The Commission of Isaiah

¹In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.[#2Ki 15:7; #Jn 12:41]

²Above it stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.[#Nu 21:6; Ps 103:20; Isa 14:29; 30:6; Rev 4:8]

³One cried to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts;

the whole earth is full of His glory.”

⁴The posts of the door moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.[#Am 9:1; #Rev 15:8]

⁵And I said: “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 my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”[#Jer 9:3–8; #Ex 33:20]

⁶Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar in his hand.[#Rev 8:3–5]

⁷And he laid it on my mouth, and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips, and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”[#Jer 1:9; Da 10:16]

⁸Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”[#Ge 1:26; 3:22; 11:7]

Then I said, “Here I am. Send me.”

⁹He said, “Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

¹⁰Make the heart of this people dull,[#Dt 32:15; Mt 13:15]

and their ears heavy,

and shut their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their heart,

and turn and be healed.”

¹¹Then I said, “Lord, how long?”[#Ps 79:5]

And He answered:

“Until the cities are laid waste

without inhabitants,

and the houses without man,

and the land is utterly desolate,

¹²and the Lord has removed men far away,

and there is a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

¹³But yet in it shall be one-tenth,[#Isa 1:9; Ro 11:5]

and it shall return, and shall be burned,

as a terebinth tree or as an oak,

whose stump remains when it is cut down,

so the holy seed is its stump.”