63:3 “I have stomped grapes in the winepress all by myself;
no one from the nations joined me.
I stomped on them 1 in my anger;
I trampled them down in my rage.
Their juice splashed on my garments,
and stained 2 all my clothes.
ס (Samek)
1:15 He rounded up 3 all my mighty ones; 4
The Lord 5 did this 6 in 7 my midst.
He summoned an assembly 8 against me
to shatter my young men.
The Lord has stomped like grapes 9
the virgin daughter, Judah. 10
14:17 Then 11 another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 14:18 Another 12 angel, who was in charge of 13 the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to the angel 14 who had the sharp sickle, “Use 15 your sharp sickle and gather 16 the clusters of grapes 17 off the vine of the earth, 18 because its grapes 19 are now ripe.” 20 14:19 So 21 the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard 22 of the earth and tossed them into the great 23 winepress of the wrath of God. 14:20 Then 24 the winepress was stomped 25 outside the city, and blood poured out of the winepress up to the height of horses’ bridles 26 for a distance of almost two hundred miles. 27
1 sn Nations, headed by Edom, are the object of the Lord’s anger (see v. 6). He compares military slaughter to stomping on grapes in a vat.
2 tn Heb “and I stained.” For discussion of the difficult verb form, see HALOT 170 s.v. II גאל. Perhaps the form is mixed, combining the first person forms of the imperfect (note the alef prefix) and perfect (note the תי- ending).
3 tn The verb סָלַה (salah) occurs only twice in OT; once in Qal (Ps 119:118) and once here in Piel. It is possibly a by-form of סָלַל (salal, “to heap up”). It may also be related to Aramaic סלא (sl’) meaning “to throw away” and Assyrian salu/shalu meaning “to hurl (away)” (AHw 1152) or “to kick up dust, shoot (arrows), reject, throw away?” (CAD 17:272). With people as its object shalu is used of people casting away their children, specifically meaning selling them on the market. The LXX translates סָלַה (salah) as ἐξῆρεν (exhren, “to remove, lead away”). Thus God is either (1) heaping them up (dead) in the city square, (2) putting them up for sale in the city square, or (3) leading them out of the city (into exile or to deprive it of defenders prior to attack). The English “round up” could accommodate any of these and is also a cattle term, which fits well with the use of the word “bulls” (see following note).
4 tn Heb “bulls.” Metaphorically, bulls may refer to mighty ones, leaders or warriors. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp (Lamentations [IBC], 69) insightfully suggests that the Samek stanza presents an overarching dissonance by using terms associated with a celebratory feast (bulls, assembly, and a winepress) in sentences where God is abusing the normally expected celebrants, i.e. the “leaders” are the sacrifice.
5 tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the
6 tn The verb is elided and understood from the preceding colon. Naming “my Lord” as the subject of the verb late, as it were, emphasizes the irony of the action taken by a person in this position.
7 tc The MT reads the preposition בּ (bet, “in”) prefixed to קִרְבִּי (qirbi, “my midst”): בְּקִרְבִּי (bÿkirbi, “in my midst”); however, the LXX reads ἐκ μέσου μου (ek mesou mou) which may reflect a Vorlage of the preposition מִן (min, “from”): מִקִּרְבִּי (miqqirbi, “from my midst”). The LXX may have chosen ἐκ to accommodate understanding סִלָּה (sillah) as ἐξῆρεν (exhren, “to remove, lead away”). The textual deviation may have been caused by an unusual orthographic confusion.
8 tn Heb “an assembly.” The noun מוֹעֵד (mo’ed, “assembly”) is normally used in reference to the annual religious festive assemblies of Israel (Ezek 45:17; Hos 9:5; Zeph 3:18; Zech 8:19), though a number of English versions take this “assembly” to refer to the invading army which attacks the city (e.g., NAB, NIV, TEV, NLT).
