Isaiah 6
In the year of the death of King Uzziah, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and raised up, and the length of his robes was filling the temple. Fiery creatures were standing above him. Each one had six wings. Each covers its face with two and covers its feet with two, and with two it flies. Each called one to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy is Yahweh of armies. His glory is filling the whole earth.” The foundations of the thresholds were quivering from the sound of the calling, and the house was filled with smoke.
I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined. For I am a man with unclean lips, and I dwell in the middle of a people with unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the king, Yahweh of armies.”
One of the fiery creatures flew to me with a fiery coal in his hand, that he took with tongs from the altar. Then he touched my mouth and said, “Look, this is touching your lips and has removed your iniquity, and your sin is covered.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom will I send, and who will go for us?”
I said, “Here I am. Send me.”
So he said, “Go and say to this people,
‘Listen attentively, but don’t understand.
Look carefully, but don’t comprehend.‘
Fatten the hearts of this people.
Dull their ears.
Blind their eyes.
Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,
And understand with their hearts,
So that he turns and heals them.’”
Then I said, “How long, Lord?”
And he said, “Until uninhabited cities crash into ruin.
And houses are empty of people.
And the ground is brought down into destruction.”
Yahweh will send the people away,
And the abandoned woman will multiply in the midst of the land.
A tenth will still be there when it returns, but it will be burned up.
Like the terebinth and like the oak, which when felled have a stump there,
its stump will be a holy seed.
Meditation
King Uzziah was one of the good kings. For Isaiah, he was almost the best of kings, perhaps second only to the ancient and legendary King David. Isaiah was a prophet who worked in the temple. He spent his days around the king and his court. In later days he served as an advisor to Hezekiah.
Oftentimes the chronology of the nation or of kings is marked by the ascension of other kings to the throne or to the death of those kings. The mention of these events is used to coordinate two different sets of events. But the mention of Uzziah’s death in Isaiah 6:1 is unusual because it is not used to tie together other chronological events. It is simply stated as if it is the expected backdrop of the next narrative. It is, in effect, setting a stage for the story that follows.
But what sort of story is marked by beginning with the death of a favored king? What are we to make of this? Just as the eschatological wonder presented at the outset of Isaiah 2 sets the contradictory yet hopeful stage for the long and detailed judgment that follows, so the report of this king’s death should put us in a somber mood along with Isaiah as he is worshiping in the temple.
As Isaiah entered the temple with the deep sorrow of his king’s death on his heart, he was confronted with a very different and opposing vision—he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and raised up. He saw the length of the Lord’s robes filling the temple. The throne of his human king was empty but in that mournful moment, a vision of a different and greater king came to him.
As Isaiah gazed upon the Lord sitting on his throne and as he took in the vision of the Lord’s robe filling the temple, another sight, very different, and perhaps more frightening, took shape before him. Flying creatures surrounded the Lord, above him, beside him. They seemed to be on fire. Were they human shaped? Were they animals? It was difficult for Isaiah to make them out exactly. All was hidden in flames and movement and wonder.
As Isaiah gazed more intently, almost as if he were staring into the sun, the shape of the creatures began to emerge. He could see the wings with which they flew, flowing out of the flames surrounding each creature. But what was inside those flames? Was that a face that he saw? Were those hands or feet? Did he catch a glimpse of legs or a torso? No, he began to realize that he could not see a face on any of the creatures. Beneath the flames, Isaiah could make out that the creatures were hiding their faces from him. Was it shyness that made them cover their faces? Were they protecting Isaiah from their terrifying form? Were they hiding their visage so that they would not have to declare as so many others had, “Fear not!” Once Isaiah made out the wings covering their faces, he noticed that with more wings they covered themselves down to their feet. Other than the basic shape of each creature’s torso, all was hidden from Isaiah.
