Then I said, “Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of Armies!”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. He touched my mouth with it, and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.”
I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
He said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘You hear indeed, but don’t understand. You see indeed, but don’t perceive.’
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 9 He speaketh this for two causes: the one because…
He speaketh this for two causes: the one because he that was a mortal creature, and therefore had more need to glorify God than the Angels, did it not: and the other because the more near that man approacheth to God, the more doth he know his own sin and corruption.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv5–9 Isa 6:5 Then said I, Woe [is] me! for…
Isa 6:5 Then said I, Woe [is] me! for I am undone; because I [am] a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
Ver. 5. Then said I, Woe is me.] The ordinary fear of the faithful, when they had seen the Lord in his majesty. {Gen 16:13 Deu 5:24 Heb 12:21 Jdg 13:22} How shall the wicked then be able to stand before him at the last day?
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For I am undone.] I am a dead man, since no man shall see God and live. {Exo 33:20}
Because I am a man of unclean lips,] i.e., Of a foul nature and sinful practice; his original uncleanness, that filthy fountain and well spring of wickedness, made him cry out in this manner, Pollutior sum quam ut laudem Deum. Angels praise God, as I have heard them; but I, wicked wretch, am altogether unfit for such an employment. Infinite is the distance and disproportion between the high and holy God and me, a loathsome leper, a sordid wretch, &c. The nearer a man draweth to God, the more doth rottenness enter into his bones. {Hab 3:16} "Now mine eyes have seen thee," saith Job, therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. {Job 42:6} "Depart from me, Lord," saith Peter, "for I am a sinful man," {Luk 5:8} Gr., A man a sinner - that is, a compound or hodgepodge of dirt and sin. Quis tu, Domine? quis ego? said one; Tu abyssus essentiae, veritatis, et gloriae: ego abyssus nihili, vanitatis et miseriae, Who art Thou, Lord? and what am I? Thou art an abyss of essence, truth, and glory, and I an abyss of nothing, of sin, and of misery.
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.] Whose language I have learned, with whose sinful practices I have too much symbolised, and in whose punishments therefore I am like to be involved; for there is a double danger to a man by conversing with the ungodly; (1.) Infection of sin; (2.) Infliction of punishment. Lot was the world’s miracle, who kept himself fresh in Sodom’s salt water.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv5–9 I am a man of unclean lips; I am…
I am a man of unclean lips; I am a great sinner, as many other ways, so particularly by my lips, which being in a special manner consecrated to God by my prophetical office, should have been entirely devoted to him; but, alas! my speeches, either to God in prayer, or from God in preaching and prophesying to the people, have been mixed and defiled with so much irreverence, dulness, distraction of thoughts and affections, carnal fear, and many other infirmities, that I dread the thoughts of appearing before thy judgment-seat, which I see erected in this place. For Isaiah had been a prophet before this time, Isa 1:1, and was now called, not in general to his prophetical office, but to the delivery of this special message.
I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; I am an unclean branch of an unclean tree; and besides my own uncleanness, I have both by my omissions and commissions involved myself in the guilt of their sins, and therefore may justly fear to partake with them in their plagues.
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Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts; the sight of this glorious and holy God gives me cause to fear that he is come to judgment against me, together with others. Whilst sinners are secure and presumptuous, the holiest persons have ever been filled with great reverence, and ofttimes with doubts and fears, at any extraordinary manifestation of God’s presence. See Gen 16:13; 17:3; Jdg 13:22.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv5, 9 Our curiosity would lead us to enquire further concerning…
Our curiosity would lead us to enquire further concerning the seraphim, their songs and their services; but here we leave them, and must attend to what passed between God and his prophet. Secret things belong not to us, the secret things of the world of angels, but things revealed to and by the prophets, which concern the administration of God's kingdom among men. Now here we have,
I. The consternation that the prophet was put into by the vision which he saw of the glory of God (Isa 6:5): Then said I, Woe is me! I should have said, "Blessed art thou, who hast been thus highly favoured, highly honoured, and dignified, for a time, with the privilege of those glorious beings that always behold the face of our Father. Blessed were those eyes which saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and those ears which heard the angels' praises." And, one would think, he should have said, "Happy am I, for ever happy; nothing now shall trouble me, nothing make me blush or tremble;" but, on the contrary, he cries out, "Woe is me! for I am undone. Alas for me! I am a gone man; I shall surely die (Jdg 13:22; Jdg 6:22); I am silenced; I am struck dumb, struck dead." Thus Daniel, when he heard the words of the angel, became dumb, and there was no strength, no breath, left in him, Dan 10:15, Dan 10:17. Observe,
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1. What the prophet reflected upon in himself which terrified him: "I am undone if God deal with me in strict justice, for I have made myself obnoxious to his displeasure, because I am a man of unclean lips." Some think he refers particularly to some rash word he had spoken, or to his sinful silence in not reproving sin with the boldness and freedom that were necessary - a sin which God's ministers have too much cause to charge themselves with, and to blush at the remembrance of. But it may be taken more generally; I am a sinner; particularly, I have offended in word; and who is there that hath not? Jam 3:2. We all have reason to bewail it before the Lord, (1.) That we are of unclean lips ourselves; our lips are not consecrated to God; he had not had the first-fruits of our lips (Heb 13:15), and therefore they are counted common and unclean, uncircumcised lips, Exo 6:30. Nay, they have been polluted with sin. We have spoken the language of an unclean heart, that evil communication which corrupts good manners, and whereby many have been defiled. We are unworthy and unmeet to take God's name into our lips. With what a pure lip did the angels praise God! "But," says the prophet, "I cannot praise him so, for I am a man of unclean lips." The best men in the world have reason to be ashamed of themselves, and the best of their services, when they come into comparison with the holy angels. The angels had celebrated the purity and holiness of God; and therefore the prophet, when he reflects upon sin, calls it uncleanness; for the sinfulness of sin is its contrariety to the holy nature of God, and upon that account especially it should appear both hateful and frightful to us. The impurity of our lips ought to be the grief of our souls, for by our words we shall be justified or condemned. (2.) That we dwell among those who are so too. We have reason to lament not only that we ourselves are polluted, but that the nature and race of mankind are so; the disease is hereditary and epidemic, which is so far from lessening our guilt that it should rather increase our grief, especially considering that we have not done what we might have done for the cleansing of the pollution of other people's lips; nay, we have rather learned their way and spoken their language, as Joseph in Egypt learned the courtier's oath, Gen 42:16. "I dwell in the midst of a people who by their impudent sinnings are pulling down desolating judgments upon the land, which I, who am a sinner too, may justly expect to be involved in."
2. What gave occasion for these sad reflections at this time: My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. He saw God's sovereignty to be incontestable - he is the King; and his power irresistible - he is the Lord of hosts. These are comfortable truths to God's people, and yet they ought to strike an awe upon us. Note, A believing sight of God's glorious majesty should affect us all with reverence and godly fear. We have reason to be abased in the sense of that infinite distance that there is between us and God, and our own sinfulness and vileness before him, and to be afraid of his displeasure. We are undone if there be not a Mediator between us and this holy God, Sa1 6:20. Isaiah was thus humbled, to prepare him for the honour he was now to be called to as a prophet. Note, Those are fittest to be employed for God who are low in their own eyes and are made deeply sensible of their own weakness and unworthiness.
II. The silencing of the prophet's fears by the good words, and comfortable words, with which the angel answered him, Isa 6:6, Isa 6:7. One of the seraphim immediately flew to him, to purify him, and so to pacify him. Note, God has strong consolations ready for holy mourners. Those that humble themselves in penitential shame and fear shall soon be encouraged and exalted; those that are struck down with the visions of God's glory shall soon be raised up again with the visits of his grace; he that tears will heal. Note, further, Angels are ministering spirits for the good of the saints, for their spiritual good. Here was one of the seraphim dismissed, for a time, from attending on the throne of God's glory, to be a messenger of his grace to a good man; and so well pleased was he with the office that he came flying to him. To our Lord Jesus himself, in his agony, there appeared an angel from heaven, strengthening him, Luk 22:43. Here is, 1. A comfortable sign given to the prophet of the purging away of his sin. The seraph brought a live coal from the altar, and touched his lips with it, not to hurt them, but to heal them - not to cauterize, but to cleanse them; for there were purifications by fire, as well as by water, and the filth of Jerusalem was purged by the spirit of burning, Isa 4:4. The blessed Spirit works as fire, Mat 3:11. The seraph, being himself kindled with a divine fire, put life into the prophet, to make him also zealously affected; for the way to purge the lips from the uncleanness of sin is to fire the soul with the love of God. This live coal was taken from off the altar, either the altar of incense or that of burnt-offerings, for they had both of them fire burning on them continually. Nothing is powerful to cleanse and comfort the soul but what is taken from Christ's satisfaction and the intercession he ever lives to make in the virtue of that satisfaction. 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. 2. An explication of this sign: "Lo, this has touched thy lips, to assure thee of this, that thy iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged. The guilt of thy sin is removed by pardoning mercy, the guilt of thy tongue-sins. Thy corrupt disposition to sin is removed by renewing grace; and therefore nothing can hinder thee from being accepted with God as a worshipper, in concert with the holy angels, or from being employed for God as a messenger to the children of men." Those only who are thus purged from an evil conscience are prepared to serve the living God, Heb 9:14. The taking away of sin is necessary to our speaking with confidence and comfort either to God in prayer or from God in preaching; nor are any so fit to display to others the riches and power of gospel-grace as those who have themselves tasted the sweetness and felt the influence of that grace; and those shall have their sin taken away who complain of it as a burden and see themselves in danger of being undone by it.
III. The renewing of the prophet's mission, Isa 6:8. Here is a communication between God and Isaiah about this matter. Those that would assist others in their correspondence with God must not themselves be strangers to it; for how can we expect that God should speak by us if we never heard him speaking to us, or that we should be accepted as the mouth of others to God if we never spoke to him heartily for ourselves? Observe here,
1. The counsel of God concerning Isaiah's mission. God is here brought in, after the manner of men, deliberating and advising with himself: Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? God needs not either to be counselled by others or to consult with himself; he knows what he will do, but thus he would show us that there is a counsel in his whole will, and teach us to consider our ways, and particularly that the sending forth of ministers is a work not to be done but upon mature deliberation. Observe, (1.) Who it is that is consulting. It is the Lord God in his glory, whom he saw upon the throne high and lifted up. It puts an honour upon the ministry that, when God would send a prophet to speak in his name, he appeared in all the glories of the upper world. Ministers are the ambassadors of the King of kings; how mean soever they are, he who sends them is great; it is God in three persons (Who will go for us? as Gen 1:26, Let us make man), Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They all concur, as in the creating, so in the redeeming and governing of man. Ministers are ordained in the same name into which all Christians are baptized. (2.) What the consultation is: Whom shall I send? And who will go? Some think this refers to the particular message of wrath against Israel, Isa 6:9, Isa 6:10. "Who will be willing to go on such a melancholy errand, on which they will go in the bitterness of their souls?" Eze 3:14. But I rather take it more largely for all those messages which the prophet was entrusted to deliver, in God's name, to that people, in which that hardening work was by no means the primary intention, but a secondary effect of them, Co2 2:16. Whom shall I send? intimating that the business was such as required a choice and well-accomplished messenger, Jer 49:19. God now appeared, attended with holy angels, and yet asks, Whom shall I send? For he would send them a prophet from among their brethren, Heb 2:17. Note, [1.] It is the unspeakable favour of God to us that he is pleased to send us his mind by men like ourselves, whose terror shall not make us afraid, and who are themselves concerned in the messages they bring. Those who are workers together with God are sinners and sufferers together with us. [2.] It is a rare thing to find one who is fit to go for God, and carry his messages to the children of men: Whom shall I send? Who is sufficient? Such a degree of courage for God and concern for the souls of men as is necessary to make a man faithful, and withal such an insight into the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven as is necessary to make a man skilful, are seldom to be met with. Such an interpreter of the mind of God is one of a thousand, Job 33:23. [3.] None are allowed to go for God but those who are sent by him; he will own none but those whom he appoints, Rom 10:15. It is Christ's work to put men into the ministry, Ti1 1:12.
2. The consent of Isaiah to it: Then said I, Here am I; send me. He was to go on a melancholy errand; the office seemed to go a begging, and every body declined it, and yet Isaiah offered himself to the service. It is an honour to be singular in appearing for God, Jdg 5:7. We must not say, "I would go if I thought I should have success;" but, "I will go, and leave the success to God. Here am I; send me." Isaiah had been himself in a melancholy frame (Isa 6:5), full of doubts and fears; but now that he had the assurance of the pardon of his sin the clouds were blown over, and he was fit for service and forward to it. What he says denotes, (1.) His readiness: "Here am I, a volunteer, not pressed into the service." Behold me; so the word is. God says to us, Behold me (Isa 65:1), and, Here I am (Isa 58:9), even before we call; let us say so to him when he does call. (2.) His resolution; "Here I am, ready to encounter the greatest difficulties. I have set my face as a flint." Compare this with Isa 50:4-7. (3.) His referring himself to God: "Send me whither thou wilt; make what use thou pleasest of me. Send me, that is, Lord, give me commission and full instruction; send me, and then, no doubt, thou wilt stand by me." It is a great comfort to those whom God sends that they go for God, and may therefore speak in his name, as having authority, and be assured that he will bear them out.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv5–9 Then said I, woe is me,.... There's no woe…
Then said I, woe is me,.... There's no woe to a good man, all woes are to the wicked; but a good man may think himself wretched and miserable, partly on account of his own corruptions, the body of sin and death he carries about with him; and partly on account of wicked men, among whom he dwells, Rom 7:24,
for I am undone; a good man cannot be undone, or be lost and perish; he is lost in Adam with the rest; in effectual calling he is made sensible of his lost and undone state; and under the power of unbelief may write bitter things against himself; but be can never perish, or be lost and undone for ever. The Targum is,
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"for I have sinned;''
and his particular sin is after mentioned: some (o) render it, "for I have been silent"; as if he had not performed the duty of his office, in reproving for sin, or declaring the will of God: others (p), "for I am reduced to silence", I am forced to be silent; he could not join with the "seraphim", being conscious to himself of his vileness, and of his unworthiness to take the holy name of God into his polluted lips, as follows:
because I am a man of unclean lips; he says nothing of the uncleanness of his heart, nor of his actions; not that he was free from such impurity; but only of his lips, because it was the sin of his office that lay upon his mind, and gave him present uneasiness; there is no man but offends in words, and of all men persons in public office should be careful of what they say; godly ministers are conscious of many failings in their ministry. The Targum is,
"because I am a sinful man to reprove;''
and so unfit for it.
