Here I am. Send me
1I, Isaiah, saw the Lord. It was in the year when King Azariah died. The Lord was sitting on a very high throne and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2Above Him were angels. Each angel had 6 wings. With 2 wings he covered his face, with 2 wings he covered his feet and with 2 wings he flew. 3The angels talked very loudly and said to each other: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord who rules over all. His glory is everywhere on earth.’
4The angels talked so loudly that the doors trembled and the temple was filled with smoke. 5I said: ‘I am going to die. There is no hope for me. Everything I say is impure and everything that my people say is also impure. And now I have seen the King, the Lord who rules over all.’
6One of the angels flew to me. He had a hot burning coal in his hand that he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7He touched my mouth with the coal and he said: ‘Look, the coal has touched your lips. God has forgiven your sins and He has made you pure.’
God sends Isaiah
8Then the Lord asked:
‘Is there anyone whom I can send?
Who will take a message
to the people of Judah?’
Then I said: ‘Here I am. Send me.’
9The Lord said to me:
‘Go and tell this nation:
“You will hear and listen to what I say,
but you will not understand what I say.
You will look and look,
but you will not know what you see.”
10You must make these people stubborn.
You must close their ears
and close their eyes,
so that they won't see or hear
or understand and change their lives.
They will not live as I want them to,
and I will not heal them.’
11Then I asked: ‘Lord, for how long must I do this?’ And the Lord said:
‘Until there are no more people left
in the towns and cities,
until there are no more people living in homes,
until there is no more grain and fruit.
12You must keep on talking to them
until I have taken away
all the people to a land far from here.
There will be nothing left in this land.
13The enemies will burn everything
that is left over in the land,
even if only one 10th is left over.
But when you cut down an oak tree,
there is a piece of the tree trunk
that stays in the ground.
Like that, some of the people of God
will stay alive.’
