hebrew · literary

The Book of Isaiah — Selected Prophecies

c. 740–540 BCE · Iron Age to Persian Period · Jerusalem; Babylon (exile)

Chapter 6 — The Vision of the Throne and the Call

1In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne,
2High and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
3Above it stood the seraphims:
4Each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face,
5And with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
6And one cried unto another, and said,
7Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts:
8The whole earth is full of his glory.
9And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried,
10And the house was filled with smoke.
11Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone;
12Because I am a man of unclean lips,
13And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips:
14For mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
15Then flew one of the seraphims unto me,
16Having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.
17And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips;
18And thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
19Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?
20Then said I, Here am I; send me.

Chapter 11 — The Peaceful Kingdom

21And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse,
22And a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
23And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him,
24The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
25The spirit of counsel and might,
26The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
27The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
28And the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
29And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
30And a little child shall lead them.
31And the cow and the bear shall feed;
32Their young ones shall lie down together:
33And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
34And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp,
35And the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den.
36They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain:
37For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD,
38As the waters cover the sea.

Chapter 40 — Comfort Ye My People

39Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
40Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her,
41That her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned:
42For she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.
43The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
44Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
45Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
46And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
47And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
48Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard,
49That the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth,
50Fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding.
51He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
52Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
53And the young men shall utterly fall:
54But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength;
55They shall mount up with wings as eagles;
56They shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Chapter 53 — The Suffering Servant

57Who hath believed our report?
58And to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
59For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
60And as a root out of a dry ground:
61He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him,
62There is no beauty that we should desire him.
63He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
64Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:
65Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
66But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities:
67The chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
68All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
69And the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

notes

The Book of Isaiah is the longest and most theologically complex of the Hebrew prophetic books. Modern scholarship distinguishes two or three main sections: First Isaiah (chapters 1–39), composed in Jerusalem during the Assyrian crisis (c. 740–701 BCE) under the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz; Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah (chapters 40–55), composed during the Babylonian exile (c. 550–540 BCE) and addressed to a community in despair; and Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56–66), possibly from the early post-exilic period. The seraphim vision (chapter 6) and the Suffering Servant poems (chapters 42, 49, 50, 52–53) are among the most influential passages in religious history — the Servant figure was interpreted by early Christians as a prophecy of Jesus, and Isaiah 53 became the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament. The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa), discovered at Qumran in 1947, is the oldest complete manuscript of any biblical book, dating to approximately 125 BCE. Translation from the King James Version (1611). Public domain.

currently held: Manuscript tradition (Great Isaiah Scroll, Dead Sea Scrolls)

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