Isaiah 6:1-8
Here am I, send me
In the year that king Uzziah died he sees the throne and the train filling the temple. His first words are woe is me, and the coal touches his lips before the question is asked.
People of the Bible
Isaiah
Saw the throne, said he was a man of unclean lips, and volunteered before he was asked.
Isaiah prophesies in Jerusalem through four reigns, from Uzziah to Hezekiah, and his book is the longest sustained argument in the Old Testament. He is a court prophet with access to kings, and he is the one who stands with Hezekiah against Assyria and tells him the city will not be entered. His call is in chapter six rather than chapter one, which puts the vision after the indictment. Asked whom shall I send, he answers here am I, send me, and is then told that the people will hear and not understand.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Isaiah
- 01
- 02
Isaiah 5:1-7
The song of the vineyard
He sings a love song about a friend’s vineyard that was dug, cleared, planted and watched, and yielded wild grapes. The last line names the vineyard as the house of Israel.
- 03
Isaiah 9:1-7
The government upon his shoulder
To a people walking in darkness, a child is born and a son is given, and the titles run in a line: Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
- 04
Isaiah 36:1-37:38
The letter before the LORD
Assyria at the wall and a speech in Hebrew meant for the people on it. Isaiah sends word not to be afraid of the words, and the answer is a taunt song and an empty camp by morning.
- 05
Isaiah 40:1-31
Comfort ye my people
The book turns. A voice in the wilderness, grass that withers, a shepherd carrying lambs in his bosom, and the promise that those who wait shall mount up with wings as eagles.
- 06
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Wounded for our transgressions
No form nor comeliness, despised and rejected, led as a lamb to the slaughter and silent. He was numbered with the transgressors, and bare the sin of many.
Why it matters
No book outside the gospels is quoted more often in the New Testament. The child called Immanuel, the government upon his shoulder, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the servant despised and rejected who was wounded for our transgressions, the year of the LORD’s favour that Jesus reads in Nazareth and then sits down. Isaiah also contains the widest vision of the nations in the Old Testament, a house of prayer for all peoples and a feast on the mountain where death is swallowed up forever.
23 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Isaiah 7:14; 9:1-7; 11:1-10; 52:13-53:12
Wounded for Our Transgressions
Isaiah 60:1-3; 61:1-11; 65:17-25; 66:18-23
Behold, I Create New Heavens
