WEB

Isaiah 6

Dated to the year King Uzziah died, this is Isaiah's call vision: the LORD enthroned in the temple, seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy," and the prophet crushed by his own "unclean lips." A coal from the altar burns the guilt away, and Isaiah volunteers before he knows the assignment. Watch the reversal in the commission itself: the message is meant to dull hearts and shut eyes (v.10), and the only answer to "how long?" is ruin down to a tenth. The stump that remains is called holy seed.

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Isaiah 6 (WEB)
  1. 1

    In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple.

  2. 2

    Above him stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face. With two he covered his feet. With two he flew.

  3. 3

    One called to another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of Armies! The whole earth is full of his glory!”

  4. 4

    The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

  5. 5

    Then I said, “Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Armies!”

  6. 6

    Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.

  7. 7

    He touched my mouth with it, and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.”

  8. 8

    I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”

  9. 9

    He said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘You hear indeed, but don’t understand. You see indeed, but don’t perceive.’

  10. 10

    Make the heart of this people fat. Make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.”

  11. 11

    Then I said, “Lord, how long?” He answered, “Until cities are waste without inhabitant, houses without man, the land becomes utterly waste,

  12. 12

    and the LORD has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many within the land.

  13. 13

    If there is a tenth left in it, that also will in turn be consumed, as a terebinth, and as an oak whose stump remains when they are cut down, so the holy seed is its stump.”

A commission to harden

The strangeness is that Isaiah is sent to make hearing useless: "You hear indeed, but don't understand" (v.9). His preaching will confirm a verdict already reached, not avert it.

Yet verse 13 refuses pure despair. After the felling, a stump survives, and the burned terebinth holds living seed, the thread Isaiah will pull through the chapters that follow.

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