9 tn Heb “a winepress he has stomped.” The noun גַּת (gat, “winepress”) functions as an adverbial accusative of location: “in a winepress.” The translation reflects the synecdoche that is involved – one stomps the grapes that are in the winepress, not the winepress itself.
10 sn The expression the virgin daughter, Judah is used as an epithet, i.e. Virgin Judah or Maiden Judah, further reinforcing the feminine anthrpomorphism.
11 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence within the narrative.
12 tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
13 tn Grk “who had authority over.” This appears to be the angel who tended the fire on the altar.
14 tn Grk “to the one having the sharp sickle”; the referent (the angel in v. 17) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Grk “Send.”
16 tn On this term BDAG 1018 s.v. τρυγάω states: “‘gather in’ ripe fruit, esp. harvest (grapes) w. acc. of the fruit (POslo. 21, 13 [71 ad]; Jos., Ant. 4, 227) Lk 6:44; Rv 14:18 (in imagery, as in the foll. places)…W. acc. of that which bears the fruit gather the fruit of the vine…or the vineyard (s. ἄμπελος a) Rv 14:19.”
17 tn On this term BDAG 181 s.v. βότρυς states, “bunch of grapes Rv 14:18…The word is also found in the Phrygian Papias of Hierapolis, in a passage in which he speaks of the enormous size of the grapes in the new aeon (in the Lat. transl. in Irenaeus 5, 33, 2f.): dena millia botruum Papias (1:2). On this see Stephan. Byz. s.v. Εὐκαρπία: Metrophanes says that in the district of Εὐκαρπία in Phrygia Minor the grapes were said to be so large that one bunch of them caused a wagon to break down in the middle.”
18 tn The genitive τῆς γῆς (ths ghs), taken symbolically, could be considered a genitive of apposition.
19 tn Or perhaps, “its bunches of grapes” (a different Greek word from the previous clause). L&N 3.38 states, “the fruit of grapevines (see 3.27) – ‘grape, bunch of grapes.’ τρύγησον τοὺς βότρυας τῆς ἀμπέλου τῆς γῆς, ὅτι ἤκμασαν αἱ σταφυλαὶ αὐτῆς ‘cut the grapes from the vineyard of the earth because its grapes are ripe’ Re 14:18. Some scholars have contended that βότρυς means primarily a bunch of grapes, while σταφυλή designates individual grapes. In Re 14:18 this difference might seem plausible, but there is scarcely any evidence for such a distinction, since both words may signify grapes as well as bunches of grapes.”
20 tn On the use of ἥκμασαν (hkmasan) BDAG 36 s.v. ἀκμάζω states, “to bloom…of grapes…Rv 14:18.”
21 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the implied result of the angel’s directions.
22 tn Or “vine.” BDAG 54 s.v. ἄμπελος a states, “τρυγᾶν τοὺς βότρυας τῆς ἀ. τῆς γῆς to harvest the grapes fr. the vine of the earth (i.e. fr. the earth, symbol. repr. as a grapevine) Rv 14:18f; but ἀ may be taking on the meaning of ἀμπελών, as oft. in pap., possibly PHib. 70b, 2 [III bc].” The latter alternative has been followed in the translation (ἀμπελών = “vineyard”).
23 tn Although the gender of μέγαν (megan, masc.) does not match the gender of ληνόν (lhnon, fem.) it has been taken to modify that word (as do most English translations).
24 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the vision.
25 sn The winepress was stomped. See Isa 63:3, where Messiah does this alone (usually several individuals would join in the process).
26 tn L&N 6.7 states, “In Re 14:20 the reference to a bit and bridle is merely an indication of measurement, that is to say, the height of the bit and bridle from the ground, and one may reinterpret this measurement as ‘about a meter and a half’ or ‘about five feet.’”
27 tn Grk “1,600 stades.” A stade was a measure of length about 607 ft (185 m). Thus the distance here would be 184 mi or 296 km.