Isaiah had been staring so intently into the shape of each creature that he had not noticed the deafening sound coming from them. The sound of their wings flapping was like thunder, repeated in great bursts and peals with each flap of their wings. Their fiery shape moving around and above the Lord like great bonfires in the sky. But what was that other sound in the midst of all this noise and chaos? He heard what sounded like some kind of speech, but if so, it was speech he did not know. He listened again. The speech-like sound seemed to be echoing back and forth like thunder in a canyon. Then he realized it was not an echo, but rather the booming speech was coming from one of the creatures to Isaiah’s left, and was being answered by a creature on the right. As the speech went back and forth, it sounded like so many overlapping echoes. Was it a foreign tongue he was hearing? Was it the foreign sound of the Assyrians? No, he had heard that before, but this was not that. As he listened more intently, he began to make out meanings, but he did not know where the meanings were coming from, because the words were still foreign to him. It was as if he was at the same time hearing a foreign tongue for th first time and yet learning to understand it even at this initial hearing. And what was the meaning of the sound? “Kadosh! Kadosh! Kadosh! Yahweh tsevaoth! Melo’ kol haaraez cavodo.” Holy, holy, holy. His glory is filling the whole earth. Again and again the creatures called out to one another, answering one another, overlapping one another in an unceasing crescendo of noise and splendor.
Finally Isaiah became aware of his own movement, as if the sound of the voices was picking him up and moving him from place to place. Isaiah’s terror of this movement caused him to look down around him and only then did he notice that it was the temple itself that was moving and quaking, and not Isaiah himself. The ground had become unstable. On top of that, the continuing fires surrounding these hidden yet terrifying creatures had filled the temple with smoke so that Isaiah’s vision was blurred and obscured. His breathing became labored, and he became aware of the tremendous heat in the room.
As Isaiah grew faint from the heat and blinded by the smoke, and as he grew unstable from the shaking and movement, and he grew deaf from the unending voices, he finally in exasperation cried out, “Woe is me!” And in a way similar to what Moses had done so many hundreds of years before, he said, “For I am a man with unclean lips, and I dwell in the middle of a people with unclean lips.” Isaiah’s sense of uncleanness, or inadequacy, eclipsed that of Moses, who simply felt inadequate to perform the tasks of God’s call. Isaiah felt rather that his whole person was rendered inadequate due to his uncleanness. And it was so much so, that he felt that not only he, but his whole nation was a people of unclean lips. How would Isaiah survive such an onslaught of God’s glory and the terrifying image of God’s servants flying about? “For my eyes have seen the king, Yahweh tsevaoth.” Gone from his memory was the death of Uzziah. Fixed in his mind now was the reality that there was another greater, and much more terrifying king of heaven.
While Isaiah was contemplating his own downfall in the midst of all this terror, he saw coming toward him one of the fiery creatures. His face was still hidden with two wings, and his legs and feet were still hidden with two wings. But what was this? The creature had arms beneath his wings! And what was that in his hand? The creature was holding something in his hand as he came toward Isaiah. Isaiah made out a set of tongs that were used on the altar to arrange the burning coals of the fire. And in the tongs was one of those fiery coals! The creature flew toward Isaiah, coming straight up toward his face, only changing course at the last moment, barely missing Isaiah as he brushed past him on Isaiah’s right. Just as quickly the creature reappeared on Isaiah’s left as he had circled around behind him. Then flying straight up above him, drawing Isaiah’s gaze upward, the creature descended slowly before him, the wings flapping slowly and methodically, allowing the slow descent until he was now directly before Isaiah.
The noise and chaos that continued behind the creature subsided in Isaiah’s attention as his gaze was fixed solidly on this fiery creature before him. And his attention grew even more fixed on the hand that extended out from beneath the wing, with the fiery coal held firmly with the altar tongs. Isaiah could feel the heat of the approaching coal on his face, burning his cheeks and eyes. He could feel his lips heating up and then drying out from the heat. He grew afraid and flinched ever so slightly as the creature stretched his hand just long enough so that the coal touched Isaiah’s lips. The sound, the smell, the pain of the coal on Isaiah’s lips was incredible. As the creature held the coal in place, not pressing to add to the pain, but merely touching, so that the coal could do its work, he said in that strange foreign voice understood by Isaiah, “Look, this is touching your lips and has removed your iniquity, and your sin is covered.”