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; such were the Jews, not only in Isaiah's time, but in the times of Christ and his apostles, who traduced him, as if he was a wicked person, calumniated his miracles, said he was a Samaritan, and had a devil; they taught for doctrines the commandments of men, and opposed and blasphemed the truths of the Gospel; and to live among men of a filthy speech and conversation is a concern to a good man; he is vexed and distressed hereby; he is in danger of learning their words, and of suffering with them in a common calamity.
For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts; the same divine and glorious Person described in Isa 6:1 who is no other than the Lord Christ, King of kings, and Lord of lords, King of saints, and Lord of the armies, in heaven and in earth; and a lovely sight it is to see him by faith, in the glory and beauty of his person, and in the fulness of his grace; such a sight is spiritual, saving, assimilating, appropriating, very endearing, and very glorious and delightful: wherefore it may seem strange that a sight of Christ should fill the prophet with dread; one would think he should rather have said, happy man that I am, because I have seen this glorious Person, whom to see and know is life eternal; but the reason of it is, because in this view of Christ he saw the impurity of himself, and was out of conceit with himself, and therefore cries out in the manner he does; just as in a sunbeam a man beholds those innumerable motes and atoms, which before were invisible to him. It was not because of his sight of Christ he reckoned himself undone; but because of the impurity of himself, and those among whom he dwelt, which he had a view of through his sight of Christ: his sight of Christ is given as a reason of his view of his impurity, and his impurity as the reason of his being undone in his apprehension of things. The prophet, in these his circumstances, represents a sensible sinner, under a sight and sense of his sinfulness and vileness; as the seraph in the following verses represents a Gospel minister bringing the good news of pardon, by the blood and sacrifice of Christ.
(o) "quia tacui", V. L.; so R. Joseph Kimchi. (p) "Ad silentium redactus sum", Tigurine version.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv5–9 l am - I am a great sinner, as…
l am - I am a great sinner, as many other ways, so particularly by my lips. I am an unclean branch of an unclean tree; besides my own uncleanness, I have both by my omissions and commissions involved myself in the guilt of their sins. Have seen - The sight of this glorious and holy God gives me cause to fear that he is come to judgment against me.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 9 Verse 5. Wo is me! for I am undone]…
Verse 5. Wo is me! for I am undone] נדמיתי nidmeythi, I am become dumb. There is something exceedingly affecting in this complaint. I am a man of unclean lips; I cannot say, Holy, holy, holy! which the seraphs exclaim. They are holy; I am not so: they see God, and live; I have seen him, and must die, because I am unholy. Only the pure in heart shall see God; and they only can live in his presence for ever, Reader, lay this to heart; and instead of boasting of thy excellence, and trusting in thy might, or comforting thyself in thy comparative innocence, thou wilt also be dumb before him, because thou hast been a man of unclean lips, and because thou hast still an unclean heart.
I am undone - "I am struck dumb"] נדמיתי nidmeythi, twenty-eight MSS. (five ancient) and three editions. - I understand it as from dum or damam, silere, "to be silent;" and so it is rendered by the Syriac, Vulgate, Symmachus, and by some of the Jewish interpreters, apud Sal. b. Melec. The rendering of the Syriac is תויר אני tavir ani, stupens, attonitus sum, "I am amazed." He immediately gives the reason why he was struck dumb: because he was a man of polluted lips, and dwelt among a people of polluted lips, and was unworthy, either to join the seraphim in singing praises to God, or to be the messenger of God to his people. Compare Ex 4:10; Ex 6:12; Jer 1:6.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 8, 9 Isa 6:5. Then said I, &c. — The second…
Isa 6:5. Then said I, &c. — The second part of this vision begins here, containing the sanctification of the prophet, in order to his undertaking of a great prophetical office, and showing, 1st, his state of mind upon the sight of the preceding illustrious vision: his consternation under a sense of his great unworthiness; and, 2d, describing the singular mode of his sanctification — Wo is me, for I am undone, &c. — That is, if God deal with me in strict justice. For I have made myself obnoxious to his displeasure; because I am a man of unclean lips — I am a great sinner, having offended him, as in many other ways, so particularly by my lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips — I am an unclean branch of an unclean tree; besides my own uncleanness, I have, both by want of zeal and of diligence, and faithfulness in the discharge of my duty, involved myself in the guilt of their sins, and therefore may justly fear to partake with them in their plagues. Add to this, his consternation probably also arose, in part, from a sense of his want of due qualifications for the important office in which he was to be employed, and of his unworthiness to be God’s messenger to his people, or even to join with the seraphim in praising him. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts — The sight of this glorious and holy God gives me cause to fear that he is come to enter into judgment with me. Observe, reader, while sinners are presumptuous and secure, even in the acts of their worship, though merely formal and hypocritical, holy persons have always been filled with reverence and humiliation before God: and the more extraordinary the manifestations of God’s presence have been to them, the more have they reverenced and stood in awe of him, and the more have they abhorred themselves. Thus Job 42:5-6, Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes! And thus may not only every penitent sinner, but every justified believer, say,
My humbled soul, when thou art near, In dust and ashes lies; How shall a sinful worm appear, Or meet thy purer eyes!
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv5–9 Wo is me! - That is, I am filled…
Wo is me! - That is, I am filled with overwhelming convictions of my own unworthiness, with alarm that I have seen Yahweh.
For I am undone - Margin, ‘Cut off.’ Chaldee, ‘I have sinned.’ Septuagint, ‘I am miserable, I am pierced through.’ Syriac, ‘I am struck dumb.’ The Hebrew word may sometimes have this meaning, but it also means “to be destroyed, to be ruined, to perish;” see Hos 10:15; Zep 1:2; Hos 4:6; Isa 15:1. This is probably the meaning here, ‘I shall be ruined, or destroyed.’ The reason of this, he immediately states.
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A man of unclean lips - This expression evidently denotes that he was a “sinner,” and especially that he was unworthy either to join in the praise of a God so holy, or to deliver a message in his name. The vision; the profound worship of the seraphim; and the attendant majesty and glory, had deeply impressed him with a sense of the holiness of God, and of his own unfitness either to join in worship so holy, or to deliver the message of so pure a God. A similar effect is recorded in reference to Abraham; Gen 18:27; see also Exo 4:10, Exo 4:12; Jer 1:6. A deep consciousness of guilt, in view of the holiness and majesty of God, is also described by Job:
I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear
But now mine eye seeth thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.
Job 42:5-6.
An effect also remarkably similar is described in reference to the apostle Peter, Luk 5:8 : “When Simon Peter saw it (the miracle which Jesus had performed), he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. ‘“
A people of unclean lips - A people who are unworthy to celebrate the praises of a God so pure and exalted.
Mine eyes have seen - In Exo 33:20, it is said: ‘Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live;’ compare Joh 1:18; 1Ti 6:16. Perhaps it was in recollection of this, that Isaiah said he was undone. It is not, however, to be understood that the prophet saw Yahweh Himself, but only the “symbol” of His presence. It was for this expression, according to the tradition of the Jews, that Manasseh took occasion to put the prophet to death; see the Introduction, Section 2.
The Lord of hosts - Yahweh of hosts. John applies this to the Lord Jesus, and this proves that he is divine; see Joh 12:41.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv5–8 Peace. It is proper for sinners to do so,…
Peace. It is proper for sinners to do so, Ecclesiasticus xv. 9. The prophet was grieved that he was unworthy to join in the acclamation of the Seraphim, and had reason to fear death, Genesis xvi. 13., and Exodus xxxiii. 20. He finds himself less able to speak than before, like Moses, Exodus iv. 10., and vi. 12.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv5–9 undone-- (Exo 33:20). The same effect was produced on…
undone-- (Exo 33:20). The same effect was produced on others by the presence of God (Jdg 6:22; Jdg 13:22; Job 42:5-6; Luk 5:8; Rev 1:17).
lips--appropriate to the context which describes the praises of the lips, sung in alternate responses (Exo 15:20-21; Isa 6:3) by the seraphim: also appropriate to the office of speaking as the prophet of God, about to be committed to Isaiah (Isa 6:9).
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seen--not strictly Jehovah Himself (Joh 1:18; Ti1 6:16), but the symbol of His presence.
Lord--Hebrew, "JEHOVAH."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv5–9 5. Woe is me — At sight of this…
5. Woe is me — At sight of this display of divine holiness the prophet is dismayed. The fire of purity, he fears, will not cleanse, but consume him, conscious as he is of impurity.
A man of unclean lips — And yet he had dared to prophesy in the name of this thrice holy!
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Midst of a people of unclean lips — Impure, not only inwardly and individually, but by contagion from without. The filthy tongues of neighbours and countrymen have contaminated my ears, heart, and soul. The thought is not that I am by this uncleanness unfitted for joining the “holy, holy, holy,” of the seraphim; but it is that I am unfit to speak as the mouth of Jehovah: for it is for this that the coal of the seraph purifies his lips; and this profound consecration for his office is key to this whole vision.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–9 5. Isaiah is overwhelmed with the sense of his…
5. Isaiah is overwhelmed with the sense of his own unworthiness; he feels himself cut off by a spiritual defect from participation in the solemn mystery which he, alone of mortals, has been privileged to behold; his eyes have seen, but his lips are impure.
I am undone] The Vulgate and other ancient versions give the impossible rendering, “I have been silent” (tacui). Jerome’s paraphrase is interesting as explaining the genesis of a curious legend, that Isaiah had already been a prophet, but had lost the gift of inspiration through his unfaithfulness: “quia tacui et non audacter Osiam regem corripui, ideo labia mea immunda sunt.”
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a man of unclean lips] “A pure lip” is required for the worship of Jehovah (Zep_3:9); Isaiah would fain join in the praises of the Seraphim, but the impulse is checked by the uncleanness of his lips, which is the impurity of his whole nature concentrated, as it were, in the organs of expression. Isaiah is not yet a prophet; but in this profound sense of the necessity for a consecration of the faculty of speech we must surely recognise an unconscious preparation for the task of speaking the word of God.
a people of unclean lips] Cf. ch. Isa_3:8. The vision of God which has brought his own sin to light, reveals to him also the sinfulness of the people among whom he dwells. They too are unfit to take the holy name of Jehovah on their lips; their whole worship of Him is profane. And this comes home to him as an aggravation of his guilt, that his mind is saturated with the atmosphere of ungodliness in which he lives and moves and has his being.
for mine eyes have seen the King] A second ground for the ejaculation “I am undone!” That the sight of God brings death to men is an idea frequently expressed in the O.T. (Exo_19:21; Exo_30:20; Jdg_13:22); the preceding clauses shew that to Isaiah’s consciousness the danger springs from sin, and not from mere creaturely frailty.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–9 (5) Then said I, Woe is me.—The cry of…
(5) Then said I, Woe is me.—The cry of the prophet expresses the normal result of man’s consciousness of contact with God. So Moses “hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exo_3:6). So Job “abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes” (Job_42:6). So Peter fell down at his Lord’s feet, and cried, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luk_5:8). Man at such a time feels his nothingness in the presence of the Eternal, his guilt in the presence of the All-holy. No man can see God and live. (Comp. also 1Sa_6:20.)
I am a man of unclean lips.—The prophet’s words present at once a parallel and a contrast to those of Moses in Exo_4:10. The Lawgiver feels only, or chiefly, his want of the gift of utterance which was needed for his work. With Isaiah the dominant thought is that his lips have been defiled by past sins of speech. How can he join in the praises of the seraphim with those lips from which have so often come bitter and hasty words, formal and ceremonial prayers? (Comp. Jas_3:2; Jas_3:9). His lips are “unclean” like those of one stricken, as Uzziah had been, by leprosy (Lev_13:45). He finds no comfort in the thought that others are as bad as he is, that he “dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Were it otherwise, there might be some hope that influence from without might work his purification. As it is, he and his people seem certain to sink into the abyss. To “have seen the King, the Lord of hosts,” was in such a case simply overwhelming (Exo_33:20).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv5–9 Vers. 5-7. THE SEQUEL OF THE VISION THE PROPHET"S…
Vers. 5-7. THE SEQUEL OF THE VISION THE PROPHET"S SENSE OF UNWORTHINESS.
The vision of God in this life, whether natural or ecstatic, cannot but produce in the beholder a deep feeling of his unworthiness. God "is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity;" even "the heavens are not clean in his sight". (Job_15:15) Man, being never wholly purged from sin while on earth, cannot but shrink from contact with the absolutely Holy. Hence Isaiah"s cry (ver. 5); and hence, to comfort him, the symbolic action of the seraph (ver. 6) and his encouraging words (ver. 7).
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I am undone; literally, cut off, destroyed. (comp. Jer_47:5 Hos_4:5, Hos_4:6, etc.) God once said himself, "There shall no man see me and live". (Exo_33:20) Men expected to die even when they had seen angels of God. (Gen_32:30 Jud_1:6:22, 23 13:22) How we are to reconcile Exo_33:20 with this passage, Job_42:5, and Eze_1:26-28, is uncertain. Perhaps the ecstatic sight was not included in the seeing" of which God spoke to Moses. I am a man of unclean lips. A man must be indeed" perfect" never to offend in word. (Jam_3:2) Isaiah felt that he had often so offended. His lips were not clean" in God"s sight, and if not his lips, then not his heart; for "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh". (Mat_12:34) I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Men catch up the phraseology of their time, and use wrong forms of speech, because they hear them daily. "Evil communications corrupt good manners". (1Co_15:33)
Man"s unworthiness brought home to him by nothing o much as "seeing God.
The natural man is, for the most part, very well contented with himself. He does not deal much in self-scrutiny, and is not often troubled with twinges of conscience. If at any time be has any misgivings, he compares himself with other men, and readily persuades himself that he is quite as good, or even very much better than his neighbors. "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are," is his self-satisfied utterance; or, if he is not quite so arrogant as this, at any rate he thinks himself "quite good enough as honest, industrious, liberal, moral generally, as he needs to be. Occasionally he may be startled a little out of his self-complacency by coming in contact with persons of a different stamp from himself, whom he sees to have a different rule of life, a different conception of their duties to God and man. But it is seldom that he wakes up to any true conviction of, in until in some way or other, there is revealed to him some "vision of God," some conception of the true nature of that pure and holy Being who has made and rules the universe. Once let him open the eye of his soul and see God as he is perfectly pure, holy, just, immaculate and he cannot but be driven by the contrast to recognize his own weakness, wickedness, impurity, unrighteousness, deeply engrained sinfulness. Some conviction of sin must flash on him. Well for him if it be deep and strong! Welt for him if it brings him, first to confession, (Luk_18:13) and then to earnest, heartfelt prayer for pardon! God"s seraph will then haply bring him such a "burning coal" from the altar before the throne of God as he brought to Isaiah, and convey to him the assurance that, for the merits of Christ, his "iniquity is taken away, and his sin purged.
Vers. 5-7. Spiritual agitation.
