Isaiah 63:1-3

The Victorious Divine Warrior

63:1 Who is this who comes from Edom, ¹ 

dressed in bright red, coming from Bozrah? ² 

Who ³  is this one wearing royal attire, ⁴ 

who marches confidently ⁵  because of his great strength?

“It is I, the one who announces vindication,

and who is able to deliver!” ⁶ 

63:2 Why are your clothes red?

Why do you look like someone who has stomped on grapes in a vat? ⁷ 

63:3 “I have stomped grapes in the winepress all by myself;

no one from the nations joined me.

I stomped on them ⁸  in my anger;

I trampled them down in my rage.

Their juice splashed on my garments,

and stained ⁹  all my clothes.

Lamentations 1:15

ס (Samek)

1:15 He rounded up ¹⁰  all my mighty ones; ¹¹ 

The Lord ¹²  did this ¹³  in ¹⁴  my midst.

He summoned an assembly ¹⁵  against me

to shatter my young men.

The Lord has stomped like grapes ¹⁶ 

the virgin daughter, Judah. ¹⁷ 

[63:1]  ¹ sn Edom is here an archetype for the Lord’s enemies. See 34:5.

[63:1]  ² tn Heb “[in] bright red garments, from Bozrah.”

[63:1]  ³ tn The interrogative particle is understood by ellipsis; note the first line of the verse.

[63:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “honored in his clothing”; KJV, ASV “glorious in his apparel.”

[63:1]  ⁵ tc The Hebrew text has צָעָה (tsa’ah), which means “stoop, bend” (51:14). The translation assumes an emendation to צָעַד (tsa’ad, “march”; see BDB 858 s.v. צָעָה).

[63:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “I, [the one] speaking in vindication [or “righteousness”], great to deliver.”

[63:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “and your garments like one who treads in a vat?”

[63:3]  ⁸ 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.

[63:3]  ⁹ 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).

[1:15]  ¹⁰ 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).

[1:15]  ¹¹ 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.

[1:15]  ¹² tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”); this occurs again a second time later in this verse. See the tc note at 1:14.

[1:15]  ¹³ 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.

[1:15]  ¹⁴ 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.

[1:15]  ¹⁵ 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).

[1:15]  ¹⁶ 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.

[1:15]  ¹⁷ sn The expression the virgin daughter, Judah is used as an epithet, i.e. Virgin Judah or Maiden Judah, further reinforcing the feminine anthrpomorphism.