Isaiah’s Commissioning

Isaiah 6

            It seems strange that Isaiah’s commissioning to his prophetic work is placed after he has been prophesying for 5 chapters. I suspect it’s for literary effect. One of my professors wrote his doctoral dissertation on the fact that Isaiah 2-12 is a well-defined subsection of the whole book, written specifically to place the prophecy about Immanuel (7:14) in the middle. I don’t remember the whole argument, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of evidence that Isaiah didn’t do anything by accident.

            Regardless of its position in the book, Isaiah 6 is a powerfully important chapter. First, we have Isaiah seeing a vision of God in his heavenly throne room. There are hints the heavenly reality is reflected in the arrangement of the earthly temple in Jerusalem, especially the presence of seraphim, angelic beings, similar to the cherubim which were carved onto the ark of the covenant. (Don’t ask what difference there is between a cherub and a seraph; the Bible is really scant on details. Some extra-biblical material adds more, but that is outside the Bible.) So, God is his throne room, in His glory.

            Second, Isaiah’s reaction to being in the present of that glory: he is terrified. Human sin cannot exist in the presence of God’s consuming holiness. It’s why the Lord so regularly cloaks His glory in a cloud to hide it’s consuming power. Isaiah does the only thing he can do: he repents, and he received absolution from the angel.

            Finally, he receives his commission. When we read this passage, we usually stop there: “then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” We only rarely read the second half of the chapter publicly, but it is the part that Jesus quotes about Himself, namely, that Isaiah is to preach to a people the limitations of their faith: they are ever seeing, but never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding. It is a message of judgment, which Isaiah gets immediately. “How long?” he wonders. How long will he have to pronounce this judgment. And the answer is stern: until the hammer falls and “though only a tenth remain, yet the land will be laid waste again.” The glimmer of hope is that a stump might resprout. Isaiah has some of the most beautiful passages of the gospel you can imagine, but the book is not just sweetness and light; as we’ve already seen, God’s judgment, His la