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The Scriptorium

Garments of Blood

The Servant is both the Trampler and the Trampled.

Mighty to Save: Isaiah 63, 64(1)

Pray Psalm 69.16-18.

Hear me, O LORD, for Your lovingkindness is good;
Turn to me according to the multitude of Your tender mercies.
And do not hide Your face from Your servant,
For I am in trouble;
Hear me speedily.
Draw near to my soul, and redeem it;
Deliver me because of my enemies.

Read Isaiah 63.1-6.

Reflect.

1. To what do all these mentions of wine and blood refer?

2. Is the One Who is “mighty to save” exacting judgment or bearing it? Or both?

Meditate.
We have previously seen that the coming Servant brings the salvation and new covenant of God with Him. He does this by a terrible suffering (Is. 53), the effect of which is to liberate His people to realize the promises of God’s covenant (Is. 54). The Servant is the LORD Himself (Is. 61, 62). Here He is referred to as the One Who is “mighty to save.” But how He exercises that might is shocking.

Refer back to Genesis 49.8-12. In this passage, Jacob promised a King would descend through Judah, and when He comes, His clothes will be washed in wine and stained with “the blood of grapes.” With the coming of this King, the dynasty that began with David will come to an end, for this is the King for Whom the Kingdom was intended – “Shiloh” (Him Whose It Is) – and to Whom it will be given (Gen. 49.10; cf. Dan. 7.13, 14). The One Who is coming “from Edom” in Isaiah 63.1 certainly appears kingly: “glorious in His apparel” and coming “in the greatness of His strength” and speaking “in righteousness.” As He comes, He looks for all the world like just the kind of deliverer the people of Judah and Jerusalem would love to see.

But there’s a problem here. The people seem confused (v. 2). The King’s garments are stained with wine, with the blood of grapes and peoples (vv. 3, 6). He has come from Edom – which means red – and Bozrah, a city in Edom (v. 1). He looks more like a servant who has tread out the wine than a King and Savior. 

And, indeed, He is both. He tramples the wine, treads it down in His fury, tramples the peoples until His garments are covered with their blood; and He is at the same time both grapes and peoples, bearing His own wrath, enduring His own vengeance, so that the year of His redeemed might finally come (vv. 3, 4). He is both Trampler and Trampled, “mighty to save.”

He is both Judge and Judged, for there was “no one” to do the work of salvation but Him (v. 5). That work involves redeeming the people of God from their captivity and sin, and paying the debt of their sin, so that they might stand before Him in righteousness. The blood of the peoples on His glorious garments is His own blood, shed for the salvation of the world. He breaks the strength of sin (v. 6) by becoming sin for His people, though He Himself is righteous and “mighty to save.”

The text focuses on the judgment of God coming upon His Servant, so that His people might be redeemed. But it also points forward to a Day when judgment will come upon the nations, and they, having rejected the work of their Redeemer, will bear their own guilt forever.

Reflect.
1. Why did the Servant have to endure vengeance and wrath from the Lord? What does that mean for us?

2. How does this passage connect with Genesis 49.8-12? What can we learn from these two passages together? 

3. Why is the Servant alone qualified to bring in the year of His redeemed?

The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if he were already on his way to his passion, clad in his fleshly nature; and as he was to suffer therein, he represents the bleeding condition of his flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the winepress, from which the laborers descend reddened with the wine juice, like men stained in blood. Tertullian (155-250 AD), Against Marcion 4.40

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for bearing God’s wrath against my sin, so that I…

Pray Psalm 69.

Read this psalm slowly, meditating on the suffering of Christ, and giving thanks for His bearing the wrath of God on your behalf.

Sing to the Lord.
Psalm 69 (Selected) (Greensleeves: What Child Is This?)
“Save Me, O God, deep waters rise and threaten to undo Me! 
No foothold in the mire I find; the floods must soon subdue Me. 
Hear, Lord, My weary cry; My throat is parched, unclear My eye. 
Foes long for Me to die and others’ debts are upon Me.” 

O God, our folly all You know, our wrongs from You are not hidden; 
Let those who in Your mercy go not by our shame be smitten. 
“Let none dishonored be because, O Lord, because of Me! 
You make Me dishonor see; on Me reproach is written.” 

O Lord, we make our prayer to You; receive our words, O Savior! 
Let lovingkindness see us through, and answer us with favor! 
Lord, lift us above the mire; deliv’rance is our one desire! 
Let not the floods conspire to swallow us forever! 

Let heav’n and earth now praise You, Lord, the seas and all their creatures, 
For You will save us by Your Word and build Your City’s features. 
There we will with Jesus dwell and know His blessings full and well. 
His glorious Name we’ll tell to every man and creature!

T. M. Moore

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All psalms for singing adapted from The Ailbe Psalter. All quotations from Church Fathers from Ancient Christian Commentary Series, General Editor Thomas C. Oden (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006). All psalms for singing are from The Ailbe Psalter (available by clicking here).

T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife, Susie, make their home in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
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