He drew the coal away and flew back to the altar, replacing the coal with the others there. Then just as the fiery coal blazed anew as it fell into the pile of other coals, the creature blazed with a renewed fire as it rejoined the other fiery creatures around Yahweh, singing their song, “Qadosh, qadosh, qadosh, Yahweh Tsevaoth.”
In that moment, Isaiah understood so much more that atonement from sin involved pain and suffering. He knew that every year a goat was bought to the temple to be sacrificed on the Day of Atonement. He had yet to put himself in the place of the goat, to feel the suffering inflicted on the animal. Then he remembered the lamb that was slain on the Passover. He remembered the ram that took the place of Isaac on Mount Moriah. He remembered the danger that Moses placed himself in as he stood between Yahweh and Israel, pleading for Yahweh’s forgiveness and patience. He understood now the wound on the heel that the seed of the woman would endure as he crushed the head of Satan. Isaiah understood now that God’s victory over sin would always involve suffering on the part of someone. Today it was his own suffering as the coal burned his lips. But tomorrow God may bring the suffering through another, more perfect servant on behalf of Israel. But who would that be, and when would that day come?
As Isaiah was considering these things, he heard another voice, clearer than the crashing and echoing voices of the creatures, louder, and yet in a strange way sounding like a whisper to him, saying, “Whom will I send, and who will go for us?” It was the voice of Yahweh, and the question was unmistakable. But what was this call? What was the mission that God had in mind? Which of the fiery creatures would answer this call? But at the sound of Yahweh’s question, all the creatures suddenly grew silent. The crashing thunder and shaking of the temple stopped, and Isaiah stood in silence.
As he stood there, waiting for a response from one of the creatures, he uttered almost imperceptibly, “Here I am.” All attention of the Yahweh and his creatures turned to Isaiah. It was as if all heavens and earth were focused on Isaiah, and he suddenly felt even smaller that he did before. Yet he continued, “Send me.”
Isaiah expected there to be great peals of laughter in heaven at this meek response of the frail human, but instead he heard the sound of Yahweh’s clear whisper.
“Go and say to this people, ‘Listen attentively, but don’t understand. Look carefully, but don’t comprehend.’ Fatten the hearts of this people. Dull their ears, blind their eyes. Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, so that I turn and heal them.”
Isaiah understood that Yahweh was sending him with a message of judgment, and that that judgment had already been decided. He was to proclaim the message to them in such a way that they would not turn to the Lord for repentance.
How long would this message last, however? Isaiah already knew that there was to be a great reversal in the distant future. He knew that God had a hopeful future for his people. So he asked, “How long, Lord?” How long would he preach this terrible message of judgment?
And Yahweh answered him, “Until inhabited cities crash into ruin, and houses are empty of people, and the ground is brought down into destruction. Yahweh will send the people away, and the abandoned woman will multiply in the midst of the land. A tenth will still be there when the people return, but it will be burned up. Like the terebinth and like the oak, which when felled have a stump there, its stump will be a holy seed.”
Isaiah heard the words with horror, as he realized the import of this message. Because of the sin of his people, their great cities would be torn down with rubble where walls once stood, inviting all manner of enemy into the defenseless cities. The houses would be emptied as the residents fled into the wilderness, and even the ground itself would be brought to ruin, with no one to care for and till the land.
Indeed, there would be nothing left except that, like a great tree that is felled leaves behind a lowly stump, there would be left behind the tiniest and meekest of remnants. Yet just as a new shoot can grow out of a stump yielding life out of the destructive death of the tree, so this stump will be a holy seed for a new life of the people. Was this stump the picture of the coming sufferer that Isaiah had imagined when the coal touched his own lips? Would he preach until that time? He could not tell these things, and the Lord did not disclose everything. All Isaiah could do now would be to go preach. And preach he did.