Isaiah’s Call and Mission
6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two they covered their faces. With two they covered their feet. With two they flew. 3 One called to another and said,
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Armies!
The whole earth is full of his glory!
4 The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of the one who called, and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 Then I said, “I am doomed![a] I am ruined, because I am a man with unclean lips, and I dwell among a people with unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies!”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, carrying a glowing coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with the coal and said, “Look, this has touched your lips, so your guilt is taken away, and your sin is forgiven.”
8 Then I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”
Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
9 He said:
Go! You are to tell this people,
“Keep listening, but you will never understand.
Keep looking, but you will never get it.”
10 Make the heart of this people calloused.[b]
Make their ears deaf[c] and blind their eyes,
so that they do not see with their eyes,
or hear with their ears,
or understand with their hearts,
and turn again and be healed.
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
He answered:
Until the cities are a wasteland without a single inhabitant,
until the houses are totally deserted,
and the farmland is completely devastated,
12 until the Lord has removed the people far away,
and the abandoned places within the land are many.
13 If there is only a tenth left in it, that too will be burned in its turn.
Like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains when it is cut down,
so the holy seed is its stump.[d]
Footnotes
- Isaiah 6:5 Or woe is me
- Isaiah 6:10 Literally fat
- Isaiah 6:10 Literally heavy
- Isaiah 6:13 The last line is difficult, because the word translated stump usually means pillar.