Red in His Apparel — Isaiah 63–66

Isaiah’s last four chapters open with a question called out to a man coming in from Edom with his clothes stained red. His answer is the Second Coming. Then come a prayer, a new creation, and the whole book folded back onto its first chapter.

“Who Is This That Cometh from Edom?”

Isaiah 63 opens as a conversation. A figure comes up from Edom, south-east of Judah, and from Bozrah its capital. Someone asks who he is. Set out as the poem Isaiah wrote, the exchange looks like this:

Isaiah 63:1–3 — question and answer

Q  “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? … travelling in the greatness of his strength?”

A  “I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.”

Q  “Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?”

A  “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me.”

Both questions are about His clothes. Both answers are about Him.

Why Edom? Because the name means red. Esau asked for “that same red pottage … therefore was his name called Edom” (Genesis 25:30). The man from Red comes red in his apparel.

Who is He? The Lord answered that Himself in November 1831. D&C 133:46–53 quotes this passage, sets it at the Second Coming, and changes one thing: the figure now “cometh down from God in heaven with dyed garments.” Edom was the picture; heaven is the place. His answer stays the same: “I am he who spake in righteousness, mighty to save.” The One who comes to judge introduces Himself as a Saviour.

The Winefat and the Garden

Why is He red? Because “I have trodden the winepress alone” (63:3), and grapes trodden underfoot stain whoever treads them.

Few readers notice that Isaiah uses two different words here. The “winefat” of verse 2 is Hebrew gath, a press, while the “winepress” of verse 3 is purah. Now take the garden where Jesus prayed. The Guide to the Scriptures says, “In Aramaic, the word gethsemane means ‘olive press,’” and Strong’s traces the name to gath and shemen, press and oil (G1068). The press of Isaiah 63:2 is the first half of the garden’s name.

Isaiah 63 is not about Gethsemane directly. Section 133 keeps it at His coming, and so does John, who saw Him “clothed with a vesture dipped in blood” (Revelation 19:13–15). But the Lord names the press He treads: “the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God” (D&C 88:106). He first bore that wrath in a garden called the press, and He was alone there as well:

Gethsemane and the Second Coming — antithetic parallel

“his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44)

“their blood have I sprinkled upon my garments, and stained all my raiment” (D&C 133:51)

“What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40)

“I have trodden the wine-press alone … and none were with me” (D&C 133:50)

Our arrangement, not a published structure. In the garden the blood was His own.

Section 19 tells what that press did to Him: it “caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore.” And why? “I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I” (D&C 19:16–18).

The whole of Isaiah 63 sits in those two verses. He trod the press alone in the garden so that no one else would have to, and those who refuse what He did there will meet the SAME wrath at His coming. The press does not change. Whose blood is on the garments does.

One Messiah, Two Comings

Read the prophets as ancient Israel did and you seem to find two Messiahs. One is a king who breaks the nations. The other “is brought as a lamb to the slaughter” and “openeth not his mouth” (53:7). Isaiah describes one Person at two comings, the Mortal Messiah and the Millennial Messiah. Section 88 puts them in a single line: “The Lamb of God hath overcome and trodden the wine-press alone.” It is the Lamb who treads it.

Verse 4 gives the timing: “For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.” That finishes a line left open in 61:2, “the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God.” At Nazareth Jesus read as far as “the acceptable year of the Lord” and “closed the book” (Luke 4:19–20), as Arise, Shine shows. The day of vengeance stayed in the scroll until chapter 63.

Then Isaiah’s voice turns tender, in a verse almost no one quotes: “In 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 bare them, and carried them all the days of old” (63:9). The Lord kept that too. In section 133, straight after “the year of my redeemed is come,” He goes on: “In all their afflictions he was afflicted.” He would not quote the vengeance without the pity.

How can He be afflicted in all their afflictions? Alma says He would “take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people” (Alma 7:11–12). The One in red garments knows every affliction from the inside, and that is why His vengeance can be trusted. A few verses on, Israel prays to Him as “our father, our redeemer” (63:16); Immanuel and the Child explains why the Redeemer is called Father.

