The prophecies of Isaiah have the misfortune not to be arranged in chronological order. The effort to view the events of the prophet's life in their true perspective is, in consequence, attended with some difficulty. Thus Isaiah's “call,” though not described till chap. 6, must evidently precede, in order of time, the delivery of the prophecies which stand now as chaps. 1 and 2-5. This presumption, derived from the nature of the prophetic call, is confirmed by internal evidence; for while the call is expressly stated to have taken place in the last year of king Uzziah's reign, chaps. 1-5 contain indications that they were written at a later date. Why the narrative of the prophet's call was not allowed, as in the cases of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, to occupy the first place in the book, is a question which cannot be certainly answered. One conjecture is that chaps. 1-5 were placed first for the purpose of preparing the reader of the book for the severity of tone which marks the end of chap. 6, and of acquainting him with the condition of things in Judah which led to such a tone being adopted. Or, again, it is possible that chap. 6 may have been placed so as to follow chaps. 1-5 because, though describing what occurred earlier, it may not have been actually committed to writing till afterwards-perhaps as an introduction to Isa_7:1-25; Isa_8:1-22; Isa_9:1-7. In a biography of the prophet the call will of course occupy its proper and natural position.
1. It was amidst the forebodings naturally suggested by the death of Uzziah that Isaiah became conscious of his prophetic vocation. The statement that he first saw the Lord “in the year that king Uzziah died” has doubtless something more than a mere chronological interest. The aged monarch, who had so well upheld the credit of the State, was either just dead or in the last stages of leprosy. The recent history of the kingdom of Samaria furnished an ominous warning of the troubles that might follow the removal of a capable ruler at such a time; and it may be that Isaiah had a presentiment that the death of this king would be the prelude to a period of anarchy and confusion such as he afterwards pictured as a feature of the Divine judgment on Israel's sin. The significance of the vision of chap. 6 becomes at least somewhat more intelligible to our minds if we regard it as the answer to apprehensions such as these. At a time when his thoughts were occupied with the death of a sovereign whom he had learned to revere as the embodiment of wise and experienced statesmanship, there was granted to Isaiah a revelation of Him who was the true Divine King of Israel; and at the same time he gained a perception of the ultimate issues of Jehovah's dealings with the nation which enabled him to face the dark and threatening future with confidence and hope.
2. The prophets uniformly speak of themselves as actuated in their work by a power not their own. It is the God of Israel in whose service they stand, whose purposes they declare, whether of judgment or of salvation, whose message they deliver to His people. Their declarations are continually prefaced or attested by the words, “Thus saith Jehovah,” or “Oracle of Jehovah.” Such expressions as these are not, indeed, to be taken as implying that the words which they utter were placed mechanically upon their lips-the varying style and phraseology of different prophets, to say nothing of other grounds, forbids this supposition; but they must be understood to imply the conviction that the substance and purport of what they utter is not their own, only the form in which it is cast bearing the stamp of their own genius and literary art. Not only is this conviction a characteristic of the whole activity of a prophet, it is especially prominent in all the accounts which we possess of the occasion on which a prophet was first made aware of the vocation which he was destined to pursue in life. The prophets do not speak of a resolution or purpose, framed by themselves, to devote themselves to their vocation; but they describe a moment in which they received a call-i.e., to speak from a human point of view, were conscious of a sudden intuition, impressing itself upon them with irresistible clearness and force, and, in certain instances, communicated to them in the form of a vision. Thus Amos refers to this moment of his life in the following words: “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son (i.e., no professed member of a prophetic guild); but I was an herdman, and a dresser of sycomore trees: and Jehovah took me from following the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go feed my people Israel.” Amos was thus diverted from secular employment by an inward prompting, the guidance of which he could not resist. He does not, however, state that the call came to him in a vision. Both Ezekiel and Isaiah, and apparently Jeremiah as well, experienced a vision at the time of their call. The necessity of obeying the prophetic summons is finely expressed by Amos: “The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?”
We ponder the circumstances under which the word of God came to those men in old time; and we ask whether we can have a trial which does not find its counterpart in their experience, whether we can desire a blessing which does not find its pledge in their endowments. We too must see God-see God and not merely gather speculations and dogmas about Him-if we are to declare Him; and He is ready to show Himself to us as we need to see Him. We too must hear God-hear God and not merely gather the manifold records of His utterances to our fathers-if we are to speak in His name to our own generation; and He will make Himself heard if we school our hearts to patient silence. He is showing Himself, declaring His will on every side. We can, unhappily-most sad distortion of freedom-look and listen to ourselves instead of looking and listening to Him. In any case, whatever we really see and hear we shall most assuredly teach, whether we wish to teach it or not, and that only. And what will be the difference of our teaching to ourselves, even more than to others, if we recognize the work which God has prepared for us to do as ministers of His Truth, and give ourselves wholly to it!1 [Note: B. F. Westcott, Peterborough Sermons, 269.]
