The Life
Isaiah was a prophet of royal lineage in Jerusalem who lived around 700 B.C. He prophesied for sixty years through the reigns of four kings of Judah: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, finally being martyred under the wicked king Manasseh. The book of Isaiah is one of the longest in the Old Testament — sixty-six chapters — and contains more prophecies of Christ than any other book in the entire Bible. The Orthodox Church calls him the fifth evangelist because so many of his prophecies are read every year during the Nativity season and during Holy Week as direct descriptions of what Christ would do. He prophesied that a virgin would conceive and bear a son and call his name Immanuel. He prophesied a child whose name would be “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” He prophesied a Voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. He prophesied a Suffering Servant who would be wounded for our transgressions, despised and rejected, led as a sheep to the slaughter, and would bear the iniquities of the many. The most famous moment of his life happened in the Temple, when he saw the Lord sitting upon a high throne, surrounded by six-winged Seraphim crying “Holy, Holy, Holy” — the same hymn the Orthodox Church sings at every Divine Liturgy. He died as a martyr; King Manasseh, the apostate son of Hezekiah, ordered him sawn in two with a wooden saw. He was buried near the Pool of Siloam.
The most famous moment of Isaiah’s life happened in the Temple in Jerusalem in the year that King Uzziah died, around 740 B.C. Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a high throne, lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the entire Temple. Above Him stood the Seraphim. Each of them had six wings. With two they covered their faces (because even the highest angels cannot bear to look directly upon the divine glory). With two they covered their feet. With two they flew. They cried out one to another: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” The whole Temple shook from the sound of their voices. Smoke filled the place. Isaiah was terrified. He 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 mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” Then one of the Seraphim flew to him with a live coal in his hand, taken with tongs from the altar. He touched Isaiah’s lips with the coal and said: “Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.” Then Isaiah heard the Voice of the Lord saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” He answered: “Here am I; send me.” That single sentence — here am I, send me — has been the articulation of authentic prophetic vocation for nearly three thousand years. The hymn of the Seraphim that he heard in that vision is the same hymn the Orthodox Church sings at every Divine Liturgy: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.”
During the reign of King Ahaz of Judah, around 735 B.C., the kings of Syria and Israel formed an alliance and threatened to invade Judah. Ahaz was terrified. The Lord sent Isaiah to him with a message of reassurance: the threat would come to nothing, the alliance would fail, and Ahaz should not fear. The Lord even offered Ahaz a sign — any sign he wanted, in heaven above or in the earth beneath — to confirm the prophecy. But Ahaz refused, with a false display of piety: “I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.” Isaiah was angered by the refusal, which masked Ahaz’s real plan to make an alliance with Assyria instead of trusting the Lord. The prophet declared: “Hear ye now, O house of David... Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:13-14). The Hebrew word translated “virgin” (almah) carries the meaning of “young woman of marriageable age who is presumed to be a virgin.” The Septuagint Greek translation made by Jewish scholars three centuries before the birth of Christ rendered it parthenos, which unambiguously means “virgin.” The Apostle Matthew cites the Septuagint version of this verse in Matthew 1:23 as the prophecy fulfilled in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary. The name Immanuel means “God with us.” The whole Christian doctrine of the Incarnation — that God Himself took flesh from a virgin and dwelt among us — takes its supreme Old Testament foundation from this single sentence that Isaiah spoke to a faithless king nearly seven hundred years before the birth of the Messiah.
The most extraordinary single passage in the entire Old Testament is Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12, the supreme prophecy of the Suffering Servant. The Lord speaks through the prophet about a servant who would be exalted and extolled and very high; whose visage would be marred more than any man’s; who would be despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; who would be wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace would be upon him; with his stripes we would be healed. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” He would be brought as a lamb to the slaughter; as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he would not open his mouth. He would be cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of the people he would be stricken. He would make his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death. He would pour out his soul unto death; he would bear the sin of many, and make intercession for the transgressors. The whole passage was written approximately 700 years before the Crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every detail of it was fulfilled with precision in the Lord’s Passion. The Apostles cite Isaiah 53 more than any other Old Testament passage in their preaching about the meaning of the Cross. When the Ethiopian eunuch was reading Isaiah 53 in his chariot, the Apostle Philip joined him and “began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus” (Acts 8:35). The whole Christian theology of the atonement — the doctrine that Christ suffered and died for our sins, that His wounds heal us, that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all — takes its supreme Old Testament foundation from this single chapter that Isaiah wrote seven centuries before the Cross.
