The Vision of God (Isaiah 6:1-4).
At the heart of Isaiah's ministry lies this vision of God. In it he sees the glory of God, and yet he makes no attempt to describe God Himself, probably because what he saw was indescribable. So instead he is satisfied with describing all that surrounded Him, leaving the impression of what he saw to our imagination.
Analysis of Isaiah 6:1-4.
a In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple (Isaiah 6:1).
b Above Him stood burning ones (seraphim), each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet and with two he flew (Isaiah 6:2).
b And one cried to another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3).
a And the foundations of the thresholds were moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke' (Isaiah 6:4).
In ‘a' he says that he saw Yahweh sitting on His throne, high and lifted up, and in the parallel the Temple is shaking, and is filled with smoke. The whole picture is reminiscent of Mount Sinai, with God being revealed and yet hidden (Exodus 19:18). In ‘b he sees the ‘burning ones' (seraphim) and in the parallel the ‘burning ones' cry to one another and declare His utter holiness.
‘In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.'
It is unusual for Isaiah to date his prophecies, or for a regnal year to be defined in terms of death, (but compare Isa 15:28) and we are therefore probably justified in seeing in these words some kind of implication. The year would be 740/739 BC. King Uzziah had been a good king, favoured by God, but he had been very foolish in the matter of burning incense before Yahweh, a practise forbidden to all but priests (2 Chronicles 26:16-18) and had been punished for his folly with leprosy (2 Chronicles 26:19-21). He had thus become a recluse, an isolated leper king, with his son Jotham reigning as regent (2 Kings 15:5) and was probably at this time seen to be approaching death with his leprosy still affecting him. But there was no doubt that his death would be a great blow to the people.
It was at such a time that Yahweh visibly revealed Himself to Isaiah in order to demonstrate that there was a yet more powerful King Who was sat upon the throne, One Who was over all, One Who, far from being a leper, was the essence of purity itself, (‘the Holy One of Israel'), and who far from dying was the very essence of life (‘the living God'). These two kings were in total contrast. The one sinful, frail and temporary, and despite the glory that had been his, passing away a helpless leper, and the Other holy, glorious, Almighty, permanent, unchanging and everlasting.
In view of what follows we are probably justified too in considering that Isaiah saw in the state of the king a picture of the spiritual condition of Judah and Jerusalem (see for example Isaiah 1:6). For just as Uzziah was seen to be approaching his end after being smitten by God, so were they. The whole combined nations of Israel and Judah were leprous and doomed and awaiting their end.
Note that here God is called ‘the Lord', the One Who is Sovereign over creation. At the time that this occurred Isaiah was in the Temple, aware that in ‘the Holiest of All' (the Holy of Holies), the inaccessible inner sanctuary, Yahweh's earthly throne was hidden behind the great Veil, set over the Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh. But now he was to see something that was beyond this, something which filled him with awe. For he saw a heavenly throne on which was seated the exalted, glorious and holy Lord. And the sense that he had was of the whole Temple being filled by this glorious figure, seated in majesty and purity, for the whole Temple appeared to be filled by His swirling train. It was a sight that filled him with an awe beyond anything he had ever known. Indeed it made him cry out with awe. For now he knew as never before that God was Lord indeed.
We do not have to ask how he could see One Whom no man can see and live. We must as always accept that the heavenly vision was in some way partially concealed so that he as frail man could bear what he saw, as previously in the case of Moses (Exodus 33:21-23), so that while he saw God, it was not all that was God (1 Timothy 6:16). But it was more than enough, and the sense of His presence alone would have been sufficient to prostrate him on the ground.
‘Above him stood burning ones (seraphim), each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And one cried to another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.” '
It is noteworthy that Isaiah does not try to describe the glory of the Lord. Rather he seeks to bring out His glory by the description of His throne and temple-filling train, by the description of Him as ‘high and lifted up' (compare Isaiah 57:15), and here by the vision of the burning ones, winged flames of fire, and yet presumably in human form having both faces and feet, that hovered around and over Him.
We are probably to see them as representing the heavenly cherubim, but in different form and shape from the earthly cherubim in the temple (Revelation 4:8 seems to combine the two). This is no earthly vision. And so holy was the presence of the One on the throne that these glorious beings shielded their faces and feet before His awesome ‘otherness', their faces because they could not look on His glory and total purity, and felt unworthy to see His face, and their feet because such were seen as contaminated by the touching of some inferior, or earthly, thing. We are not told what they stood on but it was clearly sufficient to defile them by its contact in the light of the awesome presence of the One Who was totally separate, and totally holy. We can consider how the feet of the priests had to be washed continually when they entered the sanctuary or approached the altar to sacrifice, for the same reason (Exodus 30:19-21; Exodus 40:31).
And the cry and attention of these holy beings is centred only on the Lord. Compared with Him they recognise their own nothingness. And they proclaim His holiness in a threefold cry, a sign of His complete and absolute holiness. He is the holy of holy of holies. Indeed so much so that the whole earth is full of His glory.
So the earth also is seen here as manifesting His glory. All creation speaks of His creative power (compare Revelation 5:13; Psalms 145:21; Psalms 150:6; Romans 1:18-20), and none more so than the earth with its wonderful God-given provision for man, its living creatures into which God had breathed life and finally man himself, who had received life from God of an even more wonderful kind, made with a heavenly nature, even though now a sadly fallen one, God's ‘image' on earth. That is why all Nature also cries out to proclaim His glory, and to wonder at man's sinfulness (Isaiah 1:2-3).
The word ‘holy' is central to Isaiah's awareness of God. He is the Sovereign Lord, He is the Mighty God, He is Yahweh of Hosts, but above all He is ‘the Holy One'. Distinct, unique, set apart from all else in being and purity, He is the One compared with Whom there is no other.
‘And the foundations of the thresholds were moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.'
At the words of each of these mighty beings as they declared the glory of Yahweh, the very foundations of the Temple shook, and every entranceway responded, vibrating vigorously to the voice of the seraphim (a reminiscence of Sinai - Exodus 19:18). And at the same time ‘the house was filled with smoke' as a result of the presence of the glory of God and of His power (Revelation 15:8), revealing, while at the same time concealing, the figure on the throne. Such smoke was reminiscent of theophanies, and especially of the theophany at Sinai (Exodus 19:18; Deuteronomy 4:11; compare Exodus 13:21; Exodus 40:34).
The glory, and the smoke, and the shaking could hardly have failed to remind Isaiah, steeped in his nation's holy writings, of the original giving of the covenant (Exodus 19-20). And now here was the covenant God come in a similar way to call His people to account.