3. God's call is inexorable. Nothing more surely marks the Divine voice in a great soul than its persistence. Isaiah might have stilled the voice by absolutely disregarding and defying it. But he was a true man, of devout spirit, and was at least ready to listen. He went to the Temple, as apparently was his custom when in perplexity, that he might, in that sacred place, pour out his soul to Jehovah. The hand of God pursued him in the sanctuary. As he prayed, he saw a vision with that inner eye which is sometimes more truthful in its sight than the outward eye. The sight of God filled him with the terror which it inspired in every Hebrew. How could sinful eyes look upon the holy God without peril? The personal disqualification which had long stood in the way of obedience was put now in the specific form of the unclean lips. God met the objection by sending a seraph to remove the taint. The effect reached further than the lips. The prophet's hearing also was made acute by the purification. God needs but to touch one part, and man is every whit clean. Isaiah heard again the Lord calling for a volunteer: “Whom shall I send?” The obstacle which had hindered him so long was swept away. Peace came to the perplexed soul. Duty became clear, and the impulse arose to follow it at any cost. “Here am I, send me.” The uncertainty of weeks, and perhaps of months, is all gone. Isaiah comes from the Temple with his life's work settled. However resolutely he had stood against former calls to the prophetic office, he succumbs completely now, and henceforth gives himself to the proclaiming of God's message to the world.
That this call was supernatural, in the true sense of being Divine, is as unquestionable to me as it was to its object. But that its manner of operation was not essentially different from thousands of other calls is a truth too important to be lightly thrust aside. God has been calling men to His service all through the ages. Doubtless there is a personal appropriateness in the form of every call. Nevertheless God is the same in all ages; man is man in all ages; and the Divine influence upon the soul is substantially the same. We can have no purpose to lower Isaiah's call. On the contrary, I believe the right explanation raises it. It is a greater thing that God keeps every planet in its place than that He should disarrange the system by the temporary stopping of one of them. The speaking of God to every soul that listens is vastly more supernatural, to use a too hackneyed term, than the speaking only to a soul now and then. The important thing about such a call is its reality. It is a bad condition for a man to be a blacksmith whom God calls to be a carpenter; it is much worse to be a prophet contrary to the Divine will. Isaiah's call was real. It led him to his true life.1 [Note: L. W. Batten, The Hebrew Prophet, 94.]
4. The spiritual truths impressed on the prophet's mind by this memorable experience are those which we see unfolded with singular clearness and constancy of purpose throughout his whole subsequent ministry.
(1) Of these the first and most fundamental is an overwhelming sense of the majesty and holiness of Jehovah, the God of Israel. These aspects of the Divine nature are prominent in nearly every page of Isaiah's writings, and the prophet's sense of them is undoubtedly to be traced to that supreme moment of his spiritual history when his eyes saw the King, Jehovah of Hosts, and he shrank in terror from the contact of His holiness.
We all need the discipline, the inspiration of awe. Wonder-this fear of the Lord-is always the beginning of wisdom. And we specially need the discipline, the inspiration now. There is, I think, great danger lest the realism, the extremity, the earthliness which have spread far over modern life and thought should dominate our religion. We are impatient of indefiniteness, of obscurity, of indecision; we are impatient of mystery, of reserve, of silence. We are tempted to treat Divine things with a strange familiarity, to use human modes of conception and feeling and representation not only as provisional helps towards the formation of spiritual ideas, as we must, but as the measures of them. We draw sharp outlines which can have no existence in the brightness which is about the throne. So it comes to pass that symbols, outward acts, formulas, the Holy Sacraments themselves in many cases, tend to confine and narrow the devotion which they were designed to elevate and enlarge. But we cannot rest with impunity in that which is of this world. So to rest is to lose the highest. To pierce through the outward is to find a new world. Isaiah felt this when the eyes of his heart were opened. The whole aspect of the Temple service, august as it was, was changed for him. When the veil was withdrawn, he saw not what he looked for,-the Ark and the carved Cherubim and the luminous cloud,-but the Lord in His kingly state, and angels standing with outstretched wings ready to serve, and the earth full of His glory as an illimitable background to the marvellous scene. Something like this it is which we must strain the eyes of our heart to see, and, having seen, to interpret to our people.1 [Note: B. F. Westcott, Peterborough Sermons, 270.]
