Who Is This That Comes from Edom

DESCRIPTION: "Who is this that comes from Edom, All his raiment stained with blood, To the slave proclaiming freedom, Bringing and bestowing good; Glorious in the garb he wears...." It is the Savior, his clothes stained with blood of his enemies. He'll heal his people
AUTHOR: Words: Thomas Kelly (source: hymnary.org)
EARLIEST DATE: 1809 (hymnary.org)
KEYWORDS: religious death clothes | blood
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
MidwestFolklore, Mary O. Eddy, "Twenty Folk Hymns," Volume 3, Number 1 (Spring 1953), p. 38, "Antwerp" (1 excerpt, 1 tune)
NOTES [420 words]: This is a fairly close allusion to Isaiah 63:1-2, which in the King James Bible reads "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. (2) Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat [=wine press]?"
According to McKenzie, p. 5, note on Isaiah 34:5, "Bozrah is mentioned in prophetic threats against Edom in lxiii 1, Jer xlix 13, 22; Amos i 12. The city is probably to be located at the modern Buseira (which preserves the name), about 120 miles south of Amman[, Jordan]."
Smith, p. 481, says, "Once again our prophecies, in another of our periodic transports, turn to hail the Solitary Divine Hero and Savior of His people." But I think it clear that the original oracle (which includes Isaiah 63:1-6) was not a Christological prophecy: "The Christian fathers made the lamentable blunder of thinking this to be Messianic, a picture in some way of Jesus the Christ in his capacity of Savior by the outpouring of blood. But this was hopelessly wrong. It is the Lord Jehovah in his capacity not as a Savior but as an Avenger" (AbinngdomComm, p. 673). It is an unusually lyrical but otherwise typical example of the sorts of prophecies added to earlier prophets by angry interpolators. (Isaiah 63 is part of the so-called "Third Isaiah," most of which was written centuries after the time of the original Isaiah.)
AbingdonComm, p. 673, says, "Here is a poem of great but awful beauty, quite detached from all that precedes and follows.... The awe-stricken prophet calls out to ask who this may be, and receives an answer that shows the person to be none other than the Lord himself. JewishStudyBible, p. 890, says of these six verses, "A short and disturbing passage concerning divine vengeance against God's enemies, symbolized especially by the Edomites. This passage is closely connected with ch. 34... there, too, the prophet predicted a great slaughter in the land of Edom." JewishStudyBible, p. 833, the commentary on Isaiah 34, notes the irony that, although the Jews were utterly hostile to Edom in the time of Third Isaiah, the people of Edom (by then called Idumeans) converted to Judaism in the Maccabean Era and fought with the Jews against Rome; indeed, Herod the Great and his sons were Idumean rather than Jewish. According to JewishStudyBible, the rabbis understood Edom in this passage to stand for Rome!- RBW
Bibliography

AbingdonComm: Frederick Carl Eiselen, Edwin Lewis, and David G. Downey, editors, The Abingdon Bible Commentary, Abingdon Press, 1929
JewishStudyBible: Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors, The Jewish Study Bible [featuring the Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh translation], second edition, Oxford University Press, 2014
McKenzie: John L. McKenzie, Second Isaiah, being volume 20 of The Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1968
Smith: George Adam Smith, The Book of Isaiah, volume II, chapters XK-LXVI, 1890; revised edition, Harper & Brothers, 1927

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