Isaiah’s Vision

Above him stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face. With two he covered his feet. With two he flew.

They called out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Armies! The whole earth is full of his glory!”

At the sound of the voice that called, the doorways shook to their foundations, and the temple filled with smoke.

“How terrible for me!” Isaiah said. “I am lost, because I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips, and my own eyes have looked on the King, the Lord of Armies!”

Then one of the seraphim flew to him. In his hand was a burning coal from the altar, which he had picked up with tongs. With it he touched Isaiah’s mouth. “Look,” he said, “this has touched your lips. Your wrongdoing is taken away, and your sin is forgiven.”

Then Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord. “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”

“Here I am,” said Isaiah. “Send me!”

“Go,” the Lord said, “and tell this people, ‘You hear and hear, but you don’t understand. You look and look, but you don’t see.’ Make the hearts of this people dull. Make their ears hard of hearing and shut their eyes, so they won’t see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and turn again and be healed.”

“Lord, how long?” Isaiah asked.

He answered, “Until the cities are ruins with no one living in them, the houses are left without people, and the land is completely ruined; until the Lord has taken the people far away, and many places in the land are abandoned. If a tenth is left in it, that tenth will be destroyed in its turn, like a terebinth tree or an oak that leaves a stump when it is cut down. The holy seed is its stump.”

Instead he lived the way the kings of Israel did. 2 Chronicles adds that he made idols of poured metal for the Baals.

He even made his son pass through the fire, following the hateful customs of the nations the Lord had driven out ahead of the people of Israel. 2 Chronicles says that he burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom and burned his children in the fire.

He sacrificed and burned incense in the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to make war on it. They surrounded Ahaz in the city, but they could not overcome him.

The king’s family, the house of David, was told, “Syria has joined forces with Ephraim.” Ephraim was another name for the kingdom of Israel. The king’s heart shook, and so did the hearts of his people, the way the trees of the forest shake in the wind.

Then the Lord told Isaiah to go out with his son Shearjashub and meet Ahaz at the end of the channel from the upper pool, on the road by the cloth-washers’ field. He gave Isaiah a message for the king:

“Be careful, and stay calm. Don’t be afraid. Don’t let your courage fail because of the fierce anger of these two smoking torch-ends, Rezin with Syria, and the son of Remaliah. Syria, Ephraim and the son of Remaliah have plotted harm against you. They have said, ‘Let’s march against Judah and tear it apart. Let’s divide it up among ourselves and make the son of Tabeel king there.’

“The Lord God says: ‘It will not stand. It will not happen.’ Here is why: the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Ephraim will be broken to pieces within sixty-five years and will no longer be a people. The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If you won’t believe, you won’t stand firm.”

But Ahaz said, “I won’t ask. I won’t test the Lord.”

Then came the answer: “Listen now, house of David! Isn’t it enough for you to try people’s patience? Will you try my God’s patience too? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

“He will eat butter and honey when he knows enough to refuse the evil and choose the good. That is because before the child knows enough to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you hate will be left empty.

“The Lord is going to bring days like no others since the day Ephraim parted from Judah. They will come on you, on your people and on your father’s family. He will bring the king of Assyria on you.

“When that day comes, the Lord will whistle for the fly from the far ends of Egypt’s rivers, and for the bee in the land of Assyria. They will come, all of them, and settle in the empty valleys and the cracks in the rocks, on every thorn hedge and every pasture. At that time the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired from the lands beyond the River: the king of Assyria. He will shave the head and the hair of the feet, and the beard will go too.

“On that day a man will keep one young cow and two sheep alive, and they will give so much milk that he will eat butter. Everyone who is left in the land will eat butter and honey. On that day every place that had a thousand vines, worth a thousand silver shekels (about twenty-two pounds of silver), will be overgrown with briers and thorns. People will go there with arrows and a bow, because all the land will be briers and thorns. You won’t go up into the hills that were once worked with the hoe, because you will be afraid of the briers and thorns. Those hills will be places for letting oxen loose and for sheep to walk on.”

2 Chronicles tells of terrible defeats. It says that because of what Ahaz had done, the Lord his God handed him over to the king of Syria. The Syrians defeated him, took a great crowd of his people captive and brought them to Damascus. Ahaz was handed over to the king of Israel too, and Israel’s king defeated him and killed great numbers of his people.

