Holy, holy, holy: Isaiah sees the King

The book of Isaiah is named for Isaiah son of Amoz, a prophet in Jerusalem in the second half of the eighth century BC. The opening verse of the book dates his ministry to the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, which spans roughly 740 to 700 BC and perhaps a little later. Judah was a small kingdom facing the rise of Assyria, the superpower of the day, which swallowed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and threatened Jerusalem in 701 BC.

The authorship of the whole book is debated. Many scholars, from the nineteenth century on, divide it into at least two works, chapters 1 to 39 from Isaiah himself and chapters 40 to 66 from later prophets in or after the exile, because the later chapters name Cyrus of Persia (44:28; 45:1) and speak to people in Babylon. Others defend the unity of the book under Isaiah, pointing to the shared title 'the Holy One of Israel' and to the New Testament's quotations from both halves under his name. Isaiah 6 sits in the first half, and its origin in the prophet's own experience is not seriously disputed.

The chapter opens with a date, 'in the year that King Uzziah died', probably about 740 BC, though the exact year of his death is debated by chronologists. Uzziah (also called Azariah) had reigned for decades and Judah had prospered. Late in life he tried to burn incense in the temple, a task reserved for priests, and was struck with a skin disease that kept him out of the temple until his death (2 Chronicles 26:16-21). So when Isaiah says he saw 'the King' in the temple in the year the earthly king died, the first hearers would feel the contrast. A human king had been shut out of the sanctuary for his pride, and the true King was seated in it.

Placement matters too. Chapters 1 to 5 are accusations against Judah, ending with the song of the vineyard that yields wild grapes (5:1-7). Chapter 6 then tells how the prophet was commissioned for a task that will meet with refusal, and so it explains why the preceding message goes unheard.

Isaiah 6 is first-person prophetic narrative. Isaiah tells what he saw and heard, and the chapter is carefully built. It moves from what he sees (verses 1-4), to what he says (verse 5), to what is done for him (verses 6-7), to what he is sent to say (verses 8-13). The central claim is stated by the seraphim in verse 3, and everything else is a reaction to it.

Three rules apply.

• First, vision language is picture language. The details (six wings, a throne, smoke, a coal) are not a photograph of God, who is spirit. They make the unseen visible and convey God's kingship, purity and nearness.
• Second, read the commission by its Hebrew grammar and by its place in the book. The verbs in verses 9 and 10 are commands, and they describe the effect of Isaiah's preaching, not the content of his message.
• Third, because the New Testament quotes verses 9 and 10 several times, the passage should also be read as the New Testament reads it, as an account of how the people's own resistance meets God's judgment.

The chapter also belongs to a sequence of prophetic commissions: Moses at the bush (Exodus 3), Micaiah's vision of the heavenly court (1 Kings 22:19-23), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1 to 3). In each, a person is brought into God's presence, made fit for it, and sent.

Verse 1

Isaiah says he saw 'the Lord' (Hebrew adonai, the title of a master or king) 'seated on a throne, high and exalted'. The Hebrew words for 'high' and 'lifted up' are the same pair used of the Servant in 52:13. The 'train of His robe' filled the temple. Most interpreters take this to be God's heavenly palace, of which the Jerusalem temple was the earthly copy, though some think Isaiah saw the vision in the Jerusalem sanctuary. Only the hem of the robe is mentioned; the vision does not describe God's face.

Verse 2

The seraphim are mentioned only here as heavenly beings in the Old Testament. The name comes from a Hebrew root meaning 'to burn', and the same word is used elsewhere for fiery snakes (Numbers 21:6; Isaiah 14:29). Each has six wings. Two cover the face, because even the highest created beings may not look straight at God. Two cover the feet, a word that can be a polite way of speaking about the body, and two are for flying in his service.

Verse 3

'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts.' In Hebrew, repeating a word is the way to say it in the highest degree, and here it is repeated twice. Holiness is the one attribute raised to this degree. The root idea of holy (qadosh) is separateness: God is set apart from everything created, in his nature and in his purity. 'LORD of Hosts' means the LORD who commands the armies of heaven. 'All the earth is full of His glory' (kavod, a word whose root means weight) says that the whole world, not only the temple, is the scene of his visible greatness.

Verse 4

The doorposts shake, and smoke fills the house. The smoke recalls the cloud on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:18) and the cloud at the temple's dedication (1 Kings 8:10-11). The building reacts to the seraphim's voice; the room seems too small for what it holds.

