Prophecy in Isaiah

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!”

Reading

“In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne” (6:1). Seraphim with six wings cry out to one another, the house fills with smoke, and Isaiah knows himself undone: “Woe is me, I am doomed!” (6:5). The Catechism sets this beside Moses at the burning bush and Peter in the boat: before the glory of the thrice-holy God, man discovers his own insignificance, and because God is holy he can forgive the one who knows he is a sinner (CCC 208). An ember from the altar touches his lips, his sin is purged, and he answers, “Here I am,” … “send me!” (6:8).

Fulfilled

St. John says of this vision: “Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him” (John 12:41). The glory on the throne is the glory of the Son.

Unfolding

John sees the throne again, with four living creatures, “each of them with six wings,” who day and night do not stop exclaiming: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come” (Revelation 4:8). At every Mass, in the Sanctus, the Church joins the angels and saints to sing to the thrice-holy God (CCC 1352). The heavenly liturgy Isaiah glimpsed is already going on.

See also

Isaiah 6:9–10 is quoted by Jesus (Matthew 13:14–15) and by Paul in Rome (Acts 28:25–27).

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.”

Reading

King Ahaz, terrified of an alliance against him, refuses to ask for a sign: “I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!” (7:12). God gives one anyway, to the whole “house of David” (7:13). Before the child is old enough “to reject evil and choose good,” the two kings Ahaz dreads will be gone (7:16). The NABRE note explains that the Hebrew word 'almah means a young woman of marriageable age, not specifically a virgin; the Greek Septuagint rendered it with a word that normally means “virgin,” and Matthew quotes that Greek.

Fulfilled

“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel” (Matthew 1:22–23). The Church sees in Mary's virginal conception the fulfillment of this sign (CCC 497). The name means “God is with us,” and in Jesus that name is literally true.

Note

This is the clearest case of the pattern described on The Bible page: a sign that spoke first to Ahaz in his own day, and is fulfilled fully, beyond anything Ahaz could imagine, in Christ.

“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”

Reading

The NABRE numbers these verses 9:1–6; many Bibles number them 9:2–7. The oracle begins in the north, the first land to fall to Assyria: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (9:1). The child will reign “upon David's throne,” and his dominion will be “vast and forever peaceful” (9:6). The Church reads it at the Mass during the Night of Christmas.

Fulfilled

Matthew sees the light dawn when Jesus begins to preach in Galilee: “the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light” (Matthew 4:16). Gabriel promises Mary that her son will receive “the throne of David his father” (Luke 1:32). The Catechism calls Christ the messianic “Prince of Peace” (CCC 2305).

Future

“Both now and forever”: the kingdom is begun, but its endless peace is still to come in full.

“But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him…”

Reading

David's family tree has been cut down to a stump, and from it new life comes. On the shoot rests “a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD” (11:2), the source of the Church's list of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism places this passage in the “Book of Emmanuel” (Isaiah 6–12), where the features of the Messiah begin to appear (CCC 712). He will “judge the poor with justice” and slay the wicked “with the breath of his lips” (11:4), the image Paul uses for the end of the lawless one (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

Fulfilled

Jesus, Son of David, is the shoot on whom the Spirit rests (Romans 1:3; Luke 4:18). In Revelation he is “the root of David” who has triumphed (Revelation 5:5), and he says of himself, “I am the root and offspring of David, the bright morning star” (22:16).

Future

“Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb” (11:6), and “they shall not harm or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD, as water covers the sea” (11:9). Isaiah repeats the picture in his vision of the new creation (65:25). That peace among all creatures has not yet come.

“How you have fallen from the heavens, O Morning Star, son of the dawn! How you have been cut down to the earth, you who conquered nations!”

Reading

“An oracle concerning Babylon; a vision of Isaiah, son of Amoz” (13:1). The day of the Lord is painted in cosmic colors: “The sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not give its light” (13:10), language Jesus takes up for his own coming (Matthew 24:29). Babylon, “the jewel of kingdoms,” will become “like Sodom and Gomorrah” (13:19). Chapter 14 is a “taunt-song against the king of Babylon” (14:4). The tyrant had said in his heart, “I will scale the heavens… I will be like the Most High!” (14:13–14), and he is brought down “to the depths of the pit” (14:15).

Fulfilled

Babylon fell to Cyrus and the Persians in 539 B.C., and in time the great city became a ruin. Its name lives on in Revelation as the image of every proud power that sets itself against God: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great” (Revelation 18:2), echoing Isaiah's own cry, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon!” (Isaiah 21:9).

