🕊️WEB · Isaiah 6:8
What does Isaiah 6:8 mean?
"I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”"
— Isaiah 6:8 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Then I said, “Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of Armies!”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.
He touched my mouth with it, and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.”
I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
He said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘You hear indeed, but don’t understand; and you see indeed, but don’t perceive.’
Make the heart of this people fat. Make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.”
Then I said, “Lord, how long?” He answered, “Until cities are waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land becomes utterly waste,
Explanation
Isaiah 6:8 records the prophet Isaiah's response after he has just experienced an overwhelming vision of God enthroned in the temple, surrounded by seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy," and after his own sin has been symbolically cleansed by a burning coal touched to his lips. In this verse, Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord asking a question addressed not to any particular person but to the heavenly assembly at large: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Isaiah, now purified and standing in the presence of divine holiness, immediately volunteers without hesitation: "Here I am. Send me!"
The context is crucial to understanding the verse's weight. Isaiah was a prophet active in Judah during the eighth century BC, and this chapter records his commissioning vision, which took place "in the year that King Uzziah died," a time of political uncertainty and spiritual complacency in Judah. The vision itself is dramatic: Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, is struck by his own sinfulness and the sinfulness of his people, cries out in despair ("Woe is me!"), and then receives atonement through the seraphim's coal. Only after this process of confrontation with holiness, confession, and cleansing does God pose the question of verse 8. The plural "us" reflects the heavenly court imagery common in prophetic call narratives, where God is depicted as surrounded by angelic beings, though Christian readers have also seen in it an echo of the plurality within the Godhead.
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