Isaiah 6:1

In the year that King Uzziah died,.... Which was the fifty second year of his reign, and in the year 3246 from the creation of the world; and, according to Jerom (l), was the year in which Romulus,

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Isaiah 6:1-13. Isaiah is outside, near the altar in front of the temple.

ISAIAH CHAPTER 6 The glory of the Lord, . Isaiah is terrified, ; is confirmed for his message, . The people’ s obstinacy unto desolation, . A remnant shall be saved, . I saw in a vision or ecstasy. The Lord; either, 1. God the Son, who frequently appeared to the patriarchs and prophets, and that sometimes in the form of a man. Or rather, 2. The Divine Majesty as he subsisteth in three persons, as may be gathered both from the plural number us, used of this Lord, , and comparing other scriptures; for God the Father is described as sitting upon a throne, ,13, and elsewhere; and the glory of God here manifested is said to be Christ’ s glory, , and the words of the Lord here following are said to be spoken by the Holy Ghost, . Sitting upon a throne, in the posture of a judge, to hear causes, and give sentence. Lifted up towards the roof of the temple. His train; or, as the word properly signifies, and is here rendered by divers, the skirts or borders of him, or of it, to wit, his royal and judicial robe; for he is represented as a judge. Filled the temple; his glorious robes reached down to the bottom of the temple, and were spread abroad in the temple, which was an evidence of a more than ordinary majesty. The temple may be here taken either, 1. Largely, and so it includes the courts as well as the house, as that word is oft used; or, 2. Strictly, for the house itself, or for that part of the temple in which this vision was exhibited, which may seem to have been the porch, for that was much higher than the other parts.

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.Ver. 1. In the year that Uzziah died.] This was 1590 years from Noah’ s flood, say chronologers, where one well observeth how divers things were done in this year within the Church, and without. The Gentiles in Greece, at the town of Eleum, behold their Olympic games; the prophet Isaiah in Judea beholdeth the glory of God, and heareth the trisagion of the blessed angels. So in the year of grace 1617 the Pope proclaimed a jubilee for the peace of Italy and Austria, &c. The Reformed Churches in Germany kept a jubilee likewise at the same time, in way of thankfulness to God for the gospel restored just a hundred years before by Luther, Zuinglius, and other reformers. I saw also,] sc., In spiritu et in ecstasi, In spirit and in a rapture. Some compare it with that vision which Ezekiel saw afterwards. This whole book is called ‘ the vision of Isaiah’ ; and why? Est autem celeberrima haec prophetia, but this is a most famous prophecy of the utter excaecation and excision of the Jews; and is alleged against them by all the four evangelists, and by St Paul. The Lord.] The Three in One, and One in Three: Isaiah 6:8, "Who shall go for us?" Compare Genesis 1:26; Genesis 3:22. See John 12:41, where it is applied to God the Son; and Acts 5:3-4, where to God the Holy Ghost. This Lord of all was seen by the prophet, not in his essence, or in the infinite excellence of his majesty, but in some visible model of his glory; like as we cannot see the sun in rota, but in radiis, in the body of it, but in the beams only. Sitting upon a throne.] Instar iudicis et vindicis, as a just judge and sharp revenger of this people’ s rebellions; and this throne is in the temple too, the place wherein they most of all trusted, crying, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." Lo, here they were to be sentenced, because they had cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. High and lifted up.] Stately for sight, and lofty for site, as was Solomon’ s. And his train filled the temple.] His train, or his skirts - viz., of his robes. The Sept. and Chaldee have it, "The house was full of his glory." The sense is, saith Oecolampadius, that the least part of the divine majesty is greater than the greatest glory of men. "He hath upon his vesture and on his thigh this name written, King of kings, and Lord of lords." Here we can see but his back parts, his train and line. We need see no more that we may live.