The passage depicts the prophet in a condition of great mental agitation; his state may suggest to us
I. THE ALARM OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT UNDER THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE DIVINE PRESENCE. Anything which brings us into close contact with the unseen world powerfully affects our spirit and produces an apprehension for which we may not be able to account.
1. Any visitant, real or imaginary, from the spiritual realm fills us with fear. (Jud_1:6:22 13:22Jo 4:15 Dan_10:8 Luk_1:12 Luk_2:9) We have not the slightest reason to apprehend any act of hostility from such a being, and may be said to have a positive interest in knowing that such as they are do exist and do concern themselves in our welfare. But there are few men who would not be considerably agitated if they believed themselves to be in the presence of a disembodied (or unembodied) spirit. We are affected with lively apprehension when we think ourselves to be on the confines of the future, the spiritual world.
2. The conception of the near presence of the Lord himself awakens the greatest disquietude of soul. So was it with Isaiah now. "Woe is me! I am undone," he exclaimed. So was it with Peter when the miraculous draught revealed the presence of his Divine Master. "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord," was his prayer. And whenever we are brought into such a spiritual condition that we are ready to say, "Surely God is in this place," whenever the hand of the Lord is felt to be upon our souls and his voice to be manifestly addressing our hearts, we are awed, agitated, even alarmed, with a peculiar and inexpressible apprehension.
II ITS JUSTIFICATION IN OUR HUMAN GUILT. We may not be able to explain our alarm at the nearness of any created being from the other world, but we can well understand how it is we are affected as we are under the consciousness of the divine presence. It is that our littleness is abashed at the presence of Divine majesty, our ignorance in presence of Divine wisdom, our feebleness in presence of Divine power. But this is not the explanation of our alarm. It is found in the fact that when we find ourselves before God we are conscious that a guilty soul is in the near presence of the thrice-holy One (see ver. 3). The clue to our agitation is in the words, "I am a man of unclean lips;" "I am a sinful man." There is a twofold reason why sinful men should be alarmed at the felt presence of God: one, that all sin by its very nature shrinks and cowers in the conscious presence of purity; the other, that the guilty human soul knows well that it is the province, and is in the power, of the righteous God to inflict the penalty which is its due; and it knows that the rightful penalty of sin is sorrow, shame, death.
III ITS DIVINE REMOVAL. (Vers. 6, 7.) Under Divine direction (as we may assume) one of the cherubim took a live coal from that altar of sacrifice which God had caused to be built for the purging of the sins of the people, and with the coal he touched the "unclean lips" of which the prophet had made confession and complaint; so was his iniquity taken away," and, we may conclude, his spirit calmed. The removal of that spiritual agitation which comes to our soul when we realize that our guilt is in the full view of the Holy One can only come from God himself. We may bless his Name that he has made such ample provision for this gracious purpose.
1. He has provided the sacrifice and the altar; that is found in him who is the Propitiation for our sins, in the cross of Calvary.
2. He has provided the messengers of mercy; these are found in those faithful servants who carry the gospel of his grace on the wings of their ardent love.
3. He has provided the means by which the sacrifice and the soul are connected, and the virtue of the one is made to touch and heal the other; this is found in that living faith by which the Lamb of God takes away our sin, and our soul, "being justified by faith, has peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. C.
Seeing God and the sense of sin.
"Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." To Isaiah a work of unusual solemnity had been entrusted, one that needed to be done in a most serious and reverent spirit. He was at once the prophet of the Lord"s terror and of the Lord"s mercy. He was to denounce sin with the solemnity of one who knew what God"s thought of sin was. He was to produce the conviction of sin before God in the corrupt minds and hearts of the people, and he was to announce the coming, presently, of the great Messenger of Divine mercy. Therefore it was necessary for him to have his own soul filled with the infinite glory and holiness of God, and filled with a very humbling sense of sin. These effects were wrought by the vision granted to him. It took its form from its design. All about it is holy. It is the holy place. The seraphim bow before the infinitely Holy. They cry, "Holy, holy." The threshold and the posts tremble before the Holy. And the soul of the prophet is abased. He is humbled in the sight of his own uncleanness, and the uncleanness of his people; for how can a man seem pure before his Maker?
I A MAN NEEDS VISIONS OF GOD WHO HAS THE WORK OF DENOUNCING SIN. No man should dare to touch that work whose own soul is not oppressed with the evil of sin. Denunciation of sin is no flippant, easy work; it involves a tremendous expense of feeling. We talk about sin so freely, that for many of us it has lost its exceeding sinfulness. We confess it so often in familiar general terms, that it has lost almost all its terror. It may have been thus with Isaiah. He may have been so constantly talking about sin, that he had exhausted his feeling of its evil, and could even speak lightly about abomination that it is said "God hateth." Certainly we need such visions of God to fill our minds and hearts with seriousness; we well may pray, "Lord, show me thyself.
II WHEN A MAN HAS VISIONS OF GOD, HE AT FIRST FEELS HELPLESS, AND DARES NOT UNDERTAKE GOD"S WORK. Compare the feelings of Moses and Jeremiah, after their visions. The first feeling will be, "I dare not." "Who is sufficient for these things?" But this will soon pass into humble dependence on Divine strength, and patient readiness to go where God sends, and do what God bids. When a man before God says, "Woe is me!" etc., he will soon respond to God"s call, saying, "Here am I; send me. R.T.
The true inspiration for workers.
"Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." What a scene is presented in this chapter for our imaginations to reproduce! The throng of worshippers had left the courts of the sacred temple; the chanting, in alternate parts, of the choir of singers, clothed in white linen, had died into silence. Other devout Israelites were praying apart, and white-robed priests silently presented their prayers in the fragrant cloud of incense which rose from the golden altar of the holy place; "then the veil of the temple seemed to be withdrawn, and the holy of holies discovered to the prophet"s eye. He saw the Lord, sitting as a King upon his throne, actually governing and judging. His train, the symbol of dignity and glory, filled the holy place, while around him hovered the attendant seraphim, spirits of purity, zeal, and love, chanting in alternate choirs the holiness of their Lord. The threshold vibrated with the sound, and the white cloud of the Divine presence, as if descending to mingle itself with the ascending incense of prayer, filled the house. The eternal archetypes of the Hebrew symbolic worship were revealed to Isaiah; and, as the center of them all, his eyes saw the King, the Lord of hosts, of whom the actual rulers, from David to Uzziah, had been but the temporary and subordinate viceroys. In that presence, even the spirits of the fire, which consumes all impurity while none can mix with it, cover their faces and their feet, conscious that they are not pure in God"s sight, but justly chargeable with imperfection; and much more does Isaiah shrink from the aspiring thoughts he had hitherto entertained of his fitness to be the preacher of that God to his countrymen; he, a man of unclean lips, sharing the uncleanness of the people among whom he dwells. In utter self-abasement he realizes the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the separation it makes between man and the holy God" (Sir E. Strachey). This was a vision of God granted to a worker, a man actively engaged in God"s service, and about to enter on more serious and more arduous duties. Visions have seldom, if ever, been granted to individuals merely as helps to their private religious life. They are gracious aids to workers; and God"s willing servants can only reach adequate convictions, feel worthy impulses, or gain a suitable and inspiring impression of the dignity of their work, through some direct manifestation of God himself to their souls. No man can do great things save as he is sustained by the conviction that God has sent him to do them, and is with him in the doing. The smallness of our aims, our endeavors, and our attainments, reveal how small and how unworthy are our views of God. It is evident that we cannot yet be said to have seen him. He has not yet overawed us with his glory and his claims, and swelled our souls with great thoughts, great resolves, and a great consecration. Those only who have seen" the King in his beauty" can give their very noblest powers, can lay down their lives, in his service.
I CAN THERE BE PERSONAL REVELATIONS OF GOD TO HIS WORKERS IN OUR DAY? We have sadly lost in spiritual power, in self-abnegation, and in holy enthusiasm for the glory of the Lord, because we have so easily settled this question by answering, "Certainly not. God does not now give visions. Christian workers now need not expect such. We are left now to the ordinary illuminations of the Holy Spirit." But will this answer bear looking at and thinking about, and testing by the light of actual experience? God"s forms of Divine dealing do indeed differ in different ages, but the essential features of God"s relationship with men do not change. He can reveal himself still to individual souls; and he is not limited to the particular forms of vision which he has used in ancient times. He may adapt his visions to the altered circumstances of each age; and if once he appeared in human form to meet the sight of bodily eyes, he may now reveal his glory in the spheres that lie open to the vision of the loving and believing soul. It he be the living God, ruling, guiding, choosing out his instruments, fashioning them for his purposes, and sending them upon his commissions, he must still have visions for his servants. They will take less of outward symbolic shape, they will relate more to thought and less to dreams; but that only makes them more immediate and direct Divine communications contacts of the Divine Spirit with the human spirit without the intervention of any earthly symbols. God spoke to the boy Samuel with an audible voice, he spoke afterwards to the man Samuel in a spirit-voice; but both were his voice. The New Testament promise is, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God,
II WHEN IN OUR LIFE MAY WE LOOK FOR SUCH DIVINE VISIONS TO WORKERS? Is there any special time or occasion at which they may be expected? They will net necessarily come at the beginnings of our special labors, though that might seem to be the most fitting time. They do often come at the outset, but sometimes we are permitted for a while to" go the warfare at our own charges;" we have a period of trial and of comparative failure, as Isaiah appears to have had, and then we are renewed in our consecration by some holy scenes of communion and revelation. Among the visions of the Old Testament we find several that were granted in the very midst of life"s work: e.g. Abraham"s, Moses", Joshua"s, this of Isaiah; compare our Lord"s transfiguration, and Paul"s ascent to glory. The times for God"s personal disclosures of himself to a man can never be fixed "rod anticipated. Like other workings of grace, they are divinely, sovereignly free; the fitting occasion for them the unsearchable Wisdom alone can decide. This only may we say No Christian man has ever become truly great and noble and enthusiastic, no man has become utterly self-denying in the Lord"s work, until he has been called and solemnized and prepared by some soul-vision of God. He may be a Christian worker before, but he is not inspired and spiritually powerful until then. Life takes on its highest nobility only after we are able to say, "Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." We may not say that such visions come only once in a man"s life. They will be given as often as there is need for them, and openness to receive them. Christ, our Lord, had visions at his baptism, at the mount, in the wilderness, and in the garden. The Apostle Paul had visions on the road to Damascus, of the man from Macedonia, of the third heaven, and amid the dangers of shipwreck. We often hear of our dying friends seeing something of which those around their beds cannot catch the faintest glimpse. And this is true of Christian souls in life. They have times of insight, times of seeing truth and seeing God; times when, apart from study and thought, they seem to be plunged in all the glory of Divine and eternal things; moments in which they could not tell whether they were "in the body or out of the body." Two or three instances may be given in illustration. While Luther was laboriously climbing up Pilate"s staircase at Rome, seeking to win a righteousness out of his own works, he heard a voice thundering in his soul and saying, "The just shall live by faith." That was a New Testament vision el the truth, and from that vision Luther"s power began. The following is a testimony rendered concerning a godly man: "About a year after his conversion, returning from a meeting greatly distressed with a sense of his unworthiness, he turned aside into a lonely barn to wrestle with God, and while kneeling on the threshing-floor he gained a little light.
Shortly after his eyes were opened to see all clearly. He felt that he was nothing, and Christ was all in all; and from that time commenced a life of most devoted and successful labor for Christ." "The holy John Flavel, being alone in a journey on horseback, and willing to make the best improvement of the day"s solitude, set himself to a close examination of the state of his soul, and then of the life to come, and the manner of its being and living in heaven, Going on his way, his thoughts began to swell, and rise higher and higher, like the waters in Ezekiel"s vision, till at last they became an overflowing flood. Such was the intention of his mind, such the ravishing taste of heavenly joys, and such the full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this world, and all the concerns thereof; and for some hours knew no more where he was than if he had been in a deep sleep in his bed." The following passage is taken from the margin of John Howe"s study Bible. It is the only record of his personal experience preserved for us. "After I had, in my course of preaching, been largely insisting on 2Co_1:12, this very morning I awoke out of a most ravishing and delightful dream, that a wonderful and copious stream of celestial rays, from the lofty throne of the Divine Majesty, seemed to dart into my expanded breast. I have often since, with great complacency, reflected on that very signal pledge of special Divine favor vouchsafed to me on that memorable day, and have, with repeated fresh pleasure, tasted the delights thereof. But what, on Oct. 22, 1704, of the same kind I sensibly felt... far surpassed the most expressive words my thoughts can suggest. I then experienced an inexpressibly pleasant melting of hearts; tears gushing out of mine eyes, for joy that God should shed abroad his love abundantly through the hearts of men, and that for this very purpose my own should be so signally possessed of and by" his blessed Spirit." Dr. Bushnell says, We have vast crowds of witnesses, rising up in every age, who testify, out of their own consciousness, to the work of the Spirit, and the new-creating power of Jesus, who, by his Spirit, is revealed in their hearts. In nothing do they consent with a more hymn-like harmony than in the testimony that their inward transformation is a Divine work a new revelation of God, by the Spirit, in their human consciousness. So do they all testify with one voice Paul, Clement, Origen, St. Bernard, Hass, Gerson, Luther, Fenelon, Baxter, Flavel, Doddridge, Wesley, Edwards, Brainerd, Taylor, all the innumerable host of believers that have entered into rest, whether it be the persecuted saint of the first age, driven home in his chariot of blood, or the saint who died but yesterday in the arms of his family." We do well to guard against any fanatical and superstitious watching for sensible appearances, symbolical manifestations, or the guidance of our dreams. But this we should better understand there are delectable mountains in our Christian pilgrimage nowadays, and we may climb the heights, and get visions of the far-away celestial city. We are Christians of the plains and the low country; we should oftener be breathing the fresh air of the mountain-side. If we would open our hearts; if we would have a well-trodden path to the place of prayer; if we would yearn for it, God would come nearer to us, and oftener show us his glory. He is a new man, and a new worker, who can say, "Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 8, 9 Then said I, Woe is me!--
Isa_6:5-8
Then said I, Woe is me!--
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The moral history of a rising soul; or, the way up from depravity to holiness
Whilst holiness is the normal, depravity is the actual state of man.
A restoration to his spiritual condition is his profoundest necessity. What is the path of the soul up from the depths of depravity to those sunny heights of holiness where unfallen spirits live an exultant life?
I. A VISION OF THE GREAT RULER AS THE HOLIEST OF BEINGS. Three facts show this.
1. There can be no excitement of the moral sensibilities and powers without a vision of God. Show me a soul that has never had an inner vision of God, and you show me a soul whose moral powers are in a chrysalis state.
2. The means which the great God has ever employed to restore men are visions of Himself. What is the Bible but a record of Divine visions and manifestations to man? What is the Gospel--Gods power unto salvation--but the manifestation of the Eternal in Christ? Here He appears to man in the face of Jesus Christ.
