah's treader says, I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the peoples there was no one with me.

The place names carry a pun. He comes from Edom, from Bozrah, with dyed garments — and Bozrah sounds like the Hebrew word for grape-gathering, while Edom sounds like the word for red. The whole picture is built on the sound of two towns.

The prayer that fills the rest of the chapter is a history lesson turned into an appeal, and it contains one of the most tender lines in the Old Testament: in all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them, and he carried them all the days of old.

Then the questions, and they are the questions of a people whose situation makes no sense to them. Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? Where is he who put his Holy Spirit within them, who led them by the right hand of Moses, who divided the water before them? Praying by reciting the old rescues and asking where that God went is a recognized way of praying in Israel.

The last appeal is a family one, and it goes over the family's head. Doubtless you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from everlasting is your name. The dead patriarchs cannot help. The claim goes straight to God.