Filthy Rags — Reading the Prayer as a Poem

Chapter 64 is Israel’s answer, and it starts with longing: “Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down” (64:1). Verse 4 says no eye has seen “what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” Paul quoted it (1 Corinthians 2:9), and the Lord used it again in 1832 to open the degrees of glory, “those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard” (D&C 76:10).

Then verse 6. Many Christians read it this way: even our best works are soiled in God’s sight, so no good deed adds anything. It is a sincere reading, and it guards a real truth, because no one earns heaven. But is it what the verse says? Isaiah wrote in POEMS, and the lines have to be read in order:

Isaiah 64:5–7 — the lament line by line

Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways:

behold, thou art wroth; for we have sinned: in those is continuance, and we shall be saved.

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;

and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee:

for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.

Our layout of the KJV lines. The Lord meets the one who works righteousness; sin is what He is wroth with.

Verse 5 carries the weight. The Lord “meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness,” so working righteousness is what God comes out to meet. It is not the rag. What has stained Israel is “we have sinned,” “our iniquities,” and “none that calleth upon thy name.” It is our failed righteousness that is as filthy rags. It isn’t that when we do good, that is a rag; it is that our sins are. Jesus “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38), and nobody calls that a rag. The fuller case is at Filthy Rags on our sister site.

And the prayer does not end in despair: “But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter” (64:8). A potter does not throw clay away for being clay. He works it.

“The Child Shall Die an Hundred Years Old”

Chapter 65 answers the prayer with a creation, “new heavens and a new earth” (65:17), and then with a line that stops readers: “the child shall die an hundred years old” (65:20). Death, on a new earth? The Doctrine and Covenants explains it:

D&C 101:30–31

“In that day an infant shall not die until he is old; and his life shall be as the age of a tree; And when he dies he shall not sleep, that is to say in the earth, but shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and shall be caught up, and his rest shall be glorious.”

Isaiah says “as the days of a tree are the days of my people” (65:22), and the revelation says “his life shall be as the age of a tree.” It is the same image, which makes chapter 65 the Millennium and not yet the celestial earth. People still build houses and plant vineyards and grow old, but dying is a change in a moment rather than a sleep in the ground. Section 101 fills in the rest: “Satan shall not have power to tempt any man,” “whatsoever any man shall ask, it shall be given unto him,” and “he shall reveal all things” (101:27–32).

Satan bound. No death as we know it. All things revealed. That is the reign of the Millennial Messiah.

The last line of chapter 65 is a quotation. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain” is word for word from 11:9, and so the peace of the Root of Jesse and the peace of the new earth are heard as one.

“Where Is the House That Ye Build unto Me?”

Chapter 66 opens by putting every temple in its place: “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me?” (66:1–2). Stephen quoted it to the council that stoned him (Acts 7:49). The next verse says where the Lord looks, “to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word,” and a house without that man in it is only stone.

Then comes birth and gathering: “Shall a nation be born at once?” (66:8). The Lord will “gather all nations and tongues,” “set a sign among them,” and send those who escape out to the nations: “they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles” (66:18–19). So the gathered become the ones who are sent. And each of them is given the same promise: “as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain” (66:22).

Key References

The Courtroom Ends in a Creation

The book began in a courtroom, with “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth” (1:2) calling heaven and earth as witnesses against a people who had rebelled. It ends with those same heavens and earth made new and remaining, as the guide’s opening page shows. The witnesses to the rebellion become the ground of the redemption. Isaiah does not pretend that everyone comes in — his last verse still speaks of a fire that shall not “be quenched” (66:24) — so the choice set out in chapter 1 is still the choice at the end.

Here, then, is the whole book in one sentence: the Premortal Messiah who called Isaiah from the throne became the Mortal Messiah who went as a lamb to the slaughter and trod the press alone, and He will come again as the Millennial Messiah, red from the press, to gather and keep a Covenant People whose names will remain.

The Saviour made studying it a COMMANDMENT: “Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah” (3 Nephi 23:1). And now you know how the book ends. The voice in 1:2 belongs to the man in red in chapter 63, and the children who rebelled in chapter 1 are the clay on the wheel in chapter 64.

Go back to chapter 1 and start again. Read it as a poem this time.

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