In 701 B.C., the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded Judah with an enormous army. He captured forty-six fortified cities. He took thousands of captives. He brought his army up to Jerusalem and surrounded it. From his camp at Lachish he sent his commander Rabshakeh to deliver a humiliating message to King Hezekiah and the people: there was no point in resisting; the gods of every other nation had failed to save them from Assyria; the God of Israel would also fail; surrender or be destroyed. King Hezekiah went into the Temple and prayed. He sent messengers to Isaiah asking for the prophet’s counsel. Isaiah sent back a message of utter confidence: “Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land” (Isaiah 37:6-7). Sennacherib sent more letters threatening Jerusalem. Hezekiah took them into the Temple, spread them out before the Lord, and prayed: “O LORD, bow down thine ear, and hear; open, LORD, thine eyes, and see... Now therefore, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only” (Isaiah 37:17-20). That night, the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the survivors arose early in the morning, the camp was full of corpses. Sennacherib withdrew immediately and returned to Nineveh, where he was assassinated by his own sons in the temple of his god Nisroch. Jerusalem was saved. Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled to the smallest detail.
The patristic tradition has called Isaiah “the fifth evangelist” for nearly two thousand years. The reason is structural. There are four canonical Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — each of which describes the life of the Lord Jesus Christ from a slightly different angle. The book of Isaiah, written seven hundred years before the Incarnation, contains so many direct prophecies of Christ that it functions almost as a fifth Gospel. He prophesied the virgin conception (Isaiah 7:14, fulfilled in Matthew 1:23). He prophesied the divine identity of the Messiah (Isaiah 9:6, with the divine titles “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace”). He prophesied the Davidic descent (Isaiah 11:1, the rod from the stem of Jesse). He prophesied the Forerunner (Isaiah 40:3, fulfilled in Saint John the Baptist). He prophesied the public healing ministry (Isaiah 35:5-6, the eyes of the blind opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping as a hart). He prophesied the calling of the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6, the servant as a light to the Gentiles). He prophesied the supreme moment of the redemption: the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. He prophesied the kingdom of universal peace (Isaiah 11:6-9, the wolf dwelling with the lamb). He prophesied the new heavens and the new earth (Isaiah 65:17, fulfilled eschatologically in the Apocalypse of Saint John). The Orthodox liturgical tradition reads Isaiah constantly through the year. The Royal Hours of the Nativity feature extended readings from Isaiah on the virgin birth and the divine child. The Royal Hours of Theophany feature Isaiah readings on the Forerunner and the river Jordan. The Vespers of Holy Friday feature Isaiah 53 read as the fulfillment of the Lord’s Passion. The whole Christian tradition’s understanding of the prophetic preparation for the Incarnation takes its supreme form from the writings of Isaiah.
The hymn that the Seraphim sang before the throne of God in Isaiah’s vision is the same hymn the Orthodox Church sings at every Divine Liturgy. The triple repetition of “Holy” has been understood by the patristic tradition as a pre-revelation of the Holy Trinity — holy in the Father, holy in the Son, holy in the Holy Spirit, one God in three Persons. The Hebrew word for holy (qadosh) means “set apart, transcendent, exceeding every category of creaturely existence.” Even the highest angels in the heavenly hierarchy cover their faces in the divine Presence because the divine glory exceeds the capacity of even the most exalted creaturely intellects. The whole earth is full of His glory — not just the Temple, not just the holy mountain, not just the chosen people, but the whole earth, every cubic inch of created reality, every hair on every head of every human being, is saturated with the divine glory. The eyes of the body do not see this. The eyes of the soul, opened by prayer and asceticism, begin to see it. The saints see it most fully. Saint Seraphim of Sarov, when his disciple Motovilov asked him to show what the divine grace looked like, simply opened his eyes and let the Light shine — the same Light that filled the Temple when Isaiah saw it, the same Light that shone forth from the body of Christ on Mount Tabor, the same Light that fills the whole earth at every moment of every day. The Trisagion is the articulation of this conviction. We sing it at every Liturgy because it is true. The Lord is holy. The whole earth is full of His glory. We participate in the angelic worship every time we approach the holy gifts.
