Isaiah 63

Today’s Passage: Isaiah 63

This chapter opens with one of the most arresting scenes in all the prophets. A watchman on the walls sees a figure striding up from the direction of Edom, from the fortress city of Bozrah, robed in splendor and marching in great strength, and his garments are stained a deep crimson red. The watchman calls out to ask who this is and why His clothes are the color of one who has been treading grapes, and the answer comes back that this is the LORD Himself, come from the winepress of His wrath, having trodden the nations alone in the day of vengeance. It is a sober and terrible picture, and we must not rush past it. Then, without warning, the whole chapter turns, and the harshness gives way to one of the tenderest recollections in Scripture. The prophet begins to rehearse the kindnesses of the LORD, how in every affliction of His people He was afflicted with them, how the Angel of His Presence saved them and He carried them like a father carrying a child through all the days of old. And out of that memory rises a cry that we ourselves can pray: You, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from everlasting.

As you read, hold this: The same God who alone accomplishes judgment against evil is the One who, in His people’s every affliction, was afflicted with them and redeemed them in love, so we cry to Him as Father.

Isaiah 63:1–3 (BSB)

¹ Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah with crimson-stained garments? Who is this robed in splendor, marching in the greatness of His strength? “It is I, proclaiming vindication, mighty to save.” ² Why are Your clothes red, and Your garments like one who treads the winepress? ³ “I have trodden the winepress alone, and no one from the nations was with Me. I trampled them in My anger and trod them down in My fury; their blood spattered My garments, and all My clothes were stained.

We begin at the wall with the watchman’s startled question, and it is worth entering the scene slowly. A figure comes up out of the wilderness of Edom, and something about Him is both glorious and grave. He is robed in splendor and moves in the greatness of His strength, yet His garments are the deep red of a man who has been laboring in a winepress. When He is asked who He is, the answer is unmistakable: it is the LORD, proclaiming vindication and mighty to save. And when He is asked why His clothes are stained, He does not turn away from the answer. I have trodden the winepress alone, He says, and no one from the nations was with Me. Here is the hard truth we must hold soberly and honestly: there is a wrath in God against all that is evil, and He will one day tread it down. Notice most of all that little word alone. No nation stood with Him, no ally lent a hand. The work of judging the world’s evil is His and His only, for He alone is holy enough to do it and to do it justly, without a trace of the malice or vengeance that spoils our own attempts at justice.

Isaiah 63:4–6 (BSB)

⁴ For the day of vengeance was in My heart, and the year of My redemption had come. ⁵ I looked, but there was no one to help; I was appalled that no one assisted. So My arm brought Me salvation, and My own wrath upheld Me. ⁶ I trampled the nations in My anger; in My wrath I made them drunk and poured out their blood on the ground.”

Now we are told what was moving in the heart of this solitary figure, and it is a thing we must handle with great care. The day of vengeance was in My heart, He says, and the year of My redemption had come. See how those two words lie side by side in the same breath: vengeance and redemption. They are not opposites in God; they are two faces of the same holy love. The very act by which He crushes the oppressor is the act by which He rescues the oppressed. When God finally moves against evil, it is not spite but the setting free of everything evil had bound. And once again He is utterly alone in it. I looked, He says, but there was no one to help. His own arm brought the salvation, His own righteousness upheld Him. We should read the trampling of the nations not as a boast but as a sober certainty: a day is coming when every cruelty that ever crushed the weak will itself be brought low, and it will be God, and God alone, who does it. That is a fearful thing to a proud and unrepentant world, and it is a deep comfort to all who have been wronged and have cried out for justice and wondered whether anyone was listening.

Isaiah 63:7 (BSB)

⁷ I will make known the LORD’s loving devotion and His praiseworthy acts, because of all that the LORD has done for us—the many good things for the house of Israel according to His great compassion and loving devotion.

And here, in a single verse, the whole chapter turns like a key in a lock. The prophet steps back from the terror of the winepress and does the very thing every grateful soul should learn to do: he begins to count the kindnesses of the LORD out loud. I will make known the LORD’s loving devotion and His praiseworthy acts, he says, and you can feel the change of air. Twice over he names that great covenant word, the LORD’s loving devotion, His steadfast, faithful, covenant-keeping love, and he ties it to all the good things God has done according to His great compassion. This is exactly how a healthy soul steadies itself. It remembers. When the world looks dark and judgment looms, the believer does not deny God’s holiness, but he plants his feet on God’s proven mercy and starts to recite it: look at all He has done, look at how good He has been, look at the sheer weight of His compassion toward us. Praise is not a way of pretending the hard things are not there. It is a way of remembering that the God over the hard things has been kind to us ten thousand times.

Isaiah 63:8–9 (BSB)