(2) In the second place, Isaiah was then possessed by the consciousness of a life-long mission to be discharged in the service of the Divine King as His messenger and spokesman to Israel. The alacrity with which he offers himself for this work, without knowing what it might involve, is a revelation of the ardent temperament of the man and contrasts strikingly with the hesitation displayed by another great prophet at a similar moment of his life.
The consciousness of being sent from God with a mission for which the time is ripe, and the consciousness of eager return to God, of the great human struggle after Him, possessing a nature which cannot live without Him-the imperious commission from above and the tumultuous experience within-these two, not inconsistent with each other, have met in all the great Christian workers and reformers who have moved and changed the world. These two lived together in the whole life of Luther. The one spoke out in the presence of the emperor at Worms. The other wrestled unseen in the agonies of the cloister cell at Erfurt. The broad and vigorous issue of the two displayed itself in the exalted but always healthy and generous humanity which, with pervasive sympathy, filled and embraced all the humanity about it, not as persuasions or convictions-that would not have worked any such result-but as the living forces which exalted and refined and consecrated and enlarged a nature of great natural nobility and richness. So it was that the sense of the divine commission and the profoundness of the human struggle created the Luther who shook the thrones of pope and Cæsar and made all Europe new.2 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Essays and Addresses, 377.]
(3) But Isaiah further learned something of the nature and effects of the work to which he was thus consecrated. It is a gloomy and discouraging prospect that is disclosed to him-a people so hardened in unbelief that the very abundance of his revelations and the urgency of his appeals will only render them more and more insensible to spiritual influences, while step by step the inevitable judgment is executed upon them until the existing nation of Israel has been utterly consumed.
Sin, once committed, seems over and done; sinners promise themselves impunity, and earthly judges sleep; but the cry of violated purity-as of yore the cry of an innocent brother's blood, and in later ages the cry of labourers' hire kept back by fraud-fills earth and heaven, eloquently appealing to God to punish the guilty.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale.
This idea of crime demanding retribution pervaded the ancient world; it was exhibited with terrific power in Greek tragic poetry. God acts according to the strict laws of justice, His judgments are preceded by a full and impartial inquiry, He condemns no man without a trial. “He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.” Vengeance is called His strange work. Still He vindicates His character as the Judge of all the earth, who will by no means clear the guilty. All His judgments have a merciful purpose. His severity has love at its core as its motive. It condemns the wicked in mercy to the rest of mankind. It prevents the torrent of sin from rushing over the world. It seeks the purity of the race when it removes those families which have become horribly depraved. “When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.”1 [Note: J. Strahan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 120.]
(4) And finally the vision contains a ray of hope in the promise of an indestructible Remnant in Israel, a “holy seed” or spiritual kernel of the nation, which shall survive the judgment and become the germ of the ideal people of God. This last idea of the Remnant, which is one of the most distinctive in Isaiah's teaching, was perhaps also the first to receive public expression; for it is embodied in the name of a son, Shear-jashub, who must have been born to the prophet very soon after his inaugural vision.
Among the predictions of Isaiah there is one which is distinguished from all the rest, because it promises a blessing, and a blessing which appears to lie beyond the limits of a statesman's vision. Yet its inclusion in the list was no accident. The belief that, after all Israel's disasters, “a remnant shall return” and shall grow into a pure and noble nation, is one of the prophet's most firmly-rooted convictions. As early as the reign of Jotham it was registered in the name given to the prophet's son, Shear-Jashub; it was reiterated in the prophecies of his prime; and it blends with the Messianic hopes of his old age. The boldness of such a hope must have startled those who first heard it uttered: for they knew that a restoration of exiles could not be accomplished until the settled policy of the Assyrian empire was reversed. And even when Assyria fell and Babylon took its place, the system of deportation and denationalization was maintained. Nothing less was required than that a new empire, based upon new principles, should sweep away the old. Yet that came to pass when Cyrus became lord of the East and fulfilled the hopes which for two hundred years had lain embalmed in Shear-Jashub's name. A prediction so strange and so strangely fulfilled is not sufficiently explained by reference to Isaiah's political sagacity. The eye which sees across two centuries is the eye of a prophet.1 [Note: M. G. Glazebrook, Studies in the Book of Isaiah, 76.]