A young king of Judah refused to ask the Lord for a sign because he had already secretly resolved to trust foreign powers instead of the Lord. The prophet, angered by the false piety, gave him the most extraordinary sign in the entire Old Testament: a virgin would conceive and bear a son, and would call his name Immanuel — God with us. Seven hundred years later, the angel Gabriel appeared to a young woman in Nazareth named Mary and told her she would conceive a child by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, that the Lord God would give Him the throne of His father David, and that He would be called the Son of the Highest. She answered: behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. The prophecy was fulfilled. The Apostle Matthew in the very first chapter of his Gospel cites Isaiah 7:14 as the prophecy fulfilled in the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary. “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (Matthew 1:22-23). The whole Christian doctrine of the Incarnation — that God Himself took flesh in the womb of a virgin, that the Lord Jesus Christ is at once true God and true man, that the eternal Word who created the heavens and the earth was carried for nine months in the body of a young woman from a small Galilean town — takes its supreme Old Testament foundation from this single sentence that Isaiah spoke to King Ahaz nearly three thousand years ago. The prophet did not understand everything he was saying. He could not have imagined the Annunciation in Nazareth. But the Holy Spirit was speaking through him, and the words were preparing the world for what the Holy Spirit would eventually accomplish in the fullness of time.
King Hezekiah, who had received Isaiah’s counsel and had been delivered by the Lord from Sennacherib, died around 687 B.C. His son Manasseh succeeded him. Manasseh was the worst king in the entire history of Judah. He restored the worship of pagan idols, set up altars to Baal, sacrificed his own son in the fires of Tophet, and shed innocent blood throughout Jerusalem. The Bible says: “Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another” (2 Kings 21:16). According to the Tradition of the Church, supported by the apocryphal text known as the Ascension of Isaiah and referenced by the Apostle Paul in Hebrews 11:37, the prophet was one of those whose blood Manasseh shed. When Isaiah continued to prophesy against the apostasy of the king, Manasseh ordered him seized and put to death by being sawn in two with a wooden saw. While the saw was cutting through his body, the prophet refused to curse the king or to deny his prophecies. His lips continued to speak with the Holy Spirit until he was sawn in twain. The Apostle Paul cites this martyrdom in his praise of the great Old Testament faithful: “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy)” (Hebrews 11:37-38). Isaiah was buried near the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. His relics were later transferred by the emperor Theodosius the Younger in the fifth century to Constantinople and installed in the church of Saint Lawrence at Blachernae. Today part of his head is preserved at the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, where Orthodox Christians continue to venerate his martyrdom and seek his prayers.
Isaiah matters to every Orthodox Christian because he is the supreme Old Testament voice of the entire structure of Christian faith. He saw the Lord on the throne and heard the angels singing the same hymn the Church sings at every Liturgy. He prophesied the virgin birth. He prophesied the Forerunner. He prophesied the Suffering Servant. He prophesied the resurrection. He prophesied the Kingdom. The whole pattern of the Christian Gospel is contained in his book, written seven hundred years before the events it describes actually occurred. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever read the words of Isaiah 7:14 and recognized in them the announcement of the Annunciation. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever read Isaiah 53 during Holy Week and recognized in it the deeper meaning of the Lord’s Passion. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever sung the Trisagion at the Divine Liturgy and recognized in it the same hymn the Seraphim sang in the Temple in 740 B.C. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever endured suffering for the truth and remembered the prophet whose lips kept speaking by the Holy Spirit while his body was being sawn in two. He is the patron of every prophetic voice that calls the faithful back to authentic worship of the Lord against the pressures of cultural apostasy. His commemoration on May 9 brings the whole Orthodox Church into communion with the prophet whose entire ministry was the preparation for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.