Pekah son of Remaliah killed one hundred and twenty thousand men in Judah in one day, all of them brave soldiers, because they had deserted the Lord, the God of their ancestors. Zichri, a great warrior from Ephraim, killed Maaseiah the king’s son, Azrikam who was in charge of the palace, and Elkanah, who was second only to the king.

The Israelites took two hundred thousand of their own relatives captive, women and sons and daughters. They also took much plunder from them and brought the plunder to Samaria.

But a prophet of the Lord was there, a man named Oded, and he went out to meet the army as it came to Samaria. “Listen,” he told them. “The Lord, the God of your ancestors, handed Judah over to you because he was angry with them. And you have killed them in a rage that reaches up to heaven.

“Now you mean to make the people of Judah and Jerusalem your slaves, men and women. But you have done wrong against the Lord your God too, haven’t you? So listen to me now, and send back the captives you have taken from your own relatives, because the Lord is fiercely angry with you.”

Then some of the leaders of Ephraim stood up to the men coming back from the war: Azariah the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah the son of Shallum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai. “You must not bring the captives in here,” they said. “What you mean to do would bring guilt on us before the Lord and add to our sins and our guilt. Our guilt is great, and there is fierce anger against Israel.”

So the soldiers left the captives and the plunder in front of the officials and the whole assembly. The men just named got up and took the captives. From the plunder they found clothes for everyone who was naked and dressed them. They gave them sandals and something to eat and drink, and rubbed oil on their skin. They put all who were weak on donkeys and brought them to their relatives at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they went back to Samaria.

Ahaz took the silver and gold that were in the Lord’s house and in the treasuries of the palace, and sent them as a present to the king of Assyria.

The king of Assyria listened to him. He marched against Damascus and captured it. He carried its people away captive to Kir, and he killed Rezin.

2 Chronicles says that at that time King Ahaz asked the kings of Assyria for help, because the Edomites had come again and attacked Judah and carried off captives. The Philistines had also invaded the towns of the lowland and the south of Judah. They had taken Beth Shemesh, Aijalon and Gederoth, and Soco, Timnah and Gimzo with their villages, and they settled there.

The Lord brought Judah down because of Ahaz, who had let nothing hold him back in Judah and had sinned terribly against the Lord.

The king of Assyria, whom 2 Chronicles calls Tilgath-pilneser, came to Ahaz, but he brought Ahaz trouble instead of making him stronger. Ahaz took things from the Lord’s house, from the king’s palace and from the princes, and gave them to the king of Assyria, but it did him no good.

Urijah the priest built the altar, following everything King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, and he had it finished before the king came home.

When the king got back from Damascus and saw the altar, he went up to it and made offerings on it. He burned his burnt offering and his meal offering, poured out his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings on the altar.

The bronze altar that stood before the Lord was at the front of the Lord’s house, between the house and the new altar. Ahaz moved it from there and put it on the north side of his own altar.

Then King Ahaz gave Urijah the priest his orders. “On the great altar,” he said, “burn the morning burnt offering and the evening meal offering, the king’s burnt offering and his meal offering, and the burnt offerings of all the people of the land, with their meal offerings and their drink offerings. Sprinkle all the blood of the burnt offerings and of the sacrifices on it. But the bronze altar will be for me to use when I ask for guidance.”

Urijah the priest did everything King Ahaz commanded.

King Ahaz cut the panels off the bronze stands and removed the basin from them. He took the Sea, the huge bronze water tank, down off the bronze oxen that held it up, and set it on a stone pavement. He removed the covered walkway for the Sabbath that had been built in the Lord’s house, and the king’s outer entrance to it. All this was because of the king of Assyria.

2 Chronicles says that in his time of trouble this same King Ahaz sinned against the Lord even more. He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, the gods that had defeated him. “Since the gods of the kings of Syria helped them,” he said, “I will sacrifice to them, and then they may help me.” But they brought ruin on him and on all Israel.

Ahaz gathered up the things used in God’s house and cut them to pieces. He shut the doors of the Lord’s house, and he made himself altars on every corner in Jerusalem. In every city of Judah he made high places for burning incense to other gods, and he made the Lord, the God of his ancestors, angry.

The rest of what Ahaz did, all his ways from first to last, is written in the records of the kings of Judah.

Ahaz died and joined his ancestors, and was buried with them in David’s city. 2 Chronicles says they buried him in the city, in Jerusalem. They didn’t bring him into the tombs of the kings of Israel. Hezekiah his son became king after him.