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Summary of Chapter 6

In the year in which King Uzziah died Isaiah saw a wonderful
vision that inaugurated his mission as a prophet. He saw the Lord
on a throne, the tRain of the Lord's robe filled the temple.
Above Him were seraphs, each having six wings. Two of these wings
covered their faces, two covered their feet, and with the other
two they were flying. They called to each other:Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory.

Then the doorposts and thresholds shook, and smoke filled
the temple.

Isaiah, recognizing what the vision was, said:Woe to me! I
am a man with unclean lips and yet I have seen the Almighty Lord!

Then one of the seraphs flew to him. He had a live coal
which he had taken from the altar with tongs. The seraph touched
Isaiah's mouth saying:This has touched your lips. You guilt is
taken away, your sin is atoned for.

Then the Lord said:Whom shall I send? Who will go? Isaiah
replied:Here I am. Send me!

The Lord replied:Go and tell this people:Really listen, but
do not understand. Really look, but do not perceive. Make the
heart of this people calloused. Make their ears dull. Close their
eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, and hear with
their ears and their heart might understand and turn and be
healed.

This hardening is to last until their cities are ruined and
deserted, and their houses empty, their fields ruined and
ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away, and the land
is deserted. And even though a tenth remains, it will be laid
waste again. But just as the terebinth and the oak leave behind
stumps after being cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump
in the land.

Comments on Chapter 6

This was the vision in which Isaiah received his commission as a
prophet. It is strange indeed that the account of it is put here
in chapter 6, instead of at the beginning. But the sayings of
prophets were often given at different times, and later arranged.

Isaiah says it happened in the year in which king Uzziah died.
The date of his death is disputed, estimates range from 747 to
735. We commented on the circumstances of his death in the
introduction.

The vision Isaiah saw was of course anthropomorphic. God
does not have human form. But the whole scene powerfully
impressed Isaiah with the transcendence of God. That word means
the fact that He is above and beyond all our categories. To
illustrate:When we know something we know either passively or
actively. Int he passive mode, we take in an image from something
outside, we are passive, we gain information. Now God cannot be
passive, cannot gain anything. So the passive mode is not correct
for Him. But in the active mode a person knows what is happening
only if and because he is causing it, like a blind man pushing a
chair. Obviously we cannot make God so limited. so we must simply
say:He is above and beyond all our categories. (Some unfortunate
theologians commonly called"Thomists" have insisted God knows
only by causing thing. But St. Thomas himself never said that.
Rather, every time- and it was several times -- when he wanted to
explain how God can know future contingents (e. g., what I will
do tomorrow at 10 A. M) Thomas first explains carefully that
although a future free act as future is unknowable even to God,
yet since God is in eternity, which has no past, and no future,
the thing is present to Him. And so He knows it. But Thomas
always stops there. He never tries to explain just <how> God
knows a thing once it is present to His eternity. That is part of
the mystery of His transcendence.

This transcendence of God is something we greatly need to
realize, or try to realize. For there are two poles, i. e.,
centers about which things cluster, in our relationship to God.
One is the pole of love, closeness, warmth. The other is the
sense of His infinite majesty, greatness. It is this that Isaiah
saw so well by means of this anthropomorphic vision. The Saints
and Fathers of the Church have understood this aspect especially
well. Thus Dionysius the Areopagite, writing around the year 500.
A. D. said that God is best known by "unknowing." St. Gregory of
Nyssa in his <Life of Moses> said: "The true vision of the One we
seek. . . consists in this:in not seeing. For the one sought is
beyond all knowledge." St. Augustine (<On Christian Doctrine> 1.
6. 6 said: "He must not even be called inexpressible, for when we
say that word, we say something."

There is just a trifle of exaggeration in such sayings as
that of Augustine. Yet there is far more truth in them. Similarly
the philosopher Plotinus said (<Enneads> 6. 8. 9) that God
is"beyond being." Plato seems to have said much the same in
<Republic> 6. 509B.

The explanation of such sayings it this: If we compare any
word, e. g., good or being, as used to apply to God, and as used
to apply to any creature, we find that the sense is, in the two
cases, partly the same, but mostly different. Hence God is
inexpressible, as Augustine said.

Isaiah had a deep sense of this reality. To lack it means that
one's devotion will be sick, mired in the slush of a distortion
of love.

As part of this vision Isaiah sees some seraphim, which he
describes a bright creatures with six wings each. That word
seraph, plural seraphim, is indeed rare, being found only in this
passage. Basically the same Hebrew word appears in Numbers 21:6
where God sends burning serpents - such seems to be the meaning
of <sarap>, to punish the faithless Jews. Moses prayed, and God
directed Moses to make a bronze serpent, and put it upon a pole.
Anyone bitten would recover if he looked at the bronze serpent.
This was very obviously a forecast in action, a prefiguration, of
Christ on the cross.

Sometimes people speak of nine choirs of angels, and seem to
have found them in St. Paul's Colossians and Ephesians. But that
is a mistake, for St. Paul especially in Colossians, is using
such terms, which he took from his opponents, in countering their
errors. The opponents were most likely either Gnostics or Jewish
apocalyptic speculators. In St. Paul's context, they are evil
spirits, not angels.

