Isaiah’s Vision of the Majesty of God

Mortals live away their lives, consumed with routine, unimpressed by the God of history. This was the damning fault of the Judahites, that they were ignorant of their own God! As Isaiah confronts them with their faults, he also presents God to them in a new light, as the great and all-transcendent Deity.

We know that the Judahites were religious, structuring their lives around a framework of feasts, festivals, and Sabbath routines. Yet when the echo of the shofar-blast had faded and the dribble of the sacrificial bloodletting ceased, they returned to ordinary living—unaffected and unimpressed by the majesty of the God who dwelt among them.

How Majestic Is His Name!

Suddenly Isaiah arrives, and nearly the first thing he introduces is a unique way of speaking about God. His vocabulary of the divine is exalted, using titles that elevate how one thinks about this Deity.

His first reference is to “the LORD.” This is the divine name—the so-called Tetragrammaton—the sacred four-letter name of God that is too holy to be bantered. Attached to this, he references the “Holy One of Israel.” Here is a being who is fundamentally distinct and separate from humanity. This name in particular is meant to get our attention: he is the “Holy One,” the Being who is above, separate, different from all the rest.

He is also the “LORD of Hosts,” Yahweh of Armies! This is the Deity who commands military forces—entire multitudes of troops, beings engaged in violence—to overthrow all opposition! If we would be respectful of a warlord or general who could order his forces to destroy our homes and towns, how much more reason do we have to be humble in the presence of Yahweh of Armies!

The title itself—Yahweh Tseva’oth—is not entirely clear, for which armies are referred to? A stream of images comes to mind: the God of the battle formations of Israel; the God who guides the stars and planetary bodies; the God who rules every cosmic power; even the God who presides in the heavenly forum over the sons of God and the angelic hosts and legions. Ultimately, these images all point to the same being, Kurios Pantokrator, as the Greeks translated it—the Lord Almighty.

Ascribe Power to God

The prophet observes the hustle and bustle of Judah as they alternately worship and honor God, and reject and despise him. They are busy making things happen, setting up treaties with Gentile nations and networking with foreign merchants. But it is not really Judah that is directing history; it is God. He is the one who opens the narrative by speaking (1:2). He ordains purposes and plans, and his counsel is absolutely and unquestionably fulfilled (1:24). When he rises to take vengeance, destructions are wrought until he is content to leave survivors (1:9). And his kingdom is one of worldwide domination, marching on gloriously until his holy mountain becomes the pilgrimage destination of the entire world.

If we are not justified in referring to him as a “vengeful deity,” we can at least recognize that his power and destructive capacity are greater than we can handle. All he need do is lift his hand, and earthquakes of titanic force rattle the mountaintops. The corpses of his enemies steadily pile up like sandbags in the street (5:25). Such wrath is not easily assuaged, for even with all this, “his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still” (5:25).

The Provocation of Rebellion

Yet the Judahites pass on blithely, busily engaged in sin, ignorant of—or disinterested in—the fact that their rebellion is a provocation. It is no little crime to insult such a Being. What they consider insignificant is actually “defying his glorious presence” (3:8), a monstrous abomination. Isaiah’s expression is that their actions are a rebellion before “the eyes of his glory,” offending the sight of the sovereign who demands respect.

Perhaps the most significant exposition of God’s glory in Isaiah’s preface (which spans chapters 1-5) is found in chapter two, where we see the complete humbling of all things exalted. Here the rough edges of the world—the peaks and mountaintop experiences of human life—are all flattened down, even depressed, when the Lord makes his glory known. Isaiah insists that the LORD of Hosts has “a day,” in which he will humble the proud and bring low the exalted. Everything that seems glorious—from the mighty cedars of Lebanon (the redwoods of the ancient world) to the soaring masts of sailing crafts and the elevations of military watchtowers—will be leveled, knocked down to a suitably reverential position.

Those who currently think themselves somebodies will be stunned when they find their vaunted eminence is really sandcastles. They will respond by desperately searching, in blind panic, for something—anything—to escape from the piercing vision of the one whom they have belittled. They will enter “the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground” when they are confronted with “the terror of the LORD” and “the splendor of his majesty” (2:19).

Hiding from Splendor

The only advice we can be given—in light of this weighty scene—is to not be found among the hardhearted, who think they can withstand him. “Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from before the terror of the LORD, and from the splendor of his majesty” (2:10). For it is only those who have an understanding of their puniness who will avoid a severe bruising. On that day, “the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and the LORD alone will be exalted in that day” (2:17).

Just as hortatory, Isaiah recommends that we be profoundly unimpressed by the credentials of humans and their vaunted honors and opinions. At the end of the day, they are as mortal as we. The prophet states this very picturesquely, describing man as that being “whose respiration is in his nose” (2:22), or “his breath in his nostrils,” highlighting that it is nothing more than the exchange of air between the inside and the outside that keeps man alive. How little it takes to cease this respiration and lower a man to the status of a corpse!

Conclusion

This is the burden of Isaiah. God is too holy, too transcendent, to be merely an accessory in the lives of his people. How can the kingdom of the covenant blunder forward like the unbelieving nations when confronted with this level of splendor? In his names, his deeds, his judgments, and his exaltation, the Holy One of Israel demands more. All of life must be lived as homage to this great Lord.

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