Isaiah 63 Footnotes

63:1-6 If God is a God of love (1Jn 4:8,16), it seems out of character for him to express such anger and wrath against people, in this case the Edomites. In raising this issue, what tends to be overlooked is what the Bible means by love. In Scripture this is a covenant-related concept; God’s love (Hb hesed is the most important word for it) is his faithfulness to a relationship he has granted to those who have pledged themselves to him. The NT concept of agape- love depends on this covenantal idea (e.g., 1Jn 4:20-21). God loves his world in a general way (Jn 3:16), but his faithful love extends especially toward those who belong to his covenant; because of his faithfulness to them, his judgment falls upon their enemies. Edom was a long-term enemy of Israel, and all such enemies (Edom represents them here) need to know that God’s wrath is real and will come upon those who reject his truth and stubbornly refuse to repent (see Rm 2:5). God’s anger flares precisely because of his love, not in spite of it.

63:10 Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would be given after he left them in bodily form (Jn 14:16; 15:26; 16:7-13) and promised a special outpouring of the Spirit that was fulfilled at Pentecost (Ac 2). This does not mean the Holy Spirit was inactive before that time. The NT mentions his activity in relation to John the Baptist before his birth (Lk 1:15), Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus (Mt 1:18), Zechariah’s prophecy (Lk 1:67), and the song of Simeon (Lk 2:25). Jesus’s ministry was a ministry of the Holy Spirit from his baptism onward (Mt 3:16; Lk 4:18; Ac 10:38). In the OT, Bezalel was given the ability to make the tabernacle through the Spirit (Ex 31:3), the Spirit caused Balaam to prophesy good things for Israel (Nm 24:2), and Samuel anointed David to be king and he was filled with the Spirit (1Sm 16:13). The Spirit of God was active throughout the OT period, even from the creation (Gn 1:2), though there is a limited amount of revelation about his work in OT texts.

63:17 Isaiah apparently quoted a prayer of the people—or ascribed it to them as a literary device—who complained that the Lord caused them to stray and hardened their hearts. It is possible to interpret this complaint in several ways. (1) God eventually hardens the hearts of those who continually reject him through their own choice (see note on 6:9-10). (2) The people, in their prayer, were inappropriately blaming God rather than taking responsibility for their poor choices. (3) The verb could be translated in a tolerative sense, “Why do you allow us to stray?” rather than in a causative sense. God gives people freedom to obey or disobey him; when humans choose to ignore him and run counter to his directives, it is not primarily God’s doing. But God may eventually give them over to their own sinful inclinations simply by withdrawing his hand from the situation (Rm 1:18-25).