The seraphim were calling out Holy, holy, holy. The holiness
of God is a most prominent theme in Isaiah. Basically holiness
means God's concern for what is morally right - cf. the appendix
to Wm. Most, Commentary on St. Paul. We can see the thought well
in Isaiah 5:15-16: "Man is bowed down, and men are brought low.
But the Lord of hosts will be exalted in right judgment
[<mishpat>], and God, the Holy One, will show Himself holy
[<niqdesh> from the root of <qadosh>, holy] by moral rightness
[i. e., by doing what moral rightness calls for]." Similarly in
Ezek 28:22: "They will know I am the Lord when I inflict
punishment on her [Sidon] and I will show myself holy in her
[<niqdashti>]."

This shaking of the doorposts would recall the earthquake at
the time of King Uzziah.

Isaiah thought he was doomed, because he knew no man could
see God and live. We think of Moses who wanted to see God, but
was refused, as we saw in the introduction. He aid his lips were
impure from sin. But one of the seraphim, in a symbolic action,
took a coal from the altar and touched his lips to purify them.

In John 12:41 we read, remarkably, that it was Jesus Isaiah
had seen. that saying came right after a quotation of the next
mysterious lines of Isaiah, which we are about to consider.

Those next lines are indeed mysterious. God asks for someone
to volunteer to be sent, and Isaiah volunteers. Then God gives
him a strange commission, which seems to mean he is to blind the
people so they could not be forgiven.

To understand, we must know that the Hebrews commonly spoke of
God as positively doing things He only permits. Thus in 1 Samuel
4:3 - if we read the Hebrew, and not the slanted translations -
the Jews said after a defeat by the Philistines: "Why did God
strike us today before the face of the Philistines?" They knew
perfectly well it was the Philistines who had struck them.
Similarly, in the account of the plagues in Exodus, several times
God says He will harden Pharaoh, and again the text says God did
harden the heart of Pharaoh. Again, God merely permitted it. Cf.
Is 45:7, where God says: "I bring well-being and create woe." And
in Amos 3:6 He said: "When evil comes to a city, has not the Lord
caused it?"

The mysterious words God spoke to Isaiah are quoted in all three
synoptics, in connection with the parables. If we follow the
chronology of Mark's Gospel-- for the Gospels are not intent on
chronology - Mark indicates Jesus at first spoke clearly, but
then, after His enemies charged He was casting out devils by the
devil, He turned to parables. Jesus told His disciples that to
them was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but to
others, all was in parables, "so that seeing they might look and
not see, and hearing they might hear and not understand." These
words are from Isaiah 6:9-10, which we saw above. They have been
much discussed of course. St. Mark quotes them in the form found
in the Targum. St. Matthew quotes Isaiah in softer form (13:13-
15): "Therefore do I speak to them in parables, <because> seeing
they do not see, and hearing they do not hear." Isaiah had used
imperative forms: "Hearing hear, but do not understand, seeing
see, but do not perceive. . . . "

First, as we said, it is well known that the Hebrews often
attributed to positive direct action of God what He only permits,
He did not really want to blind people. For in Mt 23;37 He wept
over Jerusalem because they would not listen.

So we need a different way to understand the purpose of
parables. It is this:We might think of two spirals in the
reactions of people to parables - and other things too. Let us
imagine a man who has never been drunk before, but tonight he
gets very drunk. The next day there will be guilt feelings - we
specified it was the first time. Over time, something must
give:either he will align his actions with his beliefs, or his
beliefs will be pulled to match his actions. In other words, if
he continues to get drunk, he will lose the ability to see there
is anything wrong with getting drunk. But other beliefs are
interconnected, and so his ability to see spiritual things
becomes more and more dull.

In the other direction, if one lives vigorously in accord
with faith, which tells us the things of this world are hardly
worth a mention compared to the things of eternity (cf. Phil 3:7-
8), such a one grows gradually more and more in understanding of
spiritual things; he is on the good spiral. So the parables are a
magnificent device of our Father, showing both mercy and justice
simultaneously. To one who goes on the bad spiral, the blindness
is due in justice, yet it is also mercy, for the more one
realizes, the greater his responsibility. On the good spiral, the
growing light is in a sense justice for good living; yet more
basically it is mercy, for no creature by its own power can
establish a claim on God. So in both directions, mercy and
justice are identified, even as they are in the divine essence,
where all attributes are identified with each other.

Rather similarly, Pius XII said (<Divino afflante
Spiritu>:EB 563) that God deliberately sprinkled Scripture with
difficulties to cause us to work harder and so get more out of
them.

So we can understand God's words to Isaiah in this way.

But then God foretold the exile, yet said that a holy
remnant, a holy seed, would be left, which would be a "stump
in the land". We think of course of the great prophecy in Isaiah
11:1which says that there will be a shoot from the stump of
David, that is, after David's line had been deprived of its
power, and seemed dead, a great ruler, the Messiah, would come.
(More on Isaiah 11 later, of course).