Isaiah6chapter 6

Uzziah had reigned about fifty-two years — long, strong, and prosperous. He ended it isolated in a separate house with a skin disease, struck down (the Chronicler says) for pushing into the temple to burn incense himself, which only priests could do. So the year he died, Judah was burying a great king who had died unclean, and the throne felt shaky. That is the year Isaiah sees the real throne, occupied.

The room is furnished with what a worshipper would recognize. There is an altar with coals kept burning on it, and tongs beside it for handling them, because no one picks up altar coals by hand. Incense smoke fills the house at the hour of prayer. The doorposts shake — the frames of the great doors of the sanctuary.

The word translated seraphim means burning ones. The same root names the fiery serpents in the wilderness, and thrones in Egypt and Canaan were pictured guarded by winged serpent figures, so the image was not strange to that world. What is strange is what these ones do: with two wings they cover their faces and with two their feet, because they are not the frightening thing in the room.

The threefold holy is the strongest form of emphasis Hebrew has. There is no word for holiest; you say it three times.