Featured Study · The Book of Isaiah
The Throne Vision
In the year Judah’s longest-reigning king died, Isaiah saw a throne that was not empty. The seraphim covered their faces, the doorposts shook, and one cry filled the house: Holy, holy, holy. Then John, seven centuries later, names the King on that throne: “Isaiah… saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about Him.” This page walks the whole chapter: the dead king and the living King, the burning ones, the coal, the hardest commission a prophet ever received, and the holy seed left standing in the stump.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Prophet Isaiah (c. 1726-1729) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Year the King Died
about 740 BC: an empty throne in Jerusalem, an occupied throne in heaven
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted; and the train of His robe filled the temple.Uzziah reigned fifty-two years and reigned well, until he did not. 2 Chronicles 26 tells it plainly: “when he was strong, his heart was lifted up.” He forced his way into the temple to burn incense, a priest’s office and not a king’s, and leprosy broke out on his forehead beside the altar. He spent his last years shut out of the house of the Lord he had trespassed into. In the year that king died, Isaiah saw the true King inside the temple, and the seraphim would not even look at Him.
The date matters. Uzziah’s death falls about 740 BC on the standard chronology, and Assyria’s Tiglath-pileser III had taken his own throne five years earlier. Judah’s last long, stable reign was over and the storm was coming. The chapter’s first sentence is its first sermon: thrones on earth empty; the throne Isaiah saw does not.
Was this Isaiah's first call?Isaiah 1-5 come first
Chapters 1 to 5 already stand under Uzziah, so many readers take chapter 6 not as the prophet’s first call but as his commissioning to a harder assignment, told at the exact point in the book where the assignment begins.
This is not the first beginning of Isaiah's prophecies, but his inauguration to a higher degree of the prophetic office: Isa 6:9, &c., implies the tone of one who had already experience of the people's obstinacy. Lord--here Adonai, Jehovah in Isa 6:5; Jesus Christ is meant as speaking in Isa 6:10, according to Joh 12:41.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871
- 52 yearsUzziah's reign (2 Chr 26:3)
- ~740 BCthe year he died
- 745 BCTiglath-pileser III takes Assyria's throne
- 6 wingson every seraph
The Throne and the Burning Ones
the seraphim appear here and nowhere else in Scripture by that name
Above Him stood seraphim, each having six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.The word seraphim means “burning ones.” These are beings who have never sinned, who stand nearer the throne than any prophet ever stood, and still they cover their faces. Four wings for reverence, two for service: that ratio is its own lesson.
Stood - As ministers attending upon their Lord. Seraphim - An order of holy angels, thus called from fire and burning, which this word properly signifies; to represent either their nature, which is bright and glorious, subtile, and pure; or their property, of fervent zeal for God's service and glory.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765
The burning ones and the serpents of the wildernessNumbers 21 · Isaiah 14:29 · 30:6
Here is an honest word study. The Hebrew noun saraph names the throne attendants of this chapter, and the same noun names the “fiery serpents” that bit Israel in Numbers 21:6-8, where Moses lifts up the bronze serpent. It appears again as the “fiery flying serpent” of Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6. The old commentators saw both sides of the word, and said so:
Probably it is now impossible to tell why this name was given to the representations that appeared to Isaiah. Perhaps it may have been from their “burning” ardor and zeal in the service of God; perhaps from the “rapidity” of their motion in his service - derived from the rapid motion of the serpent.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, 1832-1869
Seraph is to burn; implying the burning zeal, dazzling brightness (2Ki 2:11; Mt 28:3) and serpent-like rapidity of the seraphim in God's service. Perhaps Satan's form as a serpent (nachash) in his appearance to man has some connection with his original form as a seraph of light.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871
Among modern scholars, Michael Heiser argues in The Unseen Realm(2015) that the seraphim are serpentine throne guardians, reading the shared vocabulary of saraph and serpent against the throne-guardian imagery of Israel’s neighbors. The older reading, burning ones named for their zeal and brightness, remains fully live. Both stand on the same biblical data, and neither erases the other.
Holy, Holy, Holy
the only attribute of God that Scripture trebles
And they were calling out to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.”Hebrew has no word for “holiest.” When the language wants a superlative it repeats, and twice is usually enough: “the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” (Jeremiah 7:4). Only here, and in the song’s echo at Revelation 4:8, does Scripture treble an attribute of God. Scripture never says God is love, love, love, or mighty, mighty, mighty. It says holy, holy, holy. The seraphim sing it to one another, back and forth across the throne, and the doorposts shake.
