Vengeance on Edom

63‘Who is this that comes from Edom,    from Bozrah in garments stained crimson?
Who is this so splendidly robed,    marching in his great might?’
‘It is I, announcing vindication,    mighty to save.’
² ‘Why are your robes red,    and your garments like theirs who tread the wine press?’
³ ‘I have trodden the wine press alone,    and from the peoples no one was with me;
I trod them in my anger    and trampled them in my wrath;
their juice spattered on my garments,    and stained all my robes.
⁴ For the day of vengeance was in my heart,    and the year for my redeeming work had come.
⁵ I looked, but there was no helper;    I stared, but there was no one to sustain me;
so my own arm brought me victory,    and my wrath sustained me.

I have trodden the winepress alone

The probable facts that lie behind this stark vision are these: there was a long-term feud between Israel/Judah and Edom an adjacent land to the South. The Edomites had been particularly hostile at the time of Judah’s final defeat by the Assyrians in 586 BCE. Around the time of the return of the exiles from Babylon, the Edomites suffered defeat at the hands of another nation. This was seen by the exiles as punishment for its crimes.

Isaiah sees a vision of the Lord as a bloodstained warrior returning from battle. Although the battle has in fact been waged by human beings the prophet sees it as the work of God who has enjoyed shedding the blood of his enemies. It is a vivid, disturbing and disgusting image of God, a bit primitive we might say. But how about this? “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord/ he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored/ he hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword/ our God is marching on.” It may be that Julia Ward Howe actually believed God was marching with the Union armies but she’s more mealy-mouthed than Isaiah and doesn’t imagine her warrior God exulting in bloodshed.

Splendid as is Isaiah’s poem, a Christian believer needs to repudiate it in the strongest terms. However dramatic it nevertheless recruits the Almighty God to the cause of the nation and justifies the brutalities of war. The terrified lads who fought for Edom probably didn’t need to know that Israel’s God was happy to be stained with their blood. In the Christian bible, the passage ought to be headed, “This is NOT the word of God.” And yet….

American Civil War dead

Over the centuries a number of Christian writers have seen in the passage a prophecy of Jesus Christ, the divine warrior fighting his battle on the cross, covered not in the blood of others but in his own. He also found no help and had to tread the winepress alone. He also won the victory. If this kind of imagery seems miles away from the gospel, we have to remember that the good news started its life as “good news of victory in battle” announced to the citizens by messenger. The gospel is good news of God’s victory over evil and death in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. “The Lion of Judah fought the battle and has prevailed!” says the St. John Passion of Bach. Human courage, human suffering and human blood are at the heart of Christian faith. A symbol of Roman torture is its emblem. That makes it a stranger and more disturbing thing than cosy modern liberalism likes to admit.