Romuald Hazoumé

La Bouche du Roi, 1997–2000, Oil drums, plastic, glass, shells, tobacco, fabrics, mirrors, metal, The British Museum, London; © Romuald Hazoumé / Artist Rights Society (ARS NY); Photo: Benedict Johnson

‘Where the Grapes of Wrath are Stored’

Commentary by Angela Russell Christman

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Read by Ben Quash

Much Christian exegesis of Isaiah 63:1–14 has focused on Christ’s Passion and the Eucharist. However, interpreters have also recognized that the passage is equally about justice, for it depicts God as both liberator of the oppressed and punisher of oppressors. St Jerome highlighted this theme in his Commentary on Isaiah, imagining that the question ‘Who is this that comes from Edom?’ (Isaiah 63:1) was posed by the angels. Not knowing beforehand about the Passion (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:6–7), they were puzzled by Christ’s bloodied appearance. According to Jerome, Christ responds:

I am the one who speaks justice … I am he who has come to fight against evil powers, to proclaim freedom to the captives and liberate from prison those in chains [cf. Isaiah 61:1]. I have come to punish my adversaries and free the captives. (Wilken 2007: 492)

In 1861 the American abolitionist Julia Ward Howe emphasized this theme of justice in Battle Hymn of the Republic, which opens by alluding to Isaiah 63:3:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…

Romuald Hazoumé’s La Bouche du Roi (French for ‘the Mouth of the King’) is named after the place in Benin whence enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It consists mainly of petrol (gasoline) cans, whose anthropomorphic spouts and handles suggest the anguished faces of captives, and which are arranged to suggest the plan of a slave ship. It renews the protest against injustice voiced by Howe’s poem, but also extends it, by drawing our attention to and denouncing all forms of exploitation and their vestiges: the legacy of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century slave trade, the enslavement of people even today, the plight of refugees, economic corruption, and environmental degradation. Indeed, Hazoumé’s use of petrol cans made of plastic subtly underscores how oppression of human beings and environmental exploitation are often intertwined.

 

References

Snyder, Edward D. 1951. ‘The Biblical Background of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”’, The New England Quarterly, 24.2: 231–238

Ward, Robert J. 1993. ‘Biblical Imagery in Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”’, The Choral Journal, 34.5: 25–27

Wilken, Robert Louis (trans.) with Angela Russell Christman and Michael J. Hollerich. 2007. Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, The Church’s Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)

See full exhibition for Isaiah 63:1–14

Isaiah 63:1–14

Revised Standard Version

63Who is this that comes from Edom,

in crimsoned garments from Bozrah,

he that is glorious in his apparel,

marching in the greatness of his strength?

“It is I, announcing vindication,

mighty to save.”

2Why is thy apparel red,

and thy garments like his that treads in the wine press?

3“I have trodden the wine press alone,

and from the peoples no one was with me;

I trod them in my anger

and trampled them in my wrath;

their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments,

and I have stained all my raiment.

4For the day of vengeance was in my heart,

and my year of redemption has come.

5I looked, but there was no one to help;

I was appalled, but there was no one to uphold;

so my own arm brought me victory,

and my wrath upheld me.

6I trod down the peoples in my anger,

I made them drunk in my wrath,

and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.”

7I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord,

the praises of the Lord,

according to all that the Lord has granted us,

and the great goodness to the house of Israel

which he has granted them according to his mercy,

according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

8For he said, Surely they are my people,

sons who will not deal falsely;

and he became their Savior.

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;

he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

10But they rebelled

and grieved his holy Spirit;

therefore he turned to be their enemy,

and himself fought against them.

11Then he remembered the days of old,

of Moses his servant.

Where is he who brought up out of the sea

the shepherds of his flock?

Where is he who put in the midst of them

his holy Spirit,

12who caused his glorious arm

to go at the right hand of Moses,

who divided the waters before them

to make for himself an everlasting name,

13who led them through the depths?

Like a horse in the desert,

they did not stumble.

14Like cattle that go down into the valley,

the Spirit of the Lord gave them rest.

So thou didst lead thy people,

to make for thyself a glorious name.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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