Woe Is Me — Isaiah’s Call, Isaiah 6

A king who forced his way to the altar dies a leper. In the same year a prophet is brought to the altar, cleansed, and asked a question first spoken in the council before the world was. Isaiah’s call is a similitude of the calling of the Only Begotten.

In the Year That King Uzziah Died

“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). Why date it by that king? Because Isaiah knew how Uzziah died better than anyone — he wrote the king’s history (2 Chronicles 26:22).

Lifted up in his heart, Uzziah “went into the temple of the LORD to burn incense upon the altar of incense.” Eighty priests followed him in: “It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the LORD, but to the priests the sons of Aaron … neither shall it be for thine honour from the LORD God.” He raged, the leprosy “rose up in his forehead,” and he died a leper, “cut off from the house of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 26:16–21). So the king who took the altar by force dies shut out of the temple, and in that same year Isaiah stands in the temple and has the altar brought to him. The repeated words show it:

2 Chronicles 26 and Isaiah 6 — antithetic parallel

Uzziah goes into the temple to burn incense on the altar

Isaiah sees the Lord fill the temple; a coal comes “from off the altar”

Leprosy rises in his forehead

“This hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away”

Our arrangement, not a published structure. Read both chapters and test it.

“No man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron” (Hebrews 5:4). No man chooses to be ordained, or claims the authority of God of himself. Uzziah claimed it and was cut off; Isaiah was called, in God’s house, and the fifth Article of Faith still asks for the SAME thing.

Burning Ones, and the King on the Throne

The Hebrew saraph comes from the verb “to burn”. Seraphim are burning ones, and one of them will shortly carry fire to Isaiah’s mouth. Their wings are “a representation of power, to move, to act” (D&C 77:4). And how is that power spent? Two wings cover the face, two cover the feet, and only two fly. The mightiest servants in the room spend most of their power on reverence. Their cry is qadosh three times over — “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts” — Hebrew’s way of saying the most holy.

Who sits on the throne? Isaiah calls Him “the King, the LORD of hosts,” and LORD in capitals marks the divine name, Jehovah. John answers for the New Testament, right after quoting Isaiah about those who “believed not on him”: “These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him” (John 12:41).

The “him” is Jesus. The King Isaiah saw was Christ before His birth, and Nephi agrees: “he verily saw my Redeemer, even as I have seen him” (2 Nephi 11:2). In the Kirtland Temple the same Lord spoke with “the voice of Jehovah, saying … I am he who was slain” (D&C 110:3–4). Protestant readers of John 12 already accept that Isaiah saw Christ. The restored scriptures add what the chapter hints when the Lord asks “who will go for us?” — Jehovah is the Son, the one the Father sent. Isaiah 6 is the Premortal Messiah on the page.

A Coal from the Altar, and the Word Kipper

Isaiah 6:5–7

“Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips … for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.”

“Woe” is the word Isaiah had just pronounced six times on others in Isaiah 5. Now he turns it on himself. Why the lips? A prophet is a mouth, and his is not clean enough for the God he has just seen. Readers disagree whether chapter 6 is Isaiah’s first call or a later one, but the order teaches either way: chapters 1–5 diagnose a people of unclean lips, and the cure begins with the prophet.

Most readers miss the last word of verse 7. “Purged” translates tekuppar, a form of kipper, the Hebrew verb for making atonement — the verb of Leviticus 16: “on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you” (Leviticus 16:30). The day itself, Yom Kippur, is named from the same root. And on that day the high priest took “a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the LORD” within the veil (Leviticus 16:12). Readers differ on which altar Isaiah means, incense or sacrifice, and the chapter does not say; coals from the altar were the fire of atonement either way.

Where does the cleansing power come from? From the altar, the place of sacrifice, which is to say from Christ. And it comes BEFORE the call. Isaiah is not sent and cleaned up along the way. Uzziah went to the altar to take something; Isaiah had the altar brought to him.

“Whom Shall I Send?” — The Council Replayed

Verse 8 is the heart of the chapter, and the Pearl of Great Price shows why:

Abraham 3:27 and Isaiah 6:8 — synonymous parallel

Council  “And the Lord said: Whom shall I send?”

Temple  “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

Council  “And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me.”

Temple  “Then said I, Here am I; send me.”

