ישעיהו ו

In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Sovereign seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of God’s robe filled the temple.

Seraphs stood in attendance, each with six wings—two covering the face, two covering the body, and two to fly with.

And one would call to the other,
“Holy, holy, holy!
GOD of Hosts—
Whose presence fills all the earth!”

The doorposts would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke.

I cried,
“Woe is me; I am lost!
For I am a man of impure lips
And I live among a people
Of impure lips;
Yet my own eyes have beheld
The Sovereign GOD of Hosts.”

Then one of the seraphs—who had taken a live coal from the altar with a pair of tongs—flew over to me,

touched it to my lips, and declared,
“Now that this has touched your lips,
Your guilt shall depart
And your sin be purged away.”

Then I heard the voice of my Sovereign saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me.”

And [God] said, “Go, say to that people:
‘Hear, indeed, but do not understand;
See, indeed, but do not grasp.’

Dull that people’s mind,
Stop its ears,
And seal its eyes—
Lest, seeing with its eyes
And hearing with its ears,
It also grasp with its mind,
And repent and save itself.”

I asked, “How long, my Sovereign?” And [God] replied:
“Till towns lie waste without inhabitants
And houses without people,
And the ground lies waste and desolate—

For GOD will banish the population—
And deserted sites are many
In the midst of the land.

“But while a tenth part yet remains in it, it shall repent. It shall be ravaged like the terebinth and the oak, of which stumps are left even when they are felled: its stump shall be a holy seed.”