VI. (1) In the year that king Uzziah died.—Probably before his death. Had it been after it, the first year of king Jotham would have been the more natural formula. The chapter gives us the narrative of the solemn call of Isaiah to the office of a prophet. It does not follow that it was written at that time, and we may even believe that, if the prophet were the editor of his own discourses, he may have designedly placed the narrative in this position that men might see what he himself saw, that all that was found in the preceding chapters was but the development of what he had then heard, and yet, at the same time, a representation of the evils which made the judgments he was commissioned to declare necessary. On the relation of the call to the prophet’s previous life, see Introduction.The date is obviously given as important, and we are led to connect it with the crisis in the prophet’s life of which it tells. He had lived through the last twenty years or so of Uzziah’s reign. There was the show of outward material prosperity. There was the reality of much inward corruption. The king who had profaned the holiness of the Temple had either just died or was dragging out the dregs of his leprous life in seclusion (2 Chronicles 26:21). The question, What was to be the future of his people? must have been much in the prophet’s thoughts. The earthquake that had terrified Jerusalem had left on his mind a vague sense of impending judgment. It is significant that Isaiah’s first work as a writer was to write the history of Uzziah’s reign (2 Chronicles 26:22). (See Introduction.) I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne.—Isaiah had found himself in ‘the court of the Temple, probably in that of the priests. He had seen the incense-clouds rising from the censer of the priest, and had heard the hymns and hallelujahs of the Levites. Suddenly he passes, as St. Paul afterwards passed, under the influence of like surroundings (Acts 22:17), into a state of ecstatic trance, and as though the veil of the Temple was withdrawn, he saw the vision of the glory of the Lord, as Moses (Exodus 24:10) and Micaiah of old had seen it (1 Kings 22:19), as in more recent times it had appeared to Amos (9:1). The King of kings was seated on His throne, and on the right hand and on the left were the angel-armies of the host of heaven, chanting their hymns of praise. His train filled the temple.—The word for “temple” is that which expresses its character as the palace of the great King. (Comp. Psalms 11:4; Psalms 29:9; Habakkuk 2:20.) The “train” answers to the skirts of the glory of the Lord, who clothes Himself with light as with a garment (Exodus 33:22-23). It is noticeable (1) that the versions (LXX., Targum, Vulg.) suppress the train, apparently as being too anthropomorphic, and (2) that to the mind of St.

CHAPTER VI This chapter, by a particular designation of Isaiah to the prophetic office, 1-8, introduces, with great solemnity, a declaration of the whole tenor of the Diving conduct in reference to his people, who, on account of their unbelief and impenitence, should for a very long period be given up to a judicial blindness and hardness of heart, 9, 10; and visited with such calamities as would issue on the total desolation of their country, and their general dispersion, 11, 12. The prophet adds, however, that under their repeated dispersions, (by the Chaldeans, Romans, c.,) a small remnant would be preserved as a seed from which will be raised a people, in whom will be fulfilled all the Divine promises, 13. As this vision seems to contain a solemn designation of Isaiah to the prophetic office, it is by most interpreters thought to be the first in order of his prophecies. But this perhaps may not be so for Isaiah is said, in the general title of his prophecies, to have prophesied in the time of Uzziah, whose acts, first and last, he wrote, 2 Chronicles 26:22; which is usually done by a contemporary prophet; and the phrase, in the year that Uzziah died, probably means after the death of Uzziah; as the same phrase (Isaiah 14:28) means after the death of Ahaz. Not that Isaiah's prophecies are placed in exact order of time. Chapters ii., iii., iv., v., seem by internal marks to be antecedent to chap. i.; they suit the time of Uzziah, or the former part of Jotham's reign; whereas chap. i. can hardly be earlier than the last years of Jotham. See note on Isaiah 1:7, and Isaiah 2:1. This might be a new designation, to introduce more solemnly a general dedication of the whole course of God's dispensations in regard to his people and the fates of the nation; which are even now still depending, and will not be fully accomplished till the final restoration of Israel. In this vision the ideas are taken in general from royal majesty, as displayed by the monarchs of the East; for the prophet could not represent the ineffable presence of God by any other than sensible and earthly images. The particular scenery of it is taken from the temple. God is represented as seated on his throne above the ark, in the most holy place, where the glory appeared above the cherubim, surrounded by his attendant ministers. This is called by God himself "the place of his throne, and the place of the soles of his feet," Ezekiel 43:7. "A glorious throne exalted of old, is the place of our sanctuary," saith the prophet Jeremiah, Jeremiah 17:12. The very posture of sitting is a mark of state and solemnity: Sed et ipsum verbum sedere regni significat potestatem, saith Jerome, Comment. in Ephesians 1:20. See note on Isaiah 3:2. St.

1–4. Jehovah appears to the prophet in human form, and as a King, seated on a throne, surrounded by ministering servants who sing His praise (cf. 1 Kings 22:19 ff.). The scene is the Temple (Isaiah 6:1), where Isaiah probably was when the vision occurred. There is no occasion to suppose that a “heavenly palace” is meant. What the prophet sees is the spiritual reality of which the Temple was a symbol, Jehovah’s presence as King in the midst of His people. Cf. ch. Isaiah 8:18.

In the year - This naturally denotes a period after the death of Uzziah, though in the same year.

1. I saw — An insight into the invisible world. The prophet’s mind is in communication with heaven, but his mode of apprehension is by symbol.