Cherubim and seraphim with unwearied voices praise him and say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts." They say it not once, lest you should believe that there is but one; not twice, lest you should exclude the Spirit; they say not holies [in the plural], lest you should imagine that there is plurality, but they repeat three times and say the same word, that even in a hymn you may understand the distinction of persons in the Trinity and the oneness of the Godhead, and while they say this they proclaim God.
Ambrose of Milan· On the Holy Spirit 3.16.110, AD 397
In announcing that the whole earth is full of his glory, the seraphim are predicting the mystery of the economy that will be brought to pass through Christ. Prior to the Word's becoming flesh the world was ruled by the devil, the evil one, the serpent, the apostate. The creature, rather than the Creator, was worshiped. But when the only-begotten Word of God became human, the entire earth was filled with his glory.
Cyril of Alexandria· Commentary on Isaiah 1.4, AD 444
The fathers heard the Trinity in the triple cry; the grammars hear the Hebrew superlative. The page keeps both: the grammar explains how the sentence intensifies, and the church confessed whom the song was always about. And the second half of the cry answers the first: the temple cannot contain the One whose glory the seraphim announce fills the whole earth.
The song that never stoppedthe synagogue's Kedushah, the church's Sanctus, Revelation 4:8
To this day, when Jewish congregations pray the central standing prayer of the synagogue service (the Amidah), leader and congregation pause for a responsive section called the Kedushah, “the Sanctification.” Its heart is this verse, said aloud together, joined to Ezekiel 3:12 and Psalm 146:10. The synagogue has never stopped singing Isaiah 6:3.
The church did the same. The Sanctus of the historic Christian liturgy (“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory”) is this verse with the earth widened to heaven and earth, attested from at least the fourth century. And Revelation 4:8 shows the song still going: four living creatures, six-winged like the seraphim, resting not day and night. What Isaiah heard once, heaven sings always, and two faiths’ liturgies echo daily.
Undone, Cleansed, Sent
the order of the chapter is the sermon: woe, then the coal, then the call
Then I said: “Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts.”Isaiah has just spent a chapter pronouncing six woes on Judah (Isaiah 5:8-23). The seventh woe he pronounces on himself. The best man in the nation, a prophet already at work, sees the King and comes apart. R. C. Sproul built the controlling chapter of The Holiness of God (1985) on this verse: to be undone is to be unraveled, disintegrated, the whole self coming apart at the seams before unqualified holiness. Tozer says the same in The Knowledge of the Holy: we have no way to conceive absolute holiness; we can only do what Isaiah did.
Mathois said, 'The nearer a man comes to God, the more he sees himself to be a sinner. Isaiah the prophet saw the Lord and knew himself to be wretched and unclean (Is. 6:5).'
The Desert Fathers· Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, c. 500
Then the coal. One seraph flies with a burning stone taken with tongs from the altar, touches the exact point of confessed uncleanness, the lips, and speaks the shortest gospel in the Old Testament: your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for. Cleansing comes from the altar, the place of sacrifice. Only after that does Isaiah hear the question, and only a cleansed man answers it.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” And I said: “Here am I. Send me!”The singular I with the plural us: the old commentators heard the Godhead speaking.
God's great remedy for man's ruin of man is the sacrifice of His dear Son. He proclaims to the sons of men that only by the Atonement of Jesus can they be reconciled unto Himself.
Charles Spurgeon· Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit No. 687, “Messengers Wanted” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition), 1866
BROTHERS AND SISTERS, the heathen are perishing and there is but one way of salvation for them, for there is but one name given under Heaven among men whereby they must be saved. God, in the glorious unity of His Divine Nature is calling for messengers who shall proclaim to men the way of life.
Charles Spurgeon· Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit No. 1351, “The Divine Call for Missionaries” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition), 1877
The coal, the altar, and Jerome's sermon on the cleansed mouthIsaiah 6:6-7 in depth
unto me--The seraph had been in the temple, Isaiah outside of it. live coal--literally, "a hot stone," used, as in some countries in our days, to roast meat with, for example, the meat of the sacrifices. Fire was a symbol of purification, as it takes the dross out of metals (Mal 3:2, 3). the altar--of burnt offering, in the court of the priests before the temple.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871
It must be a coal from his altar that must put life into us and be our peace; it will not be done with strange fire.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
Which altar sent the coal is honestly disputed: JFB and Barnes say the altar of burnt offering in the court, so that cleansing comes from the place of sacrifice; some older writers say the altar of incense, where Uzziah trespassed. The text does not say, and this page does not decide.