Verse 5

Isaiah answers, 'Woe is me, for I am ruined'. The word translated 'ruined' (nidmeti) is related to a verb meaning to be cut off or silenced, and it may mean 'I am undone'. This fits the belief expressed in Exodus 33:20 that no one can see God and live. Isaiah is a prophet, yet his mouth is the problem: he is 'a man of unclean lips' who lives among 'a people of unclean lips'. He does not excuse himself by comparing himself to his neighbours. He includes himself in the people's sin, and the sin is placed in the very organ he needs for his work.

Verses 6–7

A seraph takes a glowing coal from the altar and touches his mouth. Whether this is the altar of burnt offering or the incense altar is not stated. The altar is where sin was dealt with by sacrifice, so fire from it brings cleansing from that source. The initiative is wholly God's. Isaiah offers no sacrifice and makes no promise. The seraph speaks the verdict: 'your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for.' The verb for atoned (kipper) is the verb of the sacrificial system, to cover or purge. Isaiah is made fit for service before he is asked to serve.

Verse 8

'Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?' The question is not for lack of information. God invites. The plural 'Us' has been read in different ways (see the note on traditions). Isaiah answers with a single word in Hebrew, hineni, 'Here am I'. He volunteers only after he has been cleansed, and he does so without yet knowing the content of the message.

Verses 9–10

The task is a hard one. Isaiah is told to say to the people, 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding', and to make the heart of this people calloused, their ears dull and their eyes closed, 'otherwise they might see with their eyes... and turn and be healed.' Two things should be seen.

• First, the long record of refusal in chapters 1 to 5 has already formed the response, so Isaiah's preaching confirms a hardness already present.
• Second, the purpose clause is ironic and judicial: the message will bring about the opposite of what an honest hearing would have brought. The Old Testament says both that people hardened their hearts and that God hardened them (compare Pharaoh in Exodus 7 to 14).

Verses 11–13

Isaiah asks, 'How long, O Lord?', the question of lament. The answer is long: until the cities are ruined and empty and the people driven far away. That language fits the Assyrian devastation of 701 BC and, more completely, the Babylonian conquest of 586 BC. Even if a tenth remains, it will be burned again, but like a terebinth or oak that is cut down and leaves a stump, 'the holy seed will be a stump in the land.' Some ancient witnesses, notably the Greek Septuagint, lack the last phrase, but it stands in the Hebrew text and most translations. The stump holds life, and the first hint appears that judgment will not be the last word.

Isaiah 6 provides the Bible's most concentrated statement of the holiness of God. Holiness is not one attribute among others; it names what makes God God, and later Scripture builds on it. Revelation 4:8 gives the same threefold cry to the living creatures around the throne. Peter quotes Leviticus 19:2 to the same effect (1 Peter 1:16): the call to be a holy people rests on the character of a holy God.

The chapter is also basic to the doctrine of sin and atonement. Sin is not first of all a list of acts; in Isaiah's confession it is the condition of a person and a community in the presence of the holy. The remedy is not human effort but divine provision: the coal comes from the altar, and the declaration of forgiveness comes from heaven. This anticipates the New Testament teaching that God himself provides the offering (Hebrews 9 and 10).

Finally, the chapter introduces the theme of the remnant. Isaiah's son is named Shear-jashub, 'a remnant will return' (7:3), and the stump with its holy seed is the first picture of it. Paul uses the idea in Romans 9 to 11. The hardening passage is quoted by Jesus in Matthew 13:14-15, Mark 4:12 and Luke 8:10 to explain why parables are not understood by all, by John in 12:40 to explain unbelief at the end of Jesus' public ministry, and by Paul in Acts 28:25-27.

The clearest connection is made by the New Testament itself. After quoting Isaiah 53:1 and Isaiah 6:10 about the unbelief of those who saw Jesus' signs, John writes that Isaiah said these things because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him (John 12:41). John identifies the glory Isaiah saw in the temple with the glory of Christ. This is a connection made by direct New Testament statement: the Lord on the throne is the pre-existent Son, as John's opening claim also suggests (John 1:1, 14).

The Servant of Isaiah 52:13, who is 'raised and lifted up and highly exalted', uses the very words of 6:1, and John uses the same idea of lifting up for Jesus on the cross (John 12:32-33). That is the language of an echo: the King lifted up in glory is the same figure as the Servant lifted up in suffering, and John's Gospel holds both pictures together.

The cleansing of the lips by the altar's coal is an echo of the ground of forgiveness found in sacrifice, which the New Testament says is perfected in Christ's single offering (Hebrews 10:10-14). The stump with a holy seed is a promise that is taken up in 11:1, where a shoot springs from the stump of Jesse, and the New Testament presents Jesus as that shoot (Romans 15:12; Revelation 22:16).