The same question and the same answer. The prophet’s call reenacts the council.

Now put John 12:41 back in. Who asks the question in Isaiah 6? The Lord on the throne, and John says He was Christ. Who answered it in Abraham 3? The one “like unto the Son of Man” — Christ. So the One who once said “Here am I, send me” to His Father is the One now asking “Whom shall I send?” of Isaiah. He asks nothing of His servants that He did not first answer Himself. It takes all four standard works to see it.

The council holds a warning too. Abraham 3:27 records TWO volunteers: “And another answered and said: Here am I, send me.” Moses 4 gives his terms — “here am I, send me … wherefore give me thine honor” — and the Son’s: “Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever” (Moses 4:1–2). The words were the same. What separated them was the honour, and that is the very word the priests used to Uzziah. Three figures in these passages come toward the altar or the throne, and one question divides them: whose glory were they after?

“Make the Heart of This People Fat”

Then the hardest commission in the prophets: “Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not” (6:9). Donald W. Parry gives verse 10 as a simple chiasm (“Chiasmus,” Preserved in Translation RSC):

Isaiah 6:10 — the structure (Parry)

A  Make the heart of this people fat,

B  and make their ears heavy,

C  and shut their eyes;

C′  lest they see with their eyes,

B′  and hear with their ears,

A′  and understand with their heart,

→  and convert, and be healed.

Closed going in, opened coming out. The centre is the eyes, where the chapter began (“mine eyes have seen the King”); the last clause is the exit.

Does God want His people blind? The structure argues against it. A chiasm that turns on the eyes and walks straight back out to “convert, and be healed” is describing the road home and naming what blocks it. Isaiah is told what his preaching will do to people who have decided not to see: every word of light hardens those who refuse it. It is prophetic irony. Tell a man whose eyes are shut on purpose to close them tighter, and you have described him more than commanded him.

The New Testament takes these verses up in all four Gospels and in Acts. John keeps the hard edge — “He hath blinded their eyes” (John 12:40) — but the two full quotations put the closing on the people: “their eyes they have closed” (Matthew 13:15; Acts 28:27). Both follow the Greek Septuagint: “For the heart of this people has become gross … and their eyes have they closed” (Brenton).

Then open Nephi’s copy. Where the King James has two commands, 2 Nephi 16:9 reads, “Hear ye indeed, but they understood not; and see ye indeed, but they perceived not.” The command has become a report of what the people did. Verse 10 reads “and be converted and be healed” for the King James “and convert” — the passive of the Septuagint, Matthew, and Acts. The Book of Mormon does not soften Isaiah. It says out loud what the apostles already understood him to mean.

“Lord, How Long?” — The Holy Seed in the Stump

Isaiah asks what every called servant eventually asks. The answer (6:11–12) is long: until the cities are wasted and the people removed far away. Captivity. Then comes the turn: “But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof” (6:13).

A teil tree is a terebinth. “Substance” is matstsebeth, which most modern translations render “stump.” The tree is felled, a tenth returns and is burned again, and still the stump lives with the holy seed in it. What grows from a stump? “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isaiah 11:1). A different Hebrew word, the same picture; it continues in The Root of Jesse.

This is dualism: one prophecy, many fulfilments. Verses 9–13 foretell the results of Isaiah’s own preaching and the captivity and return of Israel. They came true when Assyria emptied the north, again when Babylon took Judah, again in Galilee when Jesus said “in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias,” and again in Rome with Paul. Light offered, eyes closed, land lost, a remnant kept.

Key References

“Here Am I” in an Ordinary Calling

Few of us will see a throne; most of us get asked to teach a class. Does Isaiah 6 speak to that? It does, because the order never changes: the Lord asks, we feel undone, His sacrifice cleanses, and then we answer.

In April 2026 President Susan H. Porter taught children to pray the Savior’s words: “Follow His example and say in prayer to Heavenly Father, ‘Here am I, send me.’ Then listen for thoughts and ideas” (“Here Am I, Send Me”). Can a person say “send me” and mean “honour me”? The council says yes. Isaiah’s answer was accepted because of a cleansed mouth, a question he waited for, and a glory he did not keep.

When a calling comes that you feel unfit for, you stand where Isaiah stood. He was right that he was unclean. He was wrong that it disqualified him. The coal was already on its way.

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