When Isaiah had seen the Lord seated high upon a lofty throne, what does he say? "Woe is me, because I am in sorrow; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips." Pay attention to his exact words: Woe is me because of my unclean lips. After that, what does he tell us? Because his lips are soiled, one of the seraphim is sent to him, and the seraph taking a burning coal from the altar touches with it Isaiah's lips and tongue and purifies his mouth. Then what does the seraph say? "See," he said, "now that this has touched your lips, your tongue is cleansed." Then immediately, what does the Lord say? "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" O divine secrets of Scripture! As long as Isaiah's tongue was treacherous and his lips unclean, the Lord does not say to him, Whom shall I send, and who shall go? His lips are cleansed, and immediately he is appointed the Lord's spokesman
Jerome· Homilies on the Psalms 41, c. AD 420
The Hardening Commission
the most-quoted prophetic commission in the New Testament
And He replied: “Go and tell this people, ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’This is the hardest assignment in the prophetic books: preach, and the preaching will harden. Jesus reached for these two verses to explain the reception of His own ministry, and so did Paul. Five New Testament books land on them:
Matthew 13:14-15
the parables discourse; the fullest quotation
Mark 4:12
why He spoke in parables
Luke 8:10
the same word to the Twelve
John 12:40
over the unbelief at the end of His signs
Acts 28:26-27
Paul's last recorded word to the synagogue of Rome
How does the hardening work? The voices of the church agree on the floor: the blinding presupposes prior, wilful refusal; God never blinds an innocent eye. Where they differ, in brotherly difference and not conflict, is on how divine agency enters. One line reads it as judicial: God, in righteous judgment on persistent unbelief, gives people over to the blindness they chose. So Augustine, Wesley, Matthew Henry, and the Reformed line after them. The other reads it as consequent: the prophecy states the certain outcome of preaching to hardened hearts, not a divine act producing the hardness. So Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and Adam Clarke.
That the saying of Esaias might be fulfilled: that here is expressive not of the cause, but of the event. They did not disbelieve because Esaias said they would; but because they would disbelieve, Esaias said they would.
John Chrysostom· Catena Aurea on John 12:38, d. AD 407
Yet if any ask why they could not believe, I answer, Because they would not. For as it is to the praise of the Divine will that God cannot deny Himself, so is it the fault of the human will that they could not believe.
Augustine of Hippo· Catena Aurea on John 12:39-40, d. AD 430
The prophetic idiom, and the two readings in depthJeremiah 1:10 · Matthew 13:15
Both lines share a grammatical observation: Hebrew prophets are said to DO what they announce. Jeremiah is set over nations “to pluck up, and to pull down” (Jeremiah 1:10) when all he does is speak. The command “make the heart of this people fat” is that idiom; Matthew 13:15 quotes the verse in the plain indicative, “this people’s heart is waxed gross,” interpreting the imperative.
This making of their hearts fat, is here ascribed to the prophet, as it is ascribed to God in the repetition of this prophecy, John xii, 40, because God inflicted this judgment upon them by the ministry of the prophet, partly by way of prediction, foretelling that this would be the effect of his preaching; and partly by withdrawing the light and help of his Spirit.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765
Hear . . . indeed--Hebrew, "In hearing hear," that is, Though ye hear the prophet's warnings again and again, ye are doomed, because of your perverse will (Joh 7:17), not to understand. Light enough is given in revelation to guide those sincerely seeking to know, in order that they may do, God's will; darkness enough is left to confound the wilfully blind (Isa 43:8).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871
That it was not God Who blinded the Jews. For else He would not have required them to give account thereof, forasmuch as He surely pardons involuntary offences. But the meaning is on this wise.
Cyril of Alexandria· Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 8, d. AD 444
Isaiah’s own response was not debate but intercession: “Lord, how long?” The answer runs to the exile, cities waste and the land empty (6:11-12), and then past it, to verse 13.
The Holy Seed in the Stump
the commission ends in judgment, and the judgment ends in a living tree
And though a tenth remains in the land, it will be burned again. As the terebinth and oak leave stumps when felled, so the holy seed will be a stump in the land.”The chapter that began with a dead king ends with a living stump. Judah will be felled like an oak, and felled again, and yet the stock remains, and the stock carries the holy seed. Five chapters later the image grows: “a shoot will spring up from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit” (Isaiah 11:1). The remnant survives the axe, and out of the remnant comes the King.
According to Isaiah, not all Israel, but the elect remnant alone, is destined to salvation. God shows unchangeable severity towards sin, but covenant faithfulness in preserving a remnant, and to it Isaiah bequeaths the prophetic legacy of the second part of his book (the fortieth through sixty-sixth chapters).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871
An honest note on the last clausethe ancient copies
The final clause of 6:13, “so the holy seed will be a stump in the land,” is absent from the old Greek translation (the Septuagint) and reads a little differently in the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran. The Hebrew text this site’s floor follows carries it, as do the ancient Jewish reading traditions. The variant is named here so the reader meets it from this page first, not from a skeptic; it changes the wording of one clause, not the chapter’s remnant hope, which verses 11-13 carry with or without it.
