The Call of Isaiah: Holy, Holy, Holy

In the year that King Uzziah dies — 740 BCE, the end of a long and stable reign — Isaiah goes to the Temple and sees. The vision is the most intense throne-room scene in the Hebrew Bible before Ezekiel.

The Lord is seated on a high and exalted throne. The hem of his robe fills the Temple. Above him stand seraphim — fiery ones, creatures not described in any other text — each with six wings: two to cover the face, two to cover the feet, two to fly. They call to one another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The doorposts and threshold shake at the sound of their voices, and the house fills with smoke.

Isaiah's response is not wonder but self-annihilation: Woe is me! I am undone! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips — and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. He has seen what humans are not supposed to survive. He is expecting to die.

One of the seraphim flies to him holding a live coal taken with tongs from the altar. It touches his mouth: See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for. The instrument of his inadequacy — his lips — is also the instrument of his purification.

Then the voice of the Lord — and now the plural appears again, as in Genesis: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Isaiah says: Here am I. Send me. The willingness is immediate and absolute, though he does not yet know what he is being sent to do.

When he is told, the commission is one of the strangest in all prophetic literature: go and tell the people — but tell them in such a way that their hearts will be closed, their ears heavy, their eyes shut. Harden the people. Make them unable to hear. How long? Until the cities are waste and the land utterly desolate.

The prophet is sent to preach what will not be heard. He goes anyway.