CHAPTER 63

(698 B.C.)

MESSIAHS SECOND ADVENT: VENGEANCE ON ISRAELS ENEMIES

¹Who is this Who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? He Who is glorious in His apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength? I Who speak in Righteousness, mighty to save. (The question, Who is this Who comes from Edom? refers to Christ. This pertains to the Second Coming, with the description in Verses 1 through 6 pertaining to the Battle of Armageddon.

Some have thought that this Vision, concerning the garments dyed with blood, is descriptive of Christ as Saviour; however, this Vision, as the language states, concerns vengeance, which is the opposite of Grace, and it belongs to His future Second Coming in Judgment.)

²Wherefore are You red in your apparel, and Your garments like him who treads in the winefat? (And Your garments like him who treads in the winefat, has to do with one in olden times who treaded down grapes, and, therefore, had his garments splattered with the juice. Such typifies what Christ will do at Armageddon.)

³I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with Me: for I will tread them in My anger, and trample them in My fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will stain all My raiment. (The winepress speaks of the terrible carnage and bloodletting at Armageddon. Quite possibly millions will die at this particular time.

And of the people there was none with Me, refers to the nations of the world, which had joined in opposition to Israel in favor of the Antichrist. None sided with Israel, i.e., Christ. Consequently, He will tread them in My anger, and trample them in My fury.)

⁴For the day of vengeance is in My heart, and the year of My redeemed is come. (This is the time that the Lord will once again, as Zechariah prophesied, fight against those nations as when He fought in the day of battle [Zech. 14:3]. As well, this will be the time of Israels restoration.)

⁵And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore My Own arm brought Salvation unto Me; and My fury, it upheld Me. (Those who had no helper and no upholder are the sons of Jacob, who, at the time of Messiahs Second Coming, will be suffering most cruel persecution. However, the Lord will come back in Power and Glory in fact, such Power and Glory as the world has never seen before. Consequently, He will bring victory to His chosen People.)

⁶And I will tread down the people in My anger, and make them drunk in My fury, and I will bring down their strength to the Earth. (The people, should have been translated the nations. The destruction is to be so complete that it will be absolutely and utterly overwhelming. There will be no recovery for the Antichrist and those who follow him. They will all be destroyed!)

GODS FAVOR SHOWN ISRAEL; PRAISE FOR PAST BLESSINGS

⁷I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the LORD, and the praises of the LORD, according to all that the LORD has bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which He has bestowed on them according to His mercies, and according to the multitude of His lovingkindnesses. (As praise for present blessings followed the First Advent [61:1-11], so praise for past blessings [Vss. 7-14] here follows the Second Advent, and rightly so!)

⁸For He said, Surely they are My People, children who will not lie: so He was their Saviour. (This harks back to the deliverance of the Children of Israel from Egyptian bondage. The Lord at that time was their Saviour.)

⁹In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bore them, and carried them all the days of old. (The Angel of His Presence, occurs nowhere but in this place. It is probably equivalent to the Angel of God [Ex. 19:19; Judg. 15:6; Acts 27:23]. It either designates the Second Person of the Trinity, or the highest of the Angelic company, who seems, at least in this instance, to be the Archangel Michael.

Such refers not only to their deliverance from Egypt, but their preservation in the wilderness.)

¹⁰But they rebelled, and vexed His Holy Spirit: therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them. (Any rebellion against the Lord or His Word always, and without fail, vexes the Holy Spirit, without Whom we simply cannot succeed or survive.

Therefore He was turned to be their enemy, was brought about because of Israels sin and rebellion. Consequently, He fought against them, which is a sad state of affairs, to say the least! The Lord, Who desired to fight for them, was forced to fight against them.)

¹¹Then He remembered the days of old, Moses, and His People, saying, Where is He Who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of His flock? where is He Who put his Holy Spirit within him? (The scene now changes from the ancient deliverance of Israel to the coming Battle of Armageddon. Then the Lord will remember the days of old. He will remember His Covenants and deal with them again [Lev. 26:33-43; Deut. 30:1-10].)