Isaiah Saw His Glory
John names the King on the throne
Isaiah said these things because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about Him.The Greek text simply says his and him; John has just quoted Isaiah 53:1 and Isaiah 6:10 back to back, and the flow makes clear both mean Jesus.
Read John 12:37-41 slowly. John quotes Isaiah 53:1, then Isaiah 6:10, names Isaiah as the speaker of both, and then writes the sentence above. In John’s flow the glory Isaiah saw is the glory of Jesus: the enthroned King of the temple vision, whom the seraphim would not look upon, is the Son. This page teaches that reading at full strength, and the witness of the early church on it is essentially unanimous:
The prophet had seen Christ and the glory of Christ in the vision in which he said, "I saw the Lord of hosts sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up," and what follows.
Eusebius of Caesarea· Proof of the Gospel 9.16, d. AD 339
When he saw his glory - Christ's, Isaiah vi, 1, &c. And it is there expressly said to be the glory of the Lord, Jehovah, the Supreme God.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755
"THE SON is the King Jehovah who rules in the Old Testament and appears to the elect, as in the New Testament THE SPIRIT, the invisible Minister of the Son, is the Director of the Church and the Revealer in the sanctuary of the heart" [OLSHAUSEN].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871
The synagogue’s own rendering
Targum Jonathan, the official Aramaic rendering of the Prophets read in the ancient synagogue (compiled in the early centuries AD), softens the sight of God in this chapter into the sight of His glory. On 6:1 it reads: “I saw the glory of the Lord sitting upon His throne”; on 6:5: “mine eyes have seen the glory of the Shekinah of the King of the worlds.” Where the Hebrew says Isaiah saw the Lord, the Targum says he saw the glory. John writes that Isaiah saw HIS glory, and he spake of Him. This is reception history, offered so the reader can see both readings side by side; the Targum itself, of course, does not name the Messiah here.
THE BLINDNESS of Israel concerning our Lord was sadly remarkable. It was a blindness of the eyes, for they saw his many miracles, and yet believed not: their ears also seemed to be stopped, for they heard his words and did not understand them; and their hearts also were heavy, for they did not relent under the plaintive admonitions of a Saviour's love.
Charles Spurgeon· Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit No. 1844, “Israel And Britain. A Note of Warning” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition), 1885
How the church guarded the claimseeing the Son, not comprehending the essence
No one can deny that the prophet saw the Son in the glory of God the Father, as John said: "Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him [Christ]." Look and see the great honor that is due to God, and see the authority he has over all creation. God is high and lifted up on a throne, crowned with the splendor of his reign.… In my view we should not think of the throne of God as lifted up in a physical way. That would be foolish and absurd. Rather, that the throne is said to be lifted up means that the reign of God transcends all things. That God is sitting refers to his immovability and that his blessings are everlasting and unchanging.
Cyril of Alexandria· Commentary on Isaiah 1.4, AD 444
Augustine adds the necessary guard (Tractates on John 53): Isaiah saw Him in a symbolic vision, not the divine essence unveiled; the Son is not a lesser, visible God beside an invisible Father. Some modern interpreters read “his glory” as Christ’s glory foreseen across Isaiah’s whole book, especially the Servant passage John has just quoted; on either reading, Isaiah saw the glory of Christ. And an old tradition, preserved in Hebrews 11:37’s “sawn asunder” and told at length on the Isaiah mini-Bible study, says the prophet died for claiming to have seen the Lord.
The Voices
with the work named
Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Nos. 687, 1351, 1844 (1866-1885) · public domain
Three full sermons on this chapter and its John 12 echo: the missionary call of verse 8 twice over, and Israel's blindness read as a warning to Britain.
The Holiness of God (1985)
The book's controlling chapter is built on Isaiah 6; the best-known modern exposition of what happened to Isaiah in verse 5.
The Knowledge of the Holy (1961)
The chapter on God's holiness stands squarely in this vision's shadow: holiness is not one attribute among many but the splendor of them all.
The Unseen Realm (2015)
The serpentine-guardian reading of the seraphim, argued from the word's own usage in Numbers 21 and Isaiah 14:29.
Eusebius, Ambrose, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret
Quoted from their named works throughout; on John 12:41 their witness is essentially unanimous.
Wesley, Matthew Henry, JFB, Barnes, Clarke (1710-1871) · public domain
The page's working floor, quoted in full where they add a reading.
Marcus Brown's own commentary leads above all; within a tier, all voices are equal.
Notable art
— click a piece to enlargeKeep studying
Featured studies
Built on the same Scripture