3. The history of all restored souls shows that the improvement commences at this stage.
II. A PROFOUND CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR FALLEN STATE. Then said I, Woe is me! etc. The prophets consciousness included four things.
1. A deep sense of his personality. I am undone. He feels himself singled out from the millions.
2. A sense of personal ruin.
3. A sense of personal sin.
4. A sense of personal sin heightened by a remembrance of his neighbours sins. So long as conscience is torpid, men often make the sinful conduct of others an apology for their own; but when conscience awakes, such sophistries depart.
III. A REMOVAL OF THE CRUSHING SENSE OF GUILT. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, etc. Three thoughts are suggested by this.
1. There are Divine means for the removal of sin.
2. The means are something in connection with sacrifice.
3. The means are employed by a Divinely appointed ministry. Let that seraphim stand as the emblem of a true minister, and we see that his work is to take the purifying elements from the altar, and apply them to men. He has to take burning thoughts, and burning thoughts must come from the Cross.
IV. AN EVER-OPEN AND SENSITIVE EAR TO THE VOICE OF GOD. I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Three thoughts will develop the general and practical meaning of these words.
1. The great God has deep thoughts about our race.
2. Just as the soul is cleared of sin does it become conscious of these thoughts. It will hear the voice of God in every sound, and see His glory in every form.
3. This consciousness of the Divine thoughts about the race is a necessary stage in the moral progress of the soul.
V. A HEARTY READINESS TO DO WHAT THE SUPREME WILL DEMANDS. Here am I; send me. To reach this point is to be in sympathy with the great and good every where; this is heaven. Conclusion--Art thou in the first stage, O my soul? Stay not there; a mere vision of the holy God will only fire thee with remorse; struggle on. Art thou in the second? Stay not there; hell is somewhere in that direction; struggle on. Art thou in the third? Stay not there; freedom from sin is but negative excellence; struggle on. Art thou in the fourth? Happy spirit! thou hast scaled the mountains of difficulty and darkness. Thy jubilee has commenced. Thou art in conscious companion ship and concert with the Infinite. Still stay not there; struggle on. Ascend to the last; and from that supernal altitude, with the vast and beaming universe around thee, look ever, in waiting attitude, to thy Maker, and say, Here am I; send me. (Homilist.)
The vision of the King
Every mans course is shaped by the view that he forms of the Supreme Ruler. If a man has no such view, he has no principle, and he is living either in anarchy or in slavery to some other mind. There are hours in every earnest life, and especially in every powerful leading life, when new truths or new views of old truths breaking in upon the eye of the soul change all the aspects of being, and give an impulse that never loses its force. Such an hour of insight as came to Jacob at Bethel and afterwards at Penuel now came to Isaiah in the temple.
I. THE VIEW OF THE SUPREME RULES. Isaiah now passed through a great spiritual excitement, such as marks the hours of conversion, the chief turning point in the careers of great souls. The leading idea is described in these words, Mine eyes have seen the King. A new regal power had arisen within his life. Now, in his first natural, unenlightened, unregenerate state, a man sees no supreme authority that has a right to rule his inner and outer being. But when the light of God dawns upon his soul, then man becomes conscious of a personal will that claims to rule his life, and of a personal mind that knows his downsitting and his uprising, and understands his thoughts afar off. In this vision of the Triune Godhead Isaiah saw the Divine life now more fully and more clearly than he had ever seen it before. In words he paints for us the impressions made by it upon his soul. Hitherto God had been to him a dim floating idea, far away in the clouds, like a distant monarch exercising no constant sway over existence; but now he recognises that the Divine life is everywhere; that all things are united to God; that all the duties, all the energies and the scenes of existence are, as it were, parts of the royal train, wide as the world, filling the vast floor of the temple of being. This change in the spiritual ideas of Isaiah seems to have been very similar to the change that was wrought in the disciples by the power of the resurrection, the sight of the ascension, and the inspiration of Pentecost. They had before acknowledged Jesus as their Master, but their ideas of His Divine authority were dim and uncertain. But when He rose from the grave and ascended to realms out of sight, when He sent down the light and heat of His Spirit into their hearts and minds, then they recognised Him with the sight of the soul as the King; they then realised that all power was given to Him in heaven and in earth, that the height and the depth, that life and death, that sickness and health, that the cross of suffering and the crown of sovereignty, that the earthly course and the silent grave, the temporal home and the great hereafter, were all subject to the sovereignty of His Divine human sceptre. Similar to that is the change wrought in every human soul when religion comes instead of a misty, cloudy, speculative theory, as a living power to rule our daily being. This revelation of Jesus as the King is going on forever through the ages.
II. THE EFFECTS OF THIS VISION UPON THE SOUL.
1. It produces an abasing sense of personal sin. Why did the vision of the King create this sense of guilt and misery? In the King is the law of our life; it is only when we see the Kings life that we know what our own life ought to be. So it is forever. Where there is no vision of excellence there can be no pangs of self-reproach. The village artist, who has never seen any works better than his own, is self-satisfied in his ignorance; but the man who has seen the master works of sovereign genius, recognises in the light his own nothingness in the presence of an ideal unapproached, high-throned, and lifted up: he cries, abased, Woe is me! I am nothing, I have everything to learn. So is it in the moral world. When the vision of a pure life breaks in upon the eyes of the impure it creates bitter self-reproach, and at first rebellious impatience.
2. It quickens the sense of social sin. We cannot separate our personal life from our social life; therefore, in the moment when we begin to desire a nobler personal life we desire also to create around us a nobler social state. So Isaiah, when he saw the King, looked with agony upon the depravity of the society of which he was a member, and cried, Woe is me! for I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And what were the sins that defiled the lips of Israel in those days? We have a description of them in the five preceding chapters. The fountain of all uncleanness, ever the same, is the self-will of our lower nature, that rebels against the King whose higher law is that love which constrains man to sacrifice his baser instincts for the Divine glory and the social good. Sin is not peculiar to any age. Our nation has its great social evil. There are, amongst us sometimes, men who defile their lips with commercial fraud, but still the motto of the British merchant is Integrity, and Thoroughness is the boast of the British workman. But there is one fountain of uncleanness that pours forth a poisonous stream to defile the lips of the nation. The curse of strong drink is an overflowing well of shame, of sin, of vice, of woe. We feel pain at social evil in exact proportion to the clearness with which we have seen the King--in other words, to the strength of our religious convictions, and thesincerity of our religious emotions. If we take low views of human destiny we do not feel much pain when existence around us is without high ends here, or high hopes of hereafter; then we can bear to look with calmness on the masses of human misery. But if we have seen the King; if, in the light of His face, we have learnt what life is to be, and what by His royal grace He will make it to be, then we never can look at these social evils without feeling our own share of responsibility, without feeling a bitter, salutary self-reproach and crying out, Woe is me! for I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
3. It brings to bear upon the life a purifying power. The altar is a place of sacrifice; sacrifice is an expression of love, and love is a leading feature in the countenance of the King, and therefore the power that redeems us into the likeness of the King is the Spirit that brings to bear upon us the burning influence of love from the altar. The altar is the Cross of Calvary, on which the Son of Man gave Himself for the good of many. Love is the source of all personal and of all social good.
4. It gives to the life an ardent mission. (H. T. Edwards, M. A.)
The vision of Isaiah
There was a veil before the Holy of holies, so that the prophet, who is evidently supposed to have stood in the outer sanctuary, could not ordinarily have seen the throne of the Lord; but the veil is here supposed to be taken away--a circumstance in itself emblematical; for the vision related to the future kingdom of Christ, when the veil of separation was to be removed, and all distinctions destroyed between the Gentile and the Jew.
I. THE CONDUCT OF ISAIAH.
1. Observe how affecting a testimony is given to the corruption and alienation of our nature by the fact that a manifestation of the Divine glory could produce in him nothing but dread and confusion.
2. The reason which Isaiah gives for being sorely confounded at beholding the glories of Christ. By specifying his lips and the lips of the people, as unclean, and thus calling to remembrance sins of the tongue rather than any other offences, the prophet appears to have in mind the office to which he had been appointed, and the difficulties which attended its faithful discharge.
II. THE EMBLEMATICAL ACTION of which the prophet was the subject, and THE COMFORTING WORDS by which he was addressed. It was in consistency with the general course of the Divine dealings that the prophets confession should be followed by an assurance of the Almightys forgiveness. And it was, further, a sort of anticipation of the privileges belonging to believers in Christ, that one of the seraphim should be employed in conveying to Isaiah an assurance of pardon. There was no virtue naturally in the coal--the whole virtue must have been derived from some fire or some burnt offering to which the coal bore a typical relation. And no one living in Christian times and blessed with Christian privileges can doubt for a moment what this typical relation was. And if this were a vision of Christ in His glory, rather than of Christ in His humiliation--a vision more fitted to instruct Isaiah as to the exaltation of the Mediator, than to show him that He might be a propitiation for sins--yet observe, that the scenery of the vision was laid in the temple, all whose furniture and whose every rite was emblematic of the suretyship and offering of Christ. The fire was still burning on the altar, though the Lord was on His throne, clad in that glory which was to be gained by the extinguishing the sacrificial flames--extinguishing them by the one oblation of Himself; and therefore might it justly be said, that the temple, thus lit up and thus crowded with brilliant forms, presented to the prophet a complete parable of redemption. From the altar of burnt offering whose fire went not out, though celestial shinings flooded the sanctuary, might he learn, that the Divinity of the Person of the Mediator would not rescue humanity from the flames of Gods wrath against sin; from the throne, with all the attendant gorgeousness, might he be instructed, that when the work of suffering was complete, there should be given to the Saviour a name above every name, and that He should sit in heavenly places, the Head over all things to the Church. But then it is as a live coal that Christ acts. He was to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Isaiahs vision
There were two purposes which might be served by this magnificent vision: it could hardly fail to be profitable both to the prophet to whom it was originally given, and to the people to whom he would assuredly reveal it.
I. We have, perhaps, the most affecting possible illustration of HUMAN DEPRAVITY.
II. THE SENSE OF DEFICIENCY IN THE PERFORMANCE OF DUTY.
III. THE COMFORTING ASSURANCE OF PARDON.
IV. THIS WORK WAS ACCOMPLISHED BY PERSONAL AGENCY. One of the burning ones came and took the live coal with the tongs from off the altar and touched with it the lips of the delinquent prophet. And a fair inference from this will land us in the grand New Testament doctrine and privilege of the direct witness of Gods Holy Spirit to the adoption of the believer not the family Divine. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.)
Sin and its cure
Then said I, Woe is me! etc. It is always thus when God draws near to man. When Moses saw that bush in the desert, which burned and was not consumed, he took the shoes from off his feet and hid his face, for it is written, He was afraid to look upon God. At Sinai the people trembled and said, Let not God speak with us lest we die. And when that glorious vision of the living Christ appeared to the apostle in Patmos, he says, I fell at His feet as dead. Revelations of the unseen, of the eternal, of the unnameable Jehovah have filled men always with alarm and with fear. And when the saints of God--men of pure and irreproachable lives--have been going home to heaven, it has been said of many of them, They died under a cloud. The sense of eternity drawing near has filled even them with apprehension. Is it that the unseen, the mysterious, must always be to creatures such as we are, the source of terror? as it was with those disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, of whom revelation records, They feared as they entered into the cloud. It is nothing that you say our fears are vain and foolish under the circumstances, that blessings in disguise coming in this way have filled men with terror, that Jesus Christ Himself drawing near to His tempest-tossed disciples upon the Sea of Galilee, and drawing near to bless them, approached after this fashion and alarmed them in this way--the fear is there, and the trouble is that this bondage of fear is upon some men all their lives, and that we do not leave it behind even in the most exalted moments that come to the saints of God. Men may have their theories which explain, or which contradict, the fact--it is true nevertheless. Isaiahs experience sums up that which is noblest and best in human life.
I. First of all, it was THE SENSE OF SIN, which moved Isaiah in that hour and in this way; sin in himself, sin in others, sin in the world around, sin which the sense of the nearness of Gods presence made all the more vivid and real to him, just as the light reveals the darkness and the things of darkness to men who are immersed in it, men who otherwise may not have had and would not have had a thought concerning it. Live away from God, and sin is nothing, lies light as a gossamer upon the conscience; draw near to God, and sin begins to be a trouble, a perplexity, a burden to man.
II. In the Divine way of dealing with men there is A PROVISION MADE FOR REMOVING THIS FEAR AND PURGING THIS INIQUITY. It is not so much the method which is illustrated here as the fact itself. Sense of sin and unworthiness there must be to that man who comes near to God. But it need not be an abiding sense as of terror. There comes a day, or there ought to come a day, when God says, Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. The sense of the remission of sin is as real as the sense of sin itself. (W. Baxendale.)
The Holy One the Purifier
I. WHAT IS THERE IN THE VISION OF GOD THAT NEED A MAN, AND ESPECIALLY A RELIGIOUS MAN, WITH SUCH OVERWHELMING TERROR.
1. No doubt certain very impressive contrasts are suggested between God and man when the Divine Majesty comes into close contact with His frail and feeble creature; but these are not, at any rate, all of them, of such a kind as to cause alarm.
(1) There is the contrast between Gods greatness and mans littleness and insignificance. This is, indeed, humiliating, and should lead us to abandon all foolish feelings of self-importance and self-sufficiency; but it need not induce overwhelming terror and alarm. So far from this, is there not something in our nature that seems to delight in the contemplation of greatness? Do we not go in search of greatness?
(2) Or, again, there is the contrast between mans weakness and Gods omnipotence. Yet here, again, we can but notice that in the mere revelation and exhibition of power, as of greatness, there is nothing necessarily alarming. All that we need to know is, that the power is friendly, or, at least, not actually unfriendly.
(3) Or, just once more, there is something very humiliating in the contrast between Gods eternal and ineffable wisdom and mans ignorance and blindness. Yet there is nothing alarming in superior wisdom; nay, there is something necessarily attractive in it.
2. What was the thought, then, that broke the prophet down, and what the contrast between God and himself that impressed him so powerfully and so painfully? For an answer we have but to listen to that song of the adoring seraphim that was sounding in his ear at the moment he was seized with this uncontrollable agony of terror. When he heard them cry, Holy, holy, holy! there rushed into his mind the thought of his own unfitness to stand before One to whom the intelligences of glory bore such witness. And it is to this that God brings us when we yield to the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit. There comes in most mens lives who yield to God--it is not equally marked in all--a moment of utter breakdown; a moment when all our self-respect seems to be humbled, and our self-confidence to melt away; a moment when the sense of sin seems indeed an intolerable load, that crushes the staggering conscience beneath its weight, and suggests the gloomiest anticipations of judgment, the forecast of despair. Some are led to God through Christ in very early days, and retain no recollection of any such experience, even if it ever occurred with them; though my personal observation leads me to conclude that it often does occur, even with very young children. Such an experience would doubtless occur in many more cases, were it not for our successful efforts at evasion. We endeavour to get away from reality, and take refuge in what is superficial and conventional; we flatter ourselves into the deep stupor of self-complacency by the cry, Peace, peace! when there is no peace. He speaks to us just as if we were a pack of sinners, said the indignant churchwarden of a church in which I once conducted a mission, and yet that man had probably joined in repeating the Litany that very morning!