¹²Who led them by the right hand of Moses with His glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to make Himself an Everlasting Name? (This speaks of the mighty miracle of the opening of the Red Sea, which the Lord now once again calls to account.

To make Himself an Everlasting Name, is one of the main purposes of the entire series of miracles wrought in Egypt: that Gods Name might be declared throughout all the Earth [Ex. 9:16].)

¹³Who led them through the deep, as an horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble? (What a sight this must have been! Some 5 to 6 million people coming through this created path, with a wall of water standing up on either side of them, and the way so smooth that not one of them should stumble.)

¹⁴As a beast goes down into the valley, the Spirit of the LORD caused him to rest: so did You lead Your People, to make Yourself a glorious Name. (The Glory of all these past blessings is ascribed not to Israel, but to Israels Great Shepherd all to make Himself a Glorious Name, not for egotistical or selfish purposes, but that men throughout the Earth may know that all Blessings and Deliverance come from God, and from God Alone!)

PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE

¹⁵Look down from Heaven, and behold from the habitation of Your holiness and of Your glory: where is Your zeal and Your strength, the sounding of Your bowels and of Your mercies toward me? are they restrained? (This prayer, in effect, will be prayed by Israel, or rather the Believing Remnant of Israel, prior to the Second Coming.

The faith, attachment, and anguish of the prayer are most effecting, and are made the more so by the way in which the Holy Spirit lends Himself to the feelings of a dependent and desolate heart, recalling past blessings, expressing present distress, acknowledging sin and the justice of Gods judicial blinding, but pleading for Deliverance, not because of the Repentance and Faith of the supplicants, but nevertheless required, but because of the election of God and the immutability of His Nature.)

¹⁶Doubtless You are our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: You, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer; Your Name is from everlasting. (The Pharisee based his expectation of Salvation upon his relation to Abraham, but the spiritual Israelite bases his upon his relation to God. When facing Christ at His First Advent, they boasted that they were children of Abraham [Jn. 8:39]. Now at the eve of His Second Advent, they boast no more, but rather confess that Abraham would not even own them, i.e., be ignorant of us.

They now admit that Israel, i.e., Jacob, would not even acknowledge them.

Doubtless You are our Father, rather says, If You will not be our Father, then we have no Father! This is the ground of their appeal to God. They acknowledge that their ancient relationship to Abraham and Jacob cannot redeem them. If the Lord does not claim them and redeem them, they are eternally lost!)

¹⁷O LORD, why have You made us to err from Your Ways, and hardened our heart from Your fear? Return for Your servants sake, the tribes of Your inheritance. (This Verse should read: O Jehovah, why have You suffered us to err from Your Ways? And why have You let us harden our hearts to Your fear? Thus, true Repentance confesses that God justly gives men over to a hardened heart when they resist His Will. At the same time, faith holds to it that the Tribes of Jacob were Gods inheritance and His holy people.

Hardened our heart from Your fear, refers to the fact that when men have scornfully and obstinately rejected the Grace of God, God withdraws it from them judicially, giving them up to their wanderings, which makes their heart incapable of faith.

Return for Your servants sake, speaks of humility, and no longer of a hardened heart.)

¹⁸The people of Your holiness have possessed it but a little while: our adversaries have trodden down Your Sanctuary. (The great inheritance that God gave unto His People was possessed by them only a little while. As a result of their sin, our adversaries have trodden down Your Sanctuary. They are referring to the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and by Titus, the Roman General. But more than all they are speaking of the Antichrist, whom they erroneously thought was the Messiah, but who turned on them and did trod down their Sanctuary [Dan. 9:27].)

¹⁹We are Yours: You never bore rule over them; they were not called by Your Name. (There is no Thine [Yours] in the original, and so important a word could not possibly be supplied from without. Therefore, the translation should read, We are as those over whom You have not ruled from of old, as those upon whom Your Name has not been called; i.e., we have lost all our privileges we have become in Gods sight no better than the heathen He has forgotten that we were ever His People.)