When Isaiah says in 6:5, “for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts,” the use of the capitol letters for LORD indicates he is using the term YAHWEH, or Jehovah. That being the case, it is difficult to interpret this as being anyone but the one, true, holy God of Israel, the “the God of your fathers,” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the complete trinitarian God.
In this usage, I think we can see this as a picture of God the Father
. But as we keep looking, we will see the presence of the entire Trinity.
Next
, we read, “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying.” Here we have Lord in lower case. It reminds me much of the the opening on Psalm 110, “The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”
Commentators say this second, lower case Lord is clearly a reference to Christ. And so I think we can say about the Lord in Isaiah 6, especially as we see the Lord say, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Here is Christ, speaking to the Father and (as we will see) the Holy Spirit, as He refers to “us.”
Finally
, we need the Holy Spirit to complete the Trinity here and help us understand that we are seeing in the vision with Isaiah the full glory of God as He is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fortunately, as we had John 12:41 (Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.) to help us see Christ in this vision, we also have Acts 28:25-27 to help us see the Holy Spirit. Here is the passage from Acts:
“they departed after Paul had made one statement: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet: “‘Go to this people, and say, You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’”
So though it appears to be Christ (“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”) who calls Isaiah in v. 8, Paul tells us clearly that it is the Holy Spirit who then speaks to him and gives him his commission in verses 9-13.
So there we have the Father (YAHWEH), Son, and Holy Spirit, Three in One, in the vision of Isaiah.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.