II. But let us look again at this trembling man as he lies there in his terror and anguish. WHAT IS TO BECOME OF ONE WHO IS, BY HIS OWN CONFESSION, GUILTY AND CONDEMNED IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS JUDGE?
1. At the very moment when the man felt himself undone, at the moment when the contrast between Gods dazzling purity and awful holiness and his own uncleanness and sin had taken possession of his moral consciousness, and he could think and speak of nothing else, then flew one of the seraphim, speeding on a congenial errand, to bring the provisions of Divine mercy to bear upon this trembling soul. Mans extremity is Gods opportunity. No doubt the phrase represents a feature of Gods providence that is, at any rate, frequently illustrated in the incidents of our natural life. But I think we may say the words represent a law of the spiritual world, a great principle from which God seldom, if ever, departs in His dealings with human souls. How often, when men think they are waiting for God, and wondering why He does not intervene on their behalf, is He waiting for them to reach the end of their own resources, in order that He may find His opportunity!
2. Let us notice, too, how Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are alike concerned in the provision of this Divine consolation. It is at the behest of the eternal Father, responsive to the voice of His childs bewildered terror, that the great seraph speeds on his mission. God so loved the world that He sent His Son, and God so loves still, that He is ever sending--sending fresh influences of grace, fresh messages of mercy, fresh flashes of spiritual light. But further, notice how the mission of mercy is performed through the Divinely-appointed means. There stands the sacrificial altar where the expiatory sacrifices had that day been offered. Cleansing must reach the guilty in Gods own appointed way. And as we have the love of the Father, and the sacrifice of the Son, presented to us here as the conditions on Gods side of the cleansing of the sinner, so have we also a symbolic presentation of the work of the Holy Ghost. The spirit of burning, the refiners fire, that alone can cleanse the heart, and consume the dross and filthiness of our sin, breathing health and infusing purity, approaches us through the sacrificial work of Christ. And thus the night of sorrow and of self-despair melts into the blessed dawn of pardon.
3. As we contemplate this marvellous transformation scene, it is as well to dwell upon the fact that these effects were produced, not only by forgiveness, but by the knowledge of forgiveness.
4. And, most of all, was it not the expression of forgiveness to the heart of the awakened sinner that drew him towards the heart of his God, and led him in grateful love to present himself to God for service? (W. HayAitken, M. A.)
The three thens of Isaiahs temple vision
The prophet commenced his narrative by a note of time, and he makes his time bell ring again and again--striking then, then, then.
I. The first THEN occurs thus--The prophet was led to feel his own uncleanness, and the uncleanness of those among whom he dwelt. When was that? For it is important for us to feel the same conviction, and we may do so by the same means. Was it when he had been looking into his own heart, and seeing its dire deceitfulness, and the black streams of actual transgression which welled up from that inward fountain of depravity? He might certainly have said Woe is me! if he had been looking there; but he was not doing so on this occasion. Had he been considering the law of God, had he observed how exceeding broad it is, how it touches the thoughts and intents of the heart, and condemns us because we do not meet its demands of perfect obedience? Assuredly if he had been looking into that pure and holy law he might have well bewailed his guilt, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Or, had he been turning over the pages of memory, and noting his own shortcomings and the sins of his fellows? Had he noted his own failures in prayer, or in service, or in patience? Had he watched himself in private and in public, and did the record of the past bring a consciousness of sin upon him? If so, he might well enough have lamented before the Lord and cried, Woe is me! for I am undone. I might even say, had he been carrying out self-examination for a single day of his life, and had that day been the Sabbath, and had he been acting as the preacher, or had he been sitting under the most stirring ministry, and had he been at the holy feasts of the Lord, he might have found reason for confession. But none of these things are mentioned here as the occasion for this humbling cry. It was then--when he had seen the Lord. If you have never seen God, you have not seen yourselves; you will never know how black you are till you have seen how bright He is; and inasmuch as you will never know all His brightness, so you will never know all your own blackness. Learn, however, this lesson, that to turn your face away from God in order to repent is a great mistake; it is a sight of God in Christ Jesus which will breed humiliation and lowly confession of sin. Now, did I hear you say, I am a man that lives very near to God, etc.? No man who has come fresh from God ever speaks in tones of self-congratulation. What said Job? (See Job_42:5-6.) This was the experience of a perfect and an upright man.
II. You see the man trembling; in himself unclean and conscious of it, and surrounded by a people as unclean as himself, and it is while he stands in that condition that we meet with our second THEN. Then flew one of the seraphim, etc.
III. Let me now speak of the third THEN. Then said I, Here am I; send me. Knowing that we are now clean in the sight of God, through that altar which sanctifies all that it touches, we shall have all our fears removed, and then with grateful love burst out into the cry of full surrender and complete consecration. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The essentials of true worship
These verses teach us the essentials of true worship and of acceptable approach to God. And they seem to indicate these essentials as threefold, involving--
I. A SENSE OF PERSONAL WRETCHEDNESS. To worship truly, there must be a sense of our own nothingness and need. The sense of wretchedness is first induced by the contemplation of the holiness and majesty of God. It is relieved by the condescension and mercy of the King. Mercy and truth meet together; righteousness and peace embrace each other; and in that embrace the man who is undone is folded, and invited to bring forth his offering.
II. A SENSE OF PARDON. Our God is a consuming fire, and our first contemplation of Him thus is one which appalls and overcomes us. But a little further prostration before the Holy One shows that the fire is a purging fire, not to consume the man, but only to erase the confessed uncleanness from his lips. With the anointing of the holy fire on the lip there comes the new life into the heart, and now the mortal may mingle his praises with the seraphim themselves.
III. But worship is not complete without SERVICE. To the ascription of the heart and lip there must be added the alacrity and obedience of the life. There was service for the seraphim: to fly with the live coal. And there is service for the seer: to fly with the living message. Here am I; send me.
Here is the alacrity of obedience. There is no curious inquiry about the nature of the service. The man becomes as winged as the seraph. (A. Mursell.)
Isaiahs purification
I. In the text we have PERSONAL UNCLEANNESS ACKNOWLEDGED.
II. Observe, GODS METHOD OF DISCOVERING THIS CONDITION TO HIS PEOPLE.
1. A vision of Himself.
2. The prophet discovered his corruption by a particular manifestation. Unclean lips. Lips are indicative of character; they reveal the state of the heart.
III. THE PROPHET WAS FILLED WITH KEEN DISTRESS when he discovered that there was corruption within him.
IV. The text reveals GODS WILLINGNESS AND ABILITY TO SAVE HIS PEOPLE FROM ALL SIN.
V. The text points out THE DEFINITE NATURE OF THIS FULL SALVATION.
1. As to date. The year that King Uzziah died.
2. As to place. The sanctuary. It has been said that of all places in the world there are two which a man never forgets--the place where he was converted, and the place where he got his wife. A sea captain says, I was crossing the Channel one day, in command of a passenger steamer, when a person rushed up to me, and said, Captain, why, that is Jersey! Jersey, I said, I know that, right well, for I have seen it hundreds of times; but the speaker was not to be shaken off with my reply, and, with greater emphasis, repeated, But, sir,--Captain, that is Jersey! I replied, Well, my good woman, what of that? Why, said she, I was born to God there!
3. As to results. Readiness and fitness for service. (H. Woodcock.)
The views of the glory of Christ which produce humiliation and penitence
I. REPRESENT THE GLORY WHICH EVERY TRUE SAINT BEHOLDS IN JESUS CHRIST.
1. The saints behold the Son of God undertaking, and in the fulness of time accomplishing, the work of our redemption.
2. They contemplate the exalted Redeemer, calling and entreating sinners to accept of the benefits of His purchase as the free gift of God.
3. They behold the great Redeemer setting up that kingdom which shall never be destroyed; taking possession of those by His Spirit, whom He hath purchased with His blood; and adorning and beautifying them with His own image.
4. They behold, with awful reverence, the majesty of Christ, when those who have heard the Gospel, but have not received the truth in the love of it, are given up to judicial blindness and hardness of heart.
II. EXPLAIN THE PECULIAR MANNER IN WHICH THE TRUE SAINTS BEHOLD THE GLORIES OF THE KING, THE LORD OF HOSTS.
1. The saints, having the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the know ledge of Christ, behold a glory and excellency, and taste a sweetness in Divine things, which other men cannot and do not perceive.
2. The saints alone are spiritually convinced of the reality and certainty of the great doctrines of the Gospel.
III. CONSIDER THE TENDENCY OF SUCH VIEWS OF THE GLORY OF CHRIST, AND OF THE SCHEME OF SALVATION THROUGH HIM, TO PROMOTE THE VARIOUS EXERCISES OF PENITENCE AND SELF-ABASEMENT.
1. Such views of the great Redeemer will produce deep and serious thoughtfulness about salvation.
2. They will excite those who receive them to a strict and close examination of their hearts and lives.
3. They will produce low and debasing thoughts of ourselves.
4. They will promote in the mind of a saint a godly sorrow and a holy indignation on account of his personal sins.
5. They will determine those who receive them to turn from sin unto God, and by His grace to devote themselves entirely to His service.
6. They have a transforming or sanctifying influence.
7. They wean the affections from things below and place them on things spiritual and Divine. (J. Erskine, D. D.)
Personal responsibility of man as the possessor of speech
Like the coins which we daily pass through our hands without reading the superscription or testing the metal, we use language for our momentary needs without thinking whence it came to us, or what is its worth. But words are a great gift of God so man, language is our inheritance from the ages that are gone; it grows richer as generations pass from the accumulations of their thought. Descending to us, it educates us. But if language does so much to fashion us, it is an instrument for us of wonderful power in moulding other minds. Gods work, or else Satans work, it is forever doing.
1. If we were to decide what was the commonest fault of the tongue amongst ourselves, we should almost all answer that it was the making light of sin. We can allude to any sinful act in three ways: we can speak of it as the Bible speaks, as a sin against the Holy God; or as prudent men of the world speak, as a mistake, and a blunder, and a want of self-command and dignity; or, as the thoughtless speak, as something to be laughed at and forgotten, a natural and admissible thing. Our language is copious enough for any of these. One of the greatest dangers to souls is impurity. What shall we say of one who in that moment of trial when a soul is suspended between life and ruin, steps in, with no interest in the case except the love of evil, to unloose the bands that hold him to life, and so to help his downfall? If there is any retribution for sin, is not this the sin to call it down? Tell him that modesty is weak and boyish, and that a certain measure of dissipation befits the finished character of a man. Disconnect this sin, in all that you say about it, from every thought of God; speak never of fornication and adultery; language is rich in words that soften and disguise the guilt of this sin. Show how common the sin is. Throw on nature and on youth the blame, if there is blame, of passions too strong for restraint. You will extinguish, by such means, the last spark of that shame, which, fostered in a home where all was pure and chaste, has been sustained till now from extinction by a mothers pure prayers, by her solicitous efforts to keep enfolded even when far off, her darling in the invisible arms of her chaste affection. You will succeed. It were better that a millstone were hanged about your neck, and you drowned in the depth of the sea, than to reap ouch an accursed success against one of those for whom our beloved Lord died.
2. This brings us to another peril of the tongue. Two of the safeguards against sin are the love of God and the fear of judgment. But they suppose a faith that God indeed is, and that He verily is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. A theology of suppositions has no force as a safeguard. Faith may be strong or weak, but it cannot be faith and not faith at the same time. Through this state of division and doubt men have sometimes had to pass, but to linger in it is death. It is not a phase of religion, but a suspension of it. He for whom nor God, nor Christ, nor conscience, nor the life to come for a reality, has nothing on which he may support himself. But how are these questions, this state of doubt, treated in common talk? People mean no harm when they jest about the last new theory in science, yet when they come to consider what is the tendency of the conversation in the circle in which they live, they may have to confess that its tone tends to encourage doubt, and to make them contour with the darkness.
3. Might not even our religious conversation be more fruitful than it is? St. James, from whose Epistle we might derive a complete code of rules for the government of the tongue, says, Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. He is speaking of religions things, of hearing and speaking the word of truth, mentioned in the former verse. Does not religion suffer often from our hot and impetuous advocacy? We are zealous for God, and that, we think, excuses everything; and we are ready with the nickname or the good story against those whose views differ from our own, and we separate readily from those that will not go as far as we; and the lines that separate Church parties are daily more deeply marked Gods great purposes, in the growth of His kingdom, will gain nothing from our noisy warmth. (Archbishop Thomson.)
The making of a prophet
I. IF WE SEE GOD WE SHALL SEE OUR SIN.
II. Note the second stage here, in the education of a soul for service--THE SIN RECOGNISED AND REPENTED OF IS BURNED AWAY. I would notice about this stage of the process--
1. That Isaiah singularly passes beyond all the old ritual in which he had been brought up, and recognises another kind of cleansing than that which it embodied. He had got beyond the ritual to what the ritual meant.
2. But far more important than that thought is the human condition that is required ere this cleansing can be realised. I am a man of unclean lips. I am undone! It was because that conviction and confession sprang in the prophets consciousness that the seraph winged his way with the purifying fire in his hands. Which being translated is just this: faith alone will not bring cleansing. There must go with it what we call, in our Christian phraseology, repentance, which is but the recognition of my own antagonism to the holiness of God, and the resolve to turn my back on my own past self.
3. Again, note that we have here set forth most strikingly the other great truth, the two being as closely synchronous as the flash and the peal; namely, as soon as the consciousness of sin, and the aversion from it, spring in a mans heart, the seraphs wings are set in motion. Remember that beautiful old story in the historical books, of how the erring king, brought to sanity and repentance by Nathans apologue, put all his acknowledgments in these words, I have sinned against the Lord; and how the confession was not out of his lips, nor had died in its vibration in the atmosphere, before the prophet, with Divine authority, replied with equal brevity and completeness, and as if the two sayings were bits of the one sentence, And the Lord hath made to pass the iniquity of thy sin. That is all. Simultaneous are the two things.
4. Still further, notice how the cleansing comes as a Divine gift. The Lord is He that healeth us.
5. But, further, the cleansing is by fire. By which, as I suppose, in the present context, and at Isaiahs stage of religious knowledge and experience, we are to understand that great thought that God burns away our sins; as you put a piece of foul clay into the fire, and the stain melts from the surface like a dissipating cloud, as the heat finds its way into the substance. He will baptise with the Holy Ghost and with fire--a fire that quickens. A new impulse will be granted, and that will become the life of the sinful mans life, and will emancipate him from the power of his own darkness and evil. Now, let us remember that we have the fulness of all that was shadowed to the prophet in this vision, and that all these emblems are gathered together, not with confusion, but abundance and opulence in Jesus Christ Himself. Is He not the seraph? Is He not Himself the burning coal? Is He not the altar from which it is taken? All that is needed to make the foulest clean lies in Christs great work.