⁸ For He said, “They are surely My people, sons who will not be disloyal.” So He became their Savior. ⁹ In all their distress, He too was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them. In His love and compassion He redeemed them; He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Now we come to the tenderest verse in the whole chapter, and I want you to slow down and hold it near. God looked upon a people prone to wander and said, in effect, they are Mine, and He became their Savior. But then comes the line that ought to stop us in our tracks: in all their distress, He too was afflicted. Read that again. The same God whose garments were stained red at the winepress, the God alone in His terrible strength against evil, is the God who, when His own people suffered, suffered with them. He did not watch their pain from a safe and cloudless distance. In all their distress He too was distressed, and the Angel of His Presence, the very nearness of God Himself, went down and saved them. And see the beautiful, homely picture at the end of the verse: in His love and compassion He redeemed (גֹּאֵל) goel, pronounced go-ALE. Strong's H1350, kinsman-redeemer, one who redeems or avenges on behalf of a relative. This is one of the warmest words in all the Old Testament, and it does not mean merely to rescue. To gaal is what a near kinsman did: when a family member fell into debt or slavery or trouble, the closest relative was bound by love and blood to step in, pay the price, and buy him back. That relative was called the goel, the kinsman-redeemer, and it is this very word Isaiah reaches for here. God did not save His people from a distance, as a general saves a city by sending troops. He redeemed them as a kinsman redeems his own, drawing near, taking their trouble upon Himself, and paying to bring them home. Keep this word in your heart as you read, for it runs like a golden thread all through Scripture and comes at last to its fullest meaning in the One who drew nearer still, who took our very flesh and paid the whole price to buy us back. The God who treads the winepress alone is the same God who stoops to be our Redeemer, and both are the acts of one unchanging love. them, He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old, the way a father gathers a weary child onto his shoulders and bears him the rest of the road home. This is the heart of our God. He is mighty enough to tread the winepress alone, and tender enough to carry His children every step of the way.

Isaiah 63:10 (BSB)

¹⁰ But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit. So He turned and became their enemy, and He Himself fought against them.

We must not skip over this verse, for it tells the sorrowful other half of the story with painful honesty. They rebelled, and they grieved His Holy Spirit. Notice how personal that language is. Sin is not merely the breaking of a rule; it is the grieving of a Person, the wounding of the very Spirit of God who had been set among them in love. And there is a solemn justice in what follows: the God who had been their Savior turned and, because of their persistent rebellion, became their adversary. Hold this together with the verse before it. The same steadfast love that carries a repentant child will oppose a rebellious one, not because the love has failed but because it is holy love and will not simply wink at sin. Yet even here, do not miss the tenderness underneath the sorrow. A Spirit that can be grieved is a Spirit that cares, that is bound to us in affection, that feels the wound of our wandering. God’s opposition to His people’s sin is never the cold anger of a stranger; it is the grief of the nearest of kin.

Isaiah 63:11–14 (BSB)

¹¹ Then His people remembered the days of old, the days of Moses. Where is He who brought them through the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is the One who set His Holy Spirit among them, ¹² who sent His glorious arm to lead them by the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to gain for Himself everlasting renown, ¹³ who led them through the depths like a horse in the wilderness, so that they did not stumble? ¹⁴ Like cattle going down to the valley, the Spirit of the LORD gave them rest. You led Your people this way to make for Yourself a glorious name.

Out of the sorrow of rebellion, memory does its healing work, and the people begin to look back to the days of old, to Moses and the great deliverance at the sea. Where is He, they ask, who brought us through the waters, who set His Holy Spirit among us, who divided the sea by His glorious arm so that we did not so much as stumble in the depths? It is the ache of a heart that knows what it has lost and longs to recover it. And look at the two gentle pictures the prophet chooses for how God led them. He led them like a horse through open wilderness, sure-footed and unstumbling, and then, more tenderly still, like cattle going down into a green and sheltered valley, where the Spirit of the LORD gave them rest. This is what God is like toward His people even across their failures. He leads, He steadies, He brings them down at last into the valley of rest. And notice why He did it all: to make for Himself a glorious name. Our redemption and God’s glory are never at odds. When He saves and carries and gives rest to His own, His great name shines out before all the world, and that is a thing worth praising Him for with our whole heart.

Isaiah 63:15–16 (BSB)

¹⁵ Look down from heaven and see, from Your holy and glorious habitation. Where are Your zeal and might? Your yearning and compassion for me are restrained. ¹⁶ Yet 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.

Now the remembering turns into open prayer, and it is a prayer we can learn to pray ourselves. Look down from heaven and see, the people cry, from Your holy and glorious dwelling place. Where are Your zeal and might now? It is the honest lament of those who feel God’s nearness withdrawn and dare to say so to His face. But watch what they lay hold of in the dark. Even when they cannot feel His compassion, they refuse to let go of who He is: yet You are our Father. Though Abraham himself, their great ancestor, would not recognize this wayward generation, and though Israel would not own them, God still would. You, O LORD, are our Father; our Redeemer from everlasting is Your name. Here is the very heart of the chapter breaking into speech. The God of the winepress, the holy Judge before whom the nations tremble, is the One these frail and failing people dare to call Father, and Redeemer, that great kinsman word again, now stretched out to everlasting. This is the boldness that reverent love makes possible: to look up at the holy God in our lowest hour and still say, Father.

Isaiah 63:17–19 (BSB)

¹⁷ Why, O LORD, do You make us stray from Your ways and harden our hearts from fearing You? Return, for the sake of Your servants, the tribes of Your heritage. ¹⁸ For a short while Your people possessed Your holy place, but our enemies have trampled Your sanctuary. ¹⁹ We have become like those You never ruled, like those not called by Your name.

The chapter closes on a note of raw and honest pleading, and we should let it be as honest as it is. Why, O LORD, do You let us stray and let our hearts grow hard, they ask, giving voice to that bewildered feeling of a people so deep in their wandering that they can no longer tell where their own guilt ends and God’s discipline begins. And then the great plea: return, for the sake of Your servants, the tribes of Your heritage. They look at the ruin around them, the holy sanctuary trampled by enemies, and they feel as though they have become strangers to God, like people He never ruled, like those never called by His name. It is a cry from the very bottom, and yet it is a cry addressed to a Father. That is the mercy hidden in this ending. The prayer does not end in tidy resolution; it hangs in the air, reaching upward, waiting. But it reaches toward the One who has already told us who He is at His deepest heart: the God who in all their distress was afflicted, who redeemed His people in love and carried them home. A prayer flung up to a Father like that is never flung into the dark.