Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 6:1

"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple." — Isaiah 6:1 (ASV)

In the year that king Uzziah died. —Probably before his death. If it had been after his death, the first year of king Jotham would have been the more natural formula. The chapter gives us the narrative of the solemn call of Isaiah to the office of a prophet. It does not follow that it was written at that time. We may even believe that, if the prophet were the editor of his own discourses, he may have designedly placed the narrative in this position so that people might see what he himself saw: that all that was found in the preceding chapters was merely the development of what he had then heard, and yet, at the same time, a representation of the evils which made the judgments he was commissioned to declare necessary. On the relation of the call to the prophet’s previous life, see Introduction.

The date is obviously given as important, and we are led to connect it with the crisis in the prophet’s life of which it tells. He had lived through the last twenty years or so of Uzziah’s reign. There was the appearance of outward material prosperity. There was also the reality of much inward corruption. The king who had profaned the holiness of the Temple had either just died or was dragging out the dregs of his leprous life in seclusion (2 Chronicles 26:21). The question, "What was to be the future of his people?" must have been much in the prophet’s thoughts. The earthquake that had terrified Jerusalem had left on his mind a vague sense of impending judgment. It is significant that Isaiah’s first work as a writer was to write the history of Uzziah’s reign (2 Chronicles 26:22). (See Introduction.)

I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne. —Isaiah had found himself in the court of the Temple, probably in that of the priests. He had seen the incense-clouds rising from the censer of the priest, and had heard the hymns and hallelujahs of the Levites.

Suddenly he passes—as St. Paul afterwards did under the influence of similar surroundings (Acts 22:17)—into a state of ecstatic trance. Then, as though the veil of the Temple was withdrawn, he saw the vision of the glory of the Lord, just as Moses (Exodus 24:10) and Micaiah of old had seen it (1 Kings 22:19), and as in more recent times it had appeared to Amos (Amos 9:1). The King of kings was seated on His throne, and on the right hand and on the left were the angel-armies of the host of heaven, chanting their hymns of praise.

His train filled the temple. —The word for “temple” is that which expresses its character as the palace of the great King (Psalms 29:9; Habakkuk 2:20). The “train” corresponds to the skirts of the glory of the Lord, who clothes Himself with light as with a garment (Exodus 33:22–23). It is noticeable:

1. That the versions (Septuagint, Targum, Vulgate) suppress the train, apparently as being too anthropomorphic, and
2. That to the mind of St. John this was a vision of the glory of the Christ (John 12:41).