III. The third stage here is--THE PURGED SPIRIT IS READY FOR SERVICE. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The true messenger of God
Though the prophecies of Isaiah are amongst the most evangelical portions of the Old Testament, and though we read them with true delight, yet the history of the prophet himself, the writer of this splendid poem, is only very partially revealed. He is like a summer bird who sings sweetly on the branch of a tree, but hides himself from view. In this chapter we have an account, if not of his conversion, at least of his call to the prophetic office. It took place in the year of Uzziahs death. That was more than a date, or he would have probably said the year when Jotham began to reign. We find here the essential qualifications of the true messengers of God.
I. A VIEW OF GODS HOLINESS. He saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and heard the heavenly choir chanting: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The word holy means separate Israel was a holy nation, separate from all the people of the earth, and Canaan was the holy land. But God Himself is the holy, the separate, dwelling in light inaccessible. God is love, but He is holy love. He is a Father, infinitely excelling any earthly parent in kindness and compassion; but He is a holy Father. Gods holiness was revealed to Isaiah in a remarkable manner. He saw God, not with his natural eyes, but in such a manner as every quickened spirit must see Him. He saw God; that is, had a true conception of His character He had heard of Him before when attending the national festivals, but he never saw Him properly until Uzziah was stricken with leprosy for his presumption. Every prophet and every messenger has a certain truth which has sunk deeper into his soul than any other truth, and it is not strange, therefore, if he enters into a covenant with that truth, as it were, that he will be faithful to it at all costs; and, on the other hand, he will receive great comfort to himself from such a truth, and find shelter under its branches from the heat of the day or the fury of the storm. Every worker for God in order to be successful must first have a vision of God. This must be the foundation of our work and the source of our success. To have a firm building, the foundation must be sound. We have never understood holiness, righteousness, and truth unless we have seen God. We can never have any idea of law except in the light of the Lawgiver. Great reformers have been great believers. This is the place to grow a creed in the sunshine of Gods presence, and in contemplation of His supreme will. A short creed of thirty-nine letters burnt into our soul by the fire of conviction is better than a long creed of thirty-nine articles conveyed to our mind by traditionalism. A personal contact with God will ever leave its mark on the soul. This was experienced by Augustine, Anselm, Calvin, Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards, and other men of valour in the religious world. When Christmas Evans was once on his travels between Dolgelly and Machynlleth he had such a view of Gods glory that he felt that the barren mountain of Cader Idris had become a Holy of holies. He wrestled with God for several hours, praying for the Churches and ministers of Wales by name. What wonder that he returned to Anglesey like a giant refreshed, and that a strong religious awakening was the natural result.
II. ANOTHER NECESSARY QUALIFICATION IS A SENSE OF MANS SINFULNESS. The vision of Gods holiness created within Isaiahs mind a sense of his own unworthiness. Then, said I, Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. Why does he say unclean lips? Because he was called to speak for God, and therefore he must be, before all things, a man of pure lips, and must utter true words. He is only a voice uttering the thoughts of God, and it requires a clean channel for the waters of Gods blessings to flow. He appears to be anxious to join the seraphic song, but how could he with his lips unclean? A sense of mans sinfulness will naturally follow a true view of Gods holiness. No one with a light view of sin, viewing it only as mere weakness, the result of circumstances, or the effect of mans environment, can effect any real deliverance.
III. ANOTHER NECESSARY QUALIFICATION IS FAITH IN THE POSSIBILITY OF A MANS RENEWAL. Isaiah looked upon God, the Holy Being, as dwelling apart. On the other hand, the prophet views man in the darkness of his corrupt nature as far from God--the distance being measured, not by miles or geographical distinctions, but by sins and mans shortcomings. The prophet, first of all, seeks his own purity, and cries for renewal, and one of the seraphs, the agents of Gods mercy, becomes the medium of that blessed work. We very often find during the first real awakening of a religious activity that men become very pessimistic in their views They have passed through these two stages--the contemplation of Gods holiness and mans sinfulness--and think of the great gulf between, but before they can expect to effect a great improvement, and turn any portion of the vast wilderness into Gods garden, they must reach a further stage, and possess faith in the possibility of a mans renewal. They must look upon sin as a terrible enemy, but as an intruder in the city of Mansoul; look upon it as a serious blot upon our nature; but still to be removed by the healing influences of the grace of God. Michael Angelo saw in the rough stone at Florence the necessary material for the picture of an angel. So our Saviour looked with a prophetic eye upon all conditions of men, and He saw in Matthew, the publican, the making of an apostle. We need preachers of the Gospel of joy and of hope. John Newton said that he never doubted the power of God to save any, since he himself had been rescued from the bondage of sin. William Carey, studying a map of the world that hung in his workroom, thought with pain how small a portion of the human race had any knowledge of the Saviour; but he determined that something should be done, and he conversed, corresponded, preached, and published in order to awaken men, so as to expect great things from God, and to attempt great things for God. To love God and love our neighbour are two parts of the same law.
IV. ANOTHER QUALIFICATION IS A DESIRE TO PARTAKE IN THE WORK OF RESTORATION. Isaiah heard the voice of God saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? This voice is only heard by those who are possessed of an obedient nature.
1. Man does not lose his personality in the work of God. Here am I; send me. He offers himself. Nothing less will do, and nothing more is possible. The grace of God does not destroy mans identity, nor his personality. The most solemn thought possible is the responsibility of personal man to a personal God. We should lay our best at the feet of our Saviour, and put every faculty under tribute to Him. There is room in His service for the gifts of the imagination, the strength of the intellect, the power of the will, and the emotions of the heart. Let us do duty first, and then we can leave the consequences to God. Let us say, Send me, and let us consecrate the entire man on the altar of service.
2. The true worker must also feel that he is the object of Divine commission. Send me. He feels, though willing and anxious to do his best, that he can accomplish nothing, unless he receives Divine commission, is endowed with Divine wisdom, and inspired by Divine fellowship. With this equipment a man can weather many a storm, and struggle manfully against many foes. Paul came face to face with God on the way to Damascus, and that made him strong to fight the battle and run the race. (H. C. Williams.)
In the temple
Jerusalem was the London of the Holy Land, the capital of Palestine. Well, a very dreadful thing had just happened in Jerusalem. The king was dead, and he died in the saddest possible way. The people were very sorry, and talked a great deal about it; and Isaiah, too, was filled with grief and wonder. What could it all mean? But there was nobody in all Jerusalem who could tell him. But God, who had a great work for the youth to do, took him and told him what it all meant. He showed him a vision. Just as we see things with our minds when our eyes are closed, so God taught Isaiah the meaning of the kings death, by making him see and hear wonderful things with the eye and ear of his mind.
I. WHAT ISAIAH SAW. He saw the Lord sitting on a throne. The King Uzziah was dead, but the eternal King never dies. He was on His throne, high and lifted up, and the glory of His garments filled the temple, so great and glorious was He. And then Isaiah heard angels singing, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory. If you went into a great picture gallery you would probably come to one room which would be called the Rubens room, where all the pictures would be by Rubens; then in another part of the gallery you would come to the Turner room, and all the pictures in that would be Turners, the great English painter; and so on through room after room. And if you went into a library, on one shelf you would find the works of Shakespeare, on another the works of Bacon, on another the works of Milton. But with regard to God, the angels say you may go up and down the world, and everywhere you go you will find every room, every shelf, filled with the glory of the same One. The whole earth is filled with the glory of One, and that One is God. Now, why does God say that to Isaiah? In order to teach Isaiah reverence; to teach him to fear God--not to be afraid, but to teach him to honour God. Uzziah had dared God, as it were. Uzziah had forgotten the greatness of God, and so the first thing God did with the boy was to stamp upon his mind that he must be reverent. And, dear children, it is one of the greatest lessons that we all need: have your play and fun and laughter in their right time and in the right way; but when you come to this place for worship, for prayer and praise, remember how great God is.
II. WHAT ISAIAH FELT. He knew that Uzziah had done wrong; and God taught him that, young as he was, he too had sinned, and so he cried out, Woe is me, I am unclean. He felt that he had sinned, and then lest his heart should be broken with sorrow, God made him feel that He--the God against whom he had sinned, could pardon and cleanse him. It is a grand moment when you find fault with yourselves. That is the finest thing a boy can do, to stand up and, as it were, pitch right into himself, find fault with himself, feeling that he has done wrong. Have you felt that, children--felt that you too have sinned? But if you have sinned it isnt hopeless,for God can take your sin away. Ask Him for pardon, ask Him for power not to sin.
III. WHAT ISAIAH HEARD. He heard God asking for somebody to carry a message for Him and do work for Him. Well, but you say, We never heard God say that. No, you never heard Him in so many words, but if you know how to listen for Gods call, you can hear Him calling every day. How does God call? God calls by putting a need before you. When anything wants doing, that is Gods call to somebody.
IV. WHAT ISAIAH SAID. Here am I. He didnt look about and say, Who is there that will go? No; he said, Here am I; send me, and God did not refuse him. You know that in arranging their play, the bigger boys choose who shall be on their side, and they always choose the best boys; the poor little fellows who cant play well are left for the other side. They are always so anxious to be called; but are always passed by, or left to the very last. God doesnt do that; He doesnt say, Oh no, no, I want somebody else. He says, Come, whosoever will let him come. (J. M. Gibbon.)
Fear, as a preparation for duty
I. THE EMOTION WHICH THE MAN EXHIBITS. (Isa_6:5.)
II. THE BEARING IT HAS UPON HIS HISTORY. Inferences--
1. To make conviction of sin profounder a man needs to come up more and more evidently before the presence of the Divine purity. It never helps anyone to begin desperately to study his wickednesses with a view to outroot them. It is better for him to keep looking at God. The objective study of Christ, His life, character, etc., is far safer and more profitable for growth in grace than any painful act of self-examination.
2. He who has suffered himself to tolerate trivial notions of disobedience has not yet ever had a proper conception of his Maker, who is one day to be his Judge. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
A vision of God humbles
The prophet does not come away triumphing in what he has seen; he does not hold the vision as a prize, and mock other men because they have not seen similar revelations; he says, in effect, If ever you see God you will fall down in humility, self-abhorrence and self-helplessness. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Isaiahs true character
Only the pure in heart can see God. But he who is sufficiently pure in heart to see God is, by that very vision, convicted of an unspeakable impurity. Isaiah was not a bad man but a good, one of the excellent of the earth in whom God took delight. But the very light that is in him turns to darkness in a glory so ineffable; and he finds a sentence of death in the very life which alone can quicken and renew him. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Self-humbling a preparation for service
I have noted in my own experience that whenever I have been most blessed in the winning of souls, it has generally been just after I have endured a thorough stripping in my own heart, or when by soul trouble I have been brayed as in a mortar among wheat with a pestle till I seemed ground into dust. Trial has preceded triumph. A wider field has been opened to me by the breaking down of my hedges. I have shrunk into self-oblivion, and then the Lord has moved me to speak in a burning manner to His glory. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Gods holiness, a revelation of sin
Like some searchlight flung from a ship over the darkling waters, revealing the dark doings of the enemy away out yonder in the night, the thought of God and His holiness streaming in upon a mans soul, if it is there in any adequate measure, is sure to disclose the heaving waters and the skulking foes that are busy in the dark. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The thought of God in the heart
The sleeping snake that is coiled in every soul stirs and begins to heave in its bulk, and wake when the thought of a holy God comes into the heart. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
No heaven possible to the uncleansed man
Oh, you who think that you are sure to go to heaven, are you quite sure that you would be happy if you got there? Might not the vision of God produce a similar effect upon you to that which was produced upon one who was probably a better man than you, by this august display? And what would heaven be but a moral hell if you found yourself grovelling in the dust, crying out in anguish and terror, Woe is me! for I am undone? (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
Consciousness of sin
When one turns to look with a steadfast eye upon ones own doings, the terrible revelation comes as a sickening fear to each of us, that the dark side of our life is practically limitless. President Edwards used to exclaim for months together, Infinite upon infinite! Infinite upon infinite! And many an awakened soul has felt that the words were hardly exaggerated. (D. M. Mclntyre.)
The sense of sin
Augustine of Hippo records in his Confessions: Thou, O Lord, while he [Pontitianus] was speaking, didst turn me round towards myself, taking me from behind my back, where I had placed me, unwilling to observe myself, and setting me before my face, that I might see how foul I was, how crooked and defiled, besotted and ulcerous. And I beheld and stood aghast; and whither to flee from myself I found not.
Self-revelation a preparation for great usefulness
Students of religious biography are familiar with the strange tale of the great mediaeval preacher, Dr. John Tauler, of Strasburg, and know how popular he was while sermons were of the letter only, and not from the Spirit, and how he was set to the childs task of learning the very A B C of Christianity ere he could preach with the tongue of fire which reaches the hearts and consciences of the hearers. Falling into great weakness of body and continual sorrow of soul, losing all trust in himself and his own doings, he owned with bitter tears, I am wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. It was at that moment he received the blessed knowledge of Christ as the sin offering, and the Spirit of the Lord used him thenceforth in a marvellous manner for the convicting and comforting of the citizens, in the midst of earthquakes and wars and famine and pestilence, so that the great power of God fell upon that town as probably never before nor since. (F. Sessions.)
Jonathan Edwards conversion
Jonathan Edwards was suddenly converted, ms by a flash of light, in the moment of reading a single verse of the New Testament, into contact with which he was brought by a series of unusual circumstances. He was at home in his fathers house; some ordinary hindrance kept him from going to church one Sunday with the family; a couple of hours in prospect with nothing to do sent him listlessly into the library; the sight of a dull volume with no title on the leather back of it piqued curiosity as to what it could be; he opened it at random and found it to be a Bible; and then his eye caught this verse: Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen. He tells us in his journal that the immediate effect of it was awakening and alarming to his soul; for it brought him a most novel and most extensive thought of the vastness and majesty of the true Sovereign of the universe. Out of this grew the astonishing pain of guilt for having resisted such a Monarch so long, and for having served Him so poorly. And whereas, he had hitherto had slight notions of his own wickedness and very little poignancy of acute remorse, now he felt the deepest contrition. Here is a precise reproduction of Isaiahs experience. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv5, 8 Isa_6:5-7. Then said I, &c.
A SIGHT OF GOD AND A SENSE OF SIN
Isa_6:5-7. Then said I, &c.
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Visions of the throne of God were given to Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel among the prophets, and to John among the Apostles [748].
