Revelation 19:13; Clothing and Name

Revelation 19:13  And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. 

Clothed in vesture dipped in blood. Some are embraced, that the blood should here appear upon Christ’ garments before the engagement begins, and so talk in anticipation. It is a needless perplexity, although these bloodstains, – the enemies previously vanquished, – and so the marks of a veteran in battle. This conquering Hero is not now for the first time to try His capacities for war. Who but He was it that “cut Rahab and wounded the Dragon?” Who but He was it that fought for Israel “in the days of Joshua, when opposing kings with kings were put to the word and all their armies?” Who but He was it that “fought from heaven” against the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo, when “the stars in their courses fought against Sisera?” Who but He was the vanquisher of the six great blasphemous world-powers already dead and gone?

And as the seventh, and last, and worst of all is now to be overwhelmed, and the same almighty Conqueror comes forth to execute the doom, He properly comes in the same garments worn and stained on so many battlefields, indicating that He come in the same capacity, for the same ends, and with the same invincible power, as in other judgments upon His enemies. That red apparel, and those garments like one that treadeth the vinefat, are at once the memorials of the past, and the prophecies of what is now to be consummated upon these last confederates against His kingdom.

His Name is Called THE WORD OF GOD. This is one of the pre-eminent designations of the Son of God, who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made.” (Psalm 33:6) “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by Him. And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jon 1:1-14).

He is the Word of God – the Logos – as the true and only expression of the eternal Godhead, as the great subject and substance of the written God, as the accomplishment and fulfiller of the written Word, and the very expression and revelation of the Father, the same as words express the thoughts of the heart.

[Joseph A. Seiss, The Apocalypse – An Exposition of the Book of Revelation, Kregel, 1987, 436-437]