Why mystery

Where the NABRE has “Morning Star,” St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate has Lucifer, “light-bearer.” The NABRE note explains that the verse is addressed to the king of Babylon, and that the Fathers later applied the name to Satan. In its first sense the song mocks a human king. Origen (On First Principles 1.5) and many after him read in it, by analogy, the fall of the proud angel, whose sin was the same wish to be like God; Jesus says, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky” (Luke 10:18). That reading is a spiritual application, not the literal sense, and the Church's teaching on the fall of the angels does not rest on this verse (CCC 391–392). The title belongs, in the end, to Christ: he is “the bright morning star” (Revelation 22:16), and the Exsultet of the Easter Vigil hails him as the Morning Star who never sets.

“I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; what he opens, no one will shut, what he shuts, no one will open.”

Reading

Shebna, the proud master of the palace, is removed, and God summons “my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkiah” (22:20). He receives the robe, the sash and the authority of the office, and “he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (22:21). The key on his shoulder is the king's own authority, held in trust by his chief steward.

Fulfilled

The risen Christ is “the holy one, the true, who holds the key of David, who opens and no one shall close, who closes and no one shall open” (Revelation 3:7). What Eliakim held for a time, Christ holds forever. Revelation adds that he holds “the keys to death and the netherworld” (1:18).

Unfolding

Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19). The NABRE note on that verse says the image of the keys is probably drawn from this passage about Eliakim. The Catechism teaches that the power of the keys designates authority to govern the house of God, which is the Church, entrusted to Peter in particular (CCC 553). The King keeps the key; his steward serves the household.

“A voice proclaims: In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!”

Reading

The second part of the book opens with tenderness: “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God” (40:1). The exile is over; God himself will lead his people home across the desert, and “the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (40:5). He comes as a shepherd: “in his arms he gathers the lambs” (40:11).

Fulfilled

All four Gospels apply the voice to John the Baptist (Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:2–3; Luke 3:4–6). John says of himself, “I am ‘the voice of one crying out in the desert, “Make straight the way of the Lord,”’ as Isaiah the prophet said” (John 1:23). He is the forerunner who prepares the way (CCC 523). In Isaiah the highway is for “our God”; the Gospels see God coming in Jesus.

For now

The Church hears this passage every Advent. The way is still prepared in hearts: “the word of our God stands forever” (40:8).

“Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased. Upon him I have put my spirit; he shall bring forth justice to the nations.”

Reading

This is the first of four “Servant songs” (42:1–9; 49:1–6; 50:4–10; 52:13–53:12), which the Catechism says reveal the features of the Messiah and the meaning of his Passion (CCC 713). The Servant's way is gentle: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench” (42:3). He is set “as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations” (42:6). In Isaiah the Servant is sometimes Israel (49:3) and sometimes one who has a mission to Israel (49:5–6); the songs move from the people toward a single figure.

Fulfilled

At the Jordan the Father's voice echoes this verse over Jesus as the Spirit descends on him (Matthew 3:16–17). Matthew quotes the whole song of Jesus' quiet healing: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I delight; I shall place my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles” (Matthew 12:18). Simeon calls the child “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32).

“But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.”

Reading

The song begins with exaltation, “See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted” (52:13), and then tells how he got there. He was “spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain” (53:3). “Like a lamb led to slaughter or a sheep silent before shearers, he did not open his mouth” (53:7). His life is made “a reparation offering” (53:10), and “my servant, the just one, shall justify the many, their iniquity he shall bear” (53:11). The Church reads it every Good Friday.

Fulfilled

The question was asked from the start: the Ethiopian official reading this passage asked, “about whom is the prophet saying this?” and Philip, “beginning with this scripture passage, he proclaimed Jesus to him” (Acts 8:34–35). Peter writes, “By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). The Catechism teaches that Jesus' death fulfills this prophecy of the suffering Servant, and that Jesus himself understood his death in its light (CCC 601, 608, 615); “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

See also

At the center of Revelation's throne stands “a Lamb that seemed to have been slain” (Revelation 5:6): the lamb led to slaughter, now alive and reigning.

“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives…”

Reading

An anointed messenger announces “a year of favor from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God” (61:2). The NABRE note explains that the background of the “year of favor” is the jubilee year of release from debts (Leviticus 25:10–11). Mourners receive “a diadem instead of ashes” (61:3), and Zion rejoices “as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (61:10).

Fulfilled

In the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus reads this passage and says, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). The Catechism notes that Christ began his preaching of the Good News by making this passage his own (CCC 714), and counts the “poor” who await the Messiah as the great fruit of the Spirit's hidden preparation (CCC 716).

Future

Jesus stops reading before “a day of vindication.” The year of favor is now; the day of vindication, when God sets every wrong right, belongs to his return.