[748] “We should naturally expect that a vision vouchsafed to an Apostle of Christ, at the end of the first century of the Christian era, would be larger in scope, brighter in glory, less enigmatical in structure, in significance, than those which were attached to the ministrations of prophets. This expectation is not disappointed. We find the visions of the throne of God which prophets saw revived and incorporated in the Apostle’s vision, and we find the Christian seer enlightened with a more distinct understanding of the heavenly symbols. Isaiah saw the throne of God in the temple, surrounded by seraphim, “crying one to another, Holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts.” Ezekiel, sitting by the river of Chebar, saw the throne of God as a chariot of war coming out of a whirlwind and going forth over the earth, attended by mighty ministers of judgment, carrying the Son of Man to victory. Daniel beheld the great session of justice; the gathered myriads before the awful purity of the Divine Judge; the consuming laws executed by the faithful servants. But the Christian Apostle, looking through the door of heaven, beheld all these ancient visions, which had come down through eight centuries of time, blended into one. He saw Isaiah’s seraphim, but they had the appearance of Ezekiel’s living creatures, with fourfold countenance; their wings were still visible, and their voices still responded, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!” He saw the thrones round about the Throne, as Daniel saw them, but he was able to count them; they were four and twenty; and upon the seats he “saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and they had on their heads crowns of gold.” The stream of fire, which the prophet saw proceeding from under the throne, was now “a sea of glass like unto crystal.” He that sat on the throne, who appeared to Ezekiel as though He were clothed with fiery amber, was “to look upon like a jasper and sardine stone;” and the rainbow was still there, “round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” “Lightnings, thunderings, and voices” proceeded out of the throne, as before fire flamed out and devoured. “The seven spirits of God,” like “burning lamps of fire,” stand in the presence of the Holy One. And the Apostle witnessed the sublime service of heaven, the living creatures “giving glory and honour and thanks to Him that sat on the throne;” and, in response to their worship, “the four and twenty elders falling down before Him and worshipping Him,” and singing their united praises, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created!”—R. A. Redford.
I. The distinguished privilege. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.” “Mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” The invisible and unapproachable God revealed Himself to the bewildered seer through the glory of the afterwards incarnate Christ (Joh_12:41). May we behold God? Certainly we may.
1. In His Son Jesus Christ (Heb_1:3; 2Co_4:4; Col_1:15; Joh_14:8-9).
2. In His works and Word. The works are the embodied words of God. In the Scriptures we may see the mind, the heart, the purposes, the character of God.
3. In His sanctuary. In the act of worship, while in the temple, Isaiah beheld the glory of the Lord (Psa_63:1-2; Psa_68:24).
II. The profound abasement. It is true that “before honour is humility.” The converse is also true. Isaiah’s humility was the effect of overwhelming honour. A sight of God brought self-revelation; depravity was revealed by the dazzling whiteness of divine purity.
1. There was consternation. “Woe is me; for I am undone.”
2. There was self-loathing. “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” The vision of God results in a vivid and painful sense of sin (Job_42:5-6; Luk_5:8).
III. The divine cleansing. Absolution is connected with confession (1Jn_1:9).
1. The cleansing was efficacious.
2. The purification was by means of sacrifice.
3. The removal of defilement was immediate. A man so prepared is made ready for any ministry of testimony, toil, or tribulation.—Matthew Braithwaite.
THE MORAL HISTORY OF A RISING SOUL
Isa_6:5-8. Then said I, Woe is me, &c.
Whilst holiness is the normal, depravity is the actual state of man. A restoration to that spiritual condition is his profoundest necessity, his want of wants. The recovery of holiness involves the recovery of all other good. There seem to be, in the nature of the case, five stages through which the soul must pass in this all-important and glorious transit.
I. A VISION OF THE GREAT RULER AS THE HOLIEST OF BEINGS. Isaiah had this: “Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Three facts will show that a spiritual vision of God is the first step of the soul towards holiness.
1. There can be no excitement of the moral sensibilities and powers without a vision of God. Show me a soul that has never had an inner vision of God, and you show me a soul whose conscience, whose moral powers, are entirely dormant. The passions, the intellect, the imagination may move, but the conscience, the heart, the moral essence, the self of the man, moves not—is dead.
2. The means which God has ever employed to restore men are visions of Himself. What is the Bible but a record of Divine visions and manifestations to man? What is the Gospel—“God’s power unto salvation”—but the manifestation of the Eternal in Christ? Here He appears to man in the “face of Jesus Christ.”
3. The history of all restored souls shows that the improvement commences at this stage. The explanation which Paul gives of the first upward movement would generally be true of all: “When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me,” &c. What the sun is to the plant, God is to the soul.
II. A PROFOUND CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR FALLEN STATE. “Then said I, Woe is me,” &c. His consciousness included four things—
1. A deep sense of his personality. “I am undone.” He feels himself singled out from the millions. When conscience is touched, she breaks the bond, individualises the man, and makes him feel as if he stood alone before the Eternal Judges 2. A sense of personal ruin. “Woe is me, for I am undone.” My prospects are blighted, my hopes are gone.
3. A sense of personal ruin arising from a sense of personal sin. I feel my ruin because I feel my sin. “I am a man of unclean lips;” I am a sinner, and therefore “undone.”
4. A sense of personal sin, heightened by the remembrance of his neighbour’s sins. “I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” So long as conscience is torpid, men often make the sinful conduct of others an apology for their own; but when conscience awakes, such sophistries depart.
III. A REMOVAL OF THE CRUSHING SENSE OF GUILT. “Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand,” &c. Three thoughts are suggested by this—
1. There are Divine means for the removal of sin. This “live coal,” this altar, and seraphim in the vision, symbolise this truth.
2. The means are something in connection with sacrifice. Fire is a purifying element, and is regarded as the emblem of purity. This “live coal” was taken from the altar of burnt-offering. The fire of that altar was at first kindled by the Lord, and ever afterwards kept burning. What is the power that takes away sin? The Divine Word in connection with Christ’s sacrifice—the doctrine of the Cross. This, like “fire,” has a purifying power.
3. The means are employed by a divinely-appointed ministry. Let that seraph stand as the emblem of a true minister, and we see that his work is to take the purifying elements from the altar and apply them to men.
IV. AN EVER-OPEN AND SENSITIVE EAR TO THE VOICE OF GOD. “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying,” &c. Three thoughts will develop the general and practical meaning of these words—
1. God has deep thoughts about our race. The Bible reveals some of these thoughts, and so does Nature.
2. Just as the soul is cleared of sin does it become conscious of these thoughts. Let the conscience be thoroughly cleared of sin, and it will hear the voice of God in every sound and see His glory in every form. The universe to a holy being is the tongue of God (P. D. 2545, 2552, 2560, 2563, 2564).
3. This consciousness of the Divine thoughts about our race is a necessary stage in the moral progress of the soul. It is only thus we walk with God, as Enoch did of old.
V. A HEARTY READINESS TO DO WHAT THE SUPREME WILL COMMANDS. “Here am I; send me.” I am ready to do whatever Thou commandest. Send me anywhere, at any time, to do any work; I am ready to catch the slightest whisper of duty; my soul stands with plumed pinions.—David Thomas, D.D.: The Homilist, vol. v. pp. 411–418.
THE SERVICE OF THE SERAPHIM
Isa_6:1-2; Isa_6:5-7. I saw also the Lord, &c.
In that perfect prayer which our Lord bequeathed to His disciples we are taught to ask that God’s will may be done in earth as it is done in heaven. Thus angelic service is set before us as a model and pattern. Not that the services we are called upon to render are the same with those assigned to angels. Their sphere is heaven, ours for the present is the earth; and each of these spheres has its distinct and peculiar duties, appropriate to the nature and faculties of its occupants. But the spirit in which the employments of angels and men should be prosecuted is the same. One common sentiment—the sentiment of adoration and devotedness—should animate and govern them all. Hence the passage before us, although containing a record of the transactions of another sphere, contains a lesson, if not respecting the nature of our duties, yet respecting the method in which we should seek to fulfil them.
I. The twofold life of a servant of God, whether human or angelic, is here very beautifully exhibited to us. The seraphim are represented as veiling their faces and feet with their wings while they stand in adoration before the throne of God. But although engaged in ceaselessly adoring the Divine perfections, they do not lead a life of barren contemplation. The words, “with twain he did fly,” intimate to us that they are also engaged in the active execution of those errands with which God has charged them. The Christian’s life, like that of the seraphim, branches out into the two great divisions of contemplative devotion and active exertion. It is the life of Mary combined with that of Martha (P. D. 2417).
1. The devotional branch of the Christian’s life. In the exercises of the closet and of the sanctuary are to be found the springs of the Christian’s exertions in his Master’s cause. These exercises are not originating sources of grace, but they are channels and vehicles through which God’s Spirit conveys Himself to the soul—pitchers in which may be drawn up the waters of the River of Life to refresh and recruit the energies of him whom a painful resistance to evil within and without has rendered weary and faint in his mind (H. E. I. 3426, 4107, 4108, and 3438–3448). If devotion be essential to the perfection of a seraph’s service, how much more essential must it be to ours, our necessities being so immensely greater than those of the bright inhabitants of heaven! The exigencies of our time make devotion especially needful now. The present is emphatically a period of the world’s history in which “many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased.” Moreover, there is a revival of outward energy and activity in the cause of religion. This is a blessing. But remember, days of excitement are not days of deep devotion. There may be much of rapid movement abroad in the world without a corresponding adoration of God in the secret chamber of the heart—much of flying without veiling of the face [1303]
[1303] If this be the case with any of us, if, with the busy occupation of the hands in the furtherance of religious objects, we have allowed the inward life of communion with God to decline, how painfully do we resemble those virgins who took no heed to provide for their dying lamps a continual supply of oil! The profession which we have made before men, however bright its blaze, will one day be shown to have been delusive—to have been destitute of those animating principles of faith and love from which alone can flow an acceptable service.—Goulburn.
2. The outward manifestation of the Christian life discernible by the world. Care must be taken not only that the lamp shall be filled with oil, but that there shall be a light shining before men (Mat_5:16; H. E. I. 1042, 1044, 3906). The seraphim are not so wrapt up in adoration of God that they are forgetful of active service. “With twain they did fly” for the execution of the errands on which they were commissioned.
Here is a reproof of the monastic principle, that seclusion from the society of our fellow-men and from the active duties of life is necessary in order to secure an uninterrupted period of leisure for solitary spiritual exercises. Undue predominance is thus given to one branch of God’s service, to the prejudice and neglect of the other and no less important branch. Exercise as well as nourishment and repose is essential to the health of the body, and so toil in the vineyard—earnest endeavour to advance the kingdom of God in our own hearts and the hearts of others—is no less essential to the health of the soul. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;” but for what purpose? That they may walk in good works, and run with patience the race that is set before them (chap. Isa_40:31; H. E. I. 1736–1742).
II. Some practical lessons concerning the maintenance and manifestation of the twofold Christian life.
1. A lesson as to the spirit which should pervade all devotion. These bright and glorious beings are without sin. Still, such is their sense of the infinite distance between themselves and their Creator, that they veil their faces and their feet before His throne in token of adoring reverence. The first and most essential element of devotion is a feeling of deep awe flowing from a sense of God’s transcendent excellences and leading to profound self-abasement (H. E. I. 3798, 3799, 5074). If reverence was befitting in the seraphim, how much more is it necessary in sinful men! (Luk_18:13; Ezr_9:6).
The vision of God wrought in Isaiah a feeling almost akin to despair. It seemed to him as if the perfect holiness of God was engaged to banish for ever every creature possessing the slightest taint of moral evil (Isa_6:5). In Isa_6:6-7 we have the glorious remedy. What is the significance of the symbols? By the work of the Son of God a mighty Altar of Propitiation has been reared up, and thence there comes to the penitent sinner cleansing as well as pardon. The “live coal” is an emblem of that love and zeal in God’s service with which the Holy Spirit imbues the souls of those who flee to the Altar of Atonement as their only refuge from the wrath to come. A participation in that Spirit’s influence is absolutely essential to our true participation in the chorus of the angelic host (H. E. I. 2887).
2. A few words on that active service which is the outward manifestation of the principles nourished by devotion.
(1.) We must prepare for it by the care and culture of our own heart [1306]
(2.) There is also an outward work which God has made binding on all of us. He has assigned to each of us a certain position in life. Every such position involves its peculiar responsibilities, snares, and occupations. The responsibilities must be cheerfully and manfully met, the occupations diligently fulfilled, as a piece of taskwork allotted to us by the Lord of the vineyard (Eph_6:7). Besides, God has intrusted to us, in various measures, substance, time, abilities, influence, and these we are diligently to use for the promotion of the cause of God in the world. In our busy path through life, which brings us in contact with so many individuals, opportunities are ever and anon presented to us of being useful to our fellow-men; and to watch for, seize, and improve such opportunities is not the least important of these branches of active service (P. D. 40, 3567, 3569).
[1306] God requires us to set a strict watch over its outgoings—a watch such as sentinels keep over the persons and goods which pass out of a city whose allegiance to the sovereign is suspected—to curb and quell at its earliest outbreak every rising of vanity, temper, bitterness, passion, and just—to drag forth from its dark recesses and to slay every cherished iniquity which has found there a harbour and a hiding-place. Our own heart is a vineyard over which God hath set every one of us to dress it and to keep it. We are to extirpate the soil’s poisonous produce, and to implore upon the soil of this vineyard the precious dews of the Divine Spirit, which may remedy its native barrenness and turn it from a desert into the garden of the Lord.—Goulburn. See also H. E. I. 1841, 1 42, 2695–2708.
CONCLUSION.—
1. It is not the intrinsic dignity of our duties, nor the large result of our fulfilment of them, which renders the diligent performance of them an acceptable work in God’s eyes. The great design of our being placed in this world is not that we may do some signal service, or large amount of service, to our Creator, but rather that we may execute the service (be it great or small) allotted to us in a spirit of fidelity, zeal, and love. The spirit which is thrown into and pervades the work is everything—the work itself (comparatively) nothing. Be the sphere what it may which Divine Providence has assigned us, let the duties of it be executed in a seraphic spirit (P. D. 1484).
2. We have overwhelming motives, if we did but rightly appreciate them, to devotedness of our every faculty to the service of our God. The redeemed sinner owes to God far more of allegiance than the angel who has retained his integrity. Angels no such Fall have known, “angels no such Love have known,” as we.—E. M. Goulburn, D.C.L.: Sermons, pp. 77–99,
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv5–6
Isaiah
VISION AND SERVICE
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THE MAKING OF A PROPHET
Isa 6:5.
