Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 63:6

"And I trod down the peoples in mine anger, and made them drunk in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth." — Isaiah 63:6 (ASV)

I will tread down ... — Better, I trod; and so throughout the verse.

Make them drunk, implies a change of imagery from that of the battle to that of the cup of wrath, as in Isaiah 51:17, Psalms 75:8, and Jeremiah 25:15. The section that so closes has often been applied (as, e.g., in the Prayer-Book Epistle for the Monday before Easter) to the passion of our Lord. In that agony and death, it has been said He was alone, and no one was with Him. He trod the winepress of the wrath of God.

It is obvious, however, that this application, though we may legitimately apply some of Isaiah’s phrases to it, is not an interpretation of this passage, which paints a victory, and not a passion.

The true analogue in the New Testament is that of the victory of the triumphant Christ in Revelation 19:11-13. However, it may be conceded that, from one point of view, the agony and the cross were themselves a conflict with the powers of evil (John 12:31–32; Colossians 2:15). And, as He came out of that conflict as a conqueror, the words in which Isaiah paints the victor over Edom may also, though in a much remoter analogy, be applicable to Him in that conflict.