In previous pages we have seen how Isaiah’s vision of Jehovah throned in the Temple, ‘high and lifted up,’ derived significance from the time of its occurrence. It was ‘in the year that’ the earthly King ‘died’ that the heavenly King was revealed. The passing of the transient prepared the way for the revelation of the Eternal, and the revelation of the Eternal more than compensated for the passing of the transient. But strengthening and calming as these thoughts are, they by no means exhaust the purpose of the vision, nor do they describe all its effects on the recipient. These were, first and immediately, the consciousness of unworthiness and sin, expressed in the words that I have taken for my text. Then came the touch of the ‘live coal from the altar,’ laid on the unclean lips by the seraph; and on that followed willing surrender for a perilous service.
These three stages flowing from the vision of God, recognition of sin, experience of purging, abandonment to obedience and service, must be repeated in us all, if we are to live worthy lives. There may be much that is beautiful and elevating and noble without these; but unless in some measure we pass through the prophet’s experience, we shall fail to reach the highest possibilities of beauty and of service that open before us. So I wish to consider, very simply, these three stages in my remarks now.
I. If we see God we shall see our sin.
There came on the prophet, as in a flash, the two convictions, one which he learned from the song of the seraphs, ringing in music through the Temple, and one which rose up, like an answering note from the voice of conscience within. They sang ‘Holy! holy! holy! Lord God Almighty.’ And what was the response to that, in the prophet’s heart?-’I am unclean.’ Each major note has a corresponding minor, and the triumphant doxology of the seraph wakes in the hearer’s conscience the lowly confession of personal unlikeness to the holiness of God. It was not joy that sprang in Isaiah’s heart when he saw the throned King, and heard the proclamation of His name. It was not reverence merely that bowed his head in the dust, but it was the awakened consciousness, ‘Thou art holy; and now that I understand, in some measure, what Thy holiness means, I look on myself and I say, “unclean! unclean!”‘
The prophet’s confession assumes a form which may strike us as somewhat singular. Why is it that he speaks of ‘unclean lips,’ rather than of an unclean heart? I suppose partly because, in a very deep sense, a man’s words are more accurately a cast, as it were, from a man’s character than even his actions, and partly because the immediate occasion of his confession was the words of the seraphim, and he could not but contrast what came burning from their pure lips with what had trickled from, and soiled, his own.
But, however expressed, the consciousness of personal unlikeness to the holiness of God is the first result, and the instantaneous result, of any real apprehension of that holiness, and of any true vision of Him. Like some search-light flung from a ship over the darkling waters, revealing the dark doings of the enemy away out yonder in the night, the thought of God and His holiness streaming in upon a man’s soul, if it does so in any adequate measure, is sure to disclose the heaving waters and the skulking foes that are busy in the dark.
But it was not only the consciousness of sinfulness and antagonism that woke up instantaneously in response to that vision of the holy God. It was likewise a shrinking apprehension of personal evil from contact of God’s light with Isaiah’s darkness. ‘Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.’ What is to become, then, of the man that has neither the one nor the other? The experience of all the world witnesses that whenever there comes, in reality, or in a man’s conceptions or fancy, the contact of the supernatural, as it is called, with the natural, there is a shrinking, a sense of eerieness, an apprehension of vague possibilities of evil. The sleeping snake that is coiled in every soul stirs and begins to heave in its bulk, and wake, when the thought of a holy God comes into the heart. Now, I do not suppose that consciousness of sin is the whole explanation of that universal human feeling, but I am very sure it is an element in it, and I suspect that if there were no sin, there would be no shrinking.
At all events, be that as it may, these are the two thoughts that, involuntarily and spontaneously and immediately, sprang in this man’s heart when his purged eyes saw the King on His throne. He did not leap up with gladness at the vision. Its consolatory and its strengthening aspects were not the first that impinged upon his eye, or upon his consciousness, but the first thing was an instinctive recoil, ‘Woe is me; I am undone.’ Now, brethren, I venture to think that one main difference between shallow religion and real is to be found here, that the dim, far-off vision, if we may venture to call it so, which serves the most of us for a sight of God, leaves us quite complacent, and with very slight and superficial conceptions of our own evil, and that if once we saw, in so far as it is possible for humanity to-day to see, God as He is, and heard in the depths of our hearts that ‘Holy! holy! holy!’ from the burning seraphim, the easy-going, self-satisfied judgment of ourselves which too many of us cherish would be utterly impossible; and would disappear, shrivelled up utterly in the light of God. ‘I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,’ said Job, ‘but now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ A hearsay God and a self-complacent beholder-a God really seen, and a man down in the dust before Him! Has that vision ever blazed in on you? And if it has, has not the light shown you the seaminess of much in which a dimmer light detects no flaws or stains? Thank God if, having seen Him, you see yourselves. If you have not felt, ‘I am unclean and undone,’ depend upon it, your knowledge of God is faint and dim, and He is rather One heard of from the lips of others than realised in your own experience.
II. Again, note the second stage here, in the education of a soul for service-the sin, recognised and repented, is burned away.
‘Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.’
Now, I would notice as to this stage of the process, first, that Isaiah singularly passes beyond all the old ritual in which he had been brought up, and recognises another kind of cleansing than that which it embodied. He had got beyond the ritual to what the ritual meant. We have passed beyond the ritual, too, by another process; and, though I would by no means read full, plain, articulate Christian thought into the vision of Isaiah-which would be an anachronism, and unfaithful to the gradual historical development of the idea and means of redemption-yet I cannot help pointing to the fact that, even although this vision is located as seen in the Temple, there is not a single reference {except that passing allusion to the altar} to the ritual of the Temple, but the cleansing comes in another fashion altogether.
But far more important than that thought is the human condition that is required ere this cleansing can be realised. ‘I am a man of unclean lips.’ ‘I am undone!’ It was because that conviction and confession sprang in the prophet’s consciousness that the seraph winged his way with the purifying fire in his hands. Which being translated is just this: faith alone will not bring cleansing. There must go with it what we call, in our Christian phraseology, repentance, which is but the recognition of my own antagonism to the holiness of God, and the resolve to turn my back on my own past self. Now, it seems to me that a great deal of what is called, and in a sense is, Evangelical teaching, fails to represent the full counsel of God, in the matter of man’s redemption, because it puts a one-sided emphasis on faith, and slurs over the accompanying idea of repentance. And I am here to say that a trust in Jesus Christ, which is unaccompanied by a profound penitent consciousness and abhorrence of one’s own sins, and a resolve to turn away from them for the time to come, is not a faith which will bring either pardon or cleansing. We do not need to have less said about trust; we need to have a great deal more said about repentance. You have to learn what it is to say, ‘I abhor myself’; you have to learn what it is to say, ‘I will turn right round, and leave all that past behind me; and go in the opposite direction’; or the faith which you say you are exercising will neither save nor cleanse your souls nor your lives.
Again, note that we have here set forth most strikingly the other great truth that, side by side, and as closely synchronous as the flash and the peal, as soon as the consciousness of sin and the aversion from it spring in a man’s heart, the seraph’s wings are set in motion. Remember that beautiful old story in the historical books, of how the erring king, brought to sanity and repentance by Nathan’s apologue, put all his acknowledgments in these words, ‘I have sinned against the Lord’; and how the confession was not out of his lips, nor had died in its vibration in the atmosphere, before the prophet, with divine authority, replied with equal brevity and completeness, and as if the two sayings were parts of one sentence, ‘And the Lord hath made to pass the iniquity of thy sin.’ That is all. Simultaneous are the two things. To confess is to be forgiven, and the moment that the consciousness of sin rises in the heart, that moment does the heavenly messenger come to still and soothe.
Still further, notice how the cleansing comes as a divine gift. It is purifying, much more than pardon, that is set forth in the symbolical incident before us. The seraph is the divine messenger, and he brings a coal from the altar, and lays that upon the prophet’s lips, which is but the symbolical way of saying that the man who is conscious of his own evil will find in himself a blessed despair of being his own healer, and that he has to turn to the divine source, the vision of which has kindled the consciousness, to find there that which will take away the evil. The Lord is ‘He that healeth us.’
But, further, the cleansing is by fire. By which, as I suppose, in the present context, and at Isaiah’s stage of religious knowledge and experience, we are to understand that great thought that God burns away our sins, as you put a piece of foul clay into the fire, and the stain melts from the surface like a dissipating cloud as the heat finds its way into the substance. ‘He will baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire’-a fire that quickens. A new impulse will be granted, which will become the life of the sinful man’s life, and will emancipate him from the power of his own darkness and evil.
Now, let us remember that we have the fulness of all that was shadowed to the prophet in this vision, and that the reality of every one of these emblems is gathered together-if I may so say-not with confusion, but with abundance and opulence in Jesus Christ Himself. Is He not the seraph? Is He not Himself the burning coal? Is He not the altar from which it is taken? All that is needed to make the foulest clean is given in Christ’s great work. Brethren, we shall never understand the deepest secret of Christ and of Christianity until we learn and hold fast by the conviction that the central work of Jesus is to deal with man’s sin; and that whatever else Christianity is, it is first and foremost God’s way of redeeming the world, and making it possible for the unholy to dwell with His holy self.
III. Lastly, and only a word, the third stage here is-the purged spirit is ready for service.
God did not bid the prophet go on His mission till the prophet had voluntarily accepted the mission. He said, ‘Who will go for us?’ He wants no pressed men in His army. He does not work with reluctant servants. There is, first, the yielding of the will, and then there is the enduement with the privilege of service. The prophet, having passed through the preceding experiences, had thereby received a quick ear to hear God’s calling for volunteers. And we shall not hear Him asking ‘Who will go?’ unless we have, in our measure, passed through similar experiences. It will be a test of having done so, of our having been purged from our evil, if, when other people think that it is only Eli speaking, we know that it is the Lord that has called us, and say, ‘Here am I.’
For such experiences as I have been describing do influence the will, and mould the heart, and make it a delight to do God’s commandments, and to execute His purpose, and to be the ministers of His great Word. Some of us are willing to say that we have learned God’s holiness; that we have seen and confessed our sins; that we have received pardon and cleansing. Have these experiences made you ready for any service? Have they made your will flexible-made you dethrone yourself, and enthrone the King whom the prophet saw? If they have, they are genuine; if they have not, they are not. Submission of will; glorying in being the instrument of the divine purpose; ears sharpened to catch His lowest whisper; eyes that, like those of a dog fixed on his master, watch for the faintest indication from his guiding eye-these are the infallible tests and signs of having had lips and heart touched with the live coal that burns away our uncleanness.
So, friends, would that I could flash upon every conscience that vision! But you can do so for yourselves. Let me beseech you to bring yourselves honestly into that solemn light of the character of God, and to ask yourselves, ‘How can two walk together except they be agreed?’ Do not put away such thoughts with any shallow, easy-going talk about how God is good and will not be hard upon a poor fellow that has tried to do his best. God is good; God is love. But divine goodness and love cannot find a way by which the unclean shall dwell with the clean. What then? This then-Jesus Christ has come. We may be made clean if we trust in Him, and forsake our sins. He will touch the heart and lips with the fire of His own Spirit, and then it will be possible to dwell with the everlasting burnings of that flaming fire which is a holy God. Blessed are they that have seen the vision; blessed they that have felt it disclosing their own sins; blessed they whose hearts have been purged. Blessed most of all they who, educated and trained through these experiences, have taken this as the motto of their lives, ‘Here am I; send me.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v8 The Mission of the Prophet
The Mission of the Prophet
v. 8. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, of the All-powerful, the great Ruler of the universe, saying, Whom shall I send? the call being for volunteers to proclaim the atonement set forth in the vision just vouchsafed the prophet. And who will go for Us? the persons of the Trinity here consulting together in this very important matter. Then said I, Here am I; send me. The prophet, in the spirit of voluntary service wrought by the Lord, a principal requisite for the proper and effective ministry of the Word, is ready to undertake the task.
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v. 9. And He said, Go and tell this people, to which He no longer refers as His people, but as strangers, in the third person, Hear ye indeed, constantly within reach of the Word of God, but understand not, the words making no impression upon mind and heart; and see ye indeed, namely, the great works of God by which He reveals Himself to mankind, but perceive not, not really grasping their significance or applying them to their own condition. The judgment of God is now proclaimed as carried out upon the Jews during eight centuries and more.
v. 10. Make the heart of this people fat, insensitive to impressions for good, so that feeling, reason, and will would become callous, and make their ears heavy, the hearing of the mind becoming impaired beyond the possibility of understanding, and shut their eyes, namely, those of the spirit, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, that is, be converted, and be healed. Note that the members or organs spoken of are given in inverted order in the second part of the sentence, to increase its impressiveness. It is the judicial hardening, the judgment of obduration, which is here described, for if people deliberately and maliciously reject God’s offers of salvation, He may punish them in the manner here described, so that the message which otherwise works salvation becomes to them a savor of death unto death. Cf 2Co 2:16; Mat 13:14-15; Mar 4:12; Luk 8:10; Joh 12:40; Act 28:26-27. It is not that God works obduration, but He surrenders the godless to their evil will; He withdraws from their hearts with His Holy Spirit.
v. 11. Then said I, Lord, how long? that is, how long would this hardening continue? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted, altogether desolate, without inhabitant, and the houses without man, without a protector, and the land be utterly desolate, literally, "made desolate a desert,"
v. 12. and the Lord have removed men far away, by having them led away into exile, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
v. 13. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall be eaten, literally, "And if there is yet in it a tenth, it will once more become subject to devouring"; as a teil-tree, a terebinth, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, a mere stump being left, when they cast their leaves, when they are felled, so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof, the stump or stem. Thus the obduration upon Israel would continue until the last wrath would come upon Israel, resulting in its destruction. And yet, after the trunk would be hewn down, the stump which remained would bring forth new shoots, a people consecrated to God. As in Israel, so in all the nations of the world the Lord has His holy seed, people who by His grace accept the Gospel and are saved.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv6, 8 General Information:
General Information:
Isaiah continues to describe his vision.
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seraphim
This word suggests that the creatures might have a fiery appearance or resemble snakes. Because we do not know exactly what "seraphim" means, you could translate these as "creatures" or "living things" or "beings." Or you can borrow the word and use it in your language. See how you translated this word in Isaiah 6:2. (See: Translate Unknowns and Copy or Borrow Words)
tongs
a tool used for grabbing or holding objects
your guilt has been taken away, and your sin atoned for
These two phrases say basically the same thing. This can be stated in active form. AT: "Yahweh has taken away your guilt and has forgiven your sins" (See: Parallelism and Active or Passive)
your guilt has been taken away
Yahweh no longer considering a person to be guilty is spoken of as if "guilt" were an object that someone could take away from someone else. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
altar
guilt
sin
atonement
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv5, 7, 8, 9 6:5 It’s all over! I am doomed: The prophet…
6:5 It’s all over! I am doomed: The prophet felt unworthy of the vision. He was painfully aware of his personal uncleanness (sinful . . . filthy lips) when compared to the holiness of God. Isaiah knew that he was unworthy to speak the pure word of God, as were his people.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.