Isa 6:8-13
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Lexical notes
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Exegesis
Verse 11
Isaiah responds to the overwhelming clarification of verses 9-10 with a rather simple question: "how long?" literally, "until when?" But Isaiah's question betrays a sort of freedom Isaiah feels with the Lord he addresses: a freedom marked less by Isaiah's boldness than by the Lord's grace. The prophet's question, in fact, draws out of the narrative an aspect of it that might all too easily be missed: the prophet is here given, from the very outset, an opportunity to have laid out for him in detail the call he is being given. The Old Testament is filled with prophets who are called and sent with little--or usually no--explanation of the task whatsoever. These many examples, in fact, are the ground out of which grows the so-called "complaint literature" of the OT, literature in which a jaded prophet rebukes the Lord for His inattentiveness to His prophet, His covenant, His people, His responsibility. Only after the fact does understanding come--if it then comes at all: much of complaint literature ends in a sort of prophetic aporia. Isaiah's narrative answers the question before it arises, thereby either undercutting all complaint literature in advance or (and this option is very intriguing) becoming the most radical version of complaint literature. At any rate, Isaiah is given to understand the Lord's silence (his "inattentiveness") from the very beginning.
This last point might be elaborated briefly before returning to the content of verse 11. Isaiah has long been recognized--by authors of scripture as much as by scholars of scripture--as somehow different from other prophets. He is characterized with a sort of boldness, certainly an incredible complexity, an outstanding poetic ability, and a beligerently unapologetic style. Perhaps more self-conscious than any other prophet, he recognizes these traits in himself and on occasion comments on them. All of these details might be explained with reference to this chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah is given to understand before he prophesies that he will not often (if ever) be understood, that his writings are themselves only to be interpreted according to the tongue of angels (by the power of the Holy Ghost; cf. 2 Ne 32:3, 2 Ne 25:4). He recognizes in advance that the gift he offers all too often results only in closed eyes, shut ears, hard hearts: while the same might be said of the other prophets, only Isaiah seems reconciled to the fact. It seems, in the end, to be this little question-and-answer session that makes Isaiah the different prophet, the other among the prophets: he recognizes from the very start what his prophetic calling entails.
The question Isaiah asks the Lord, and the Lord's response in turn with it, confirms the above reading: Isaiah desires to know how long he is to work such an unfruitful task, and he is told that he must do it until men have been destroyed and scattered (the eyes, ears, and hearts of the people being, apparently, closed, shut, and hard). But more than the mere gloom of the end of such a task is in question here. Isaiah asks "until when?" and the Lord responds with a specific time, an event that lies on the horizon: Isaiah is given a very specific answer, and that answer (which spills over into verse 12) deserves close attention. The event, taking the remainder of verse 11 and the whole of verse 12 at a glance, seems to be the conquest of the people Isaiah is to teach by a foreign enemy. The cities will be wasted, left without inhabitant, the houses without men, and the land will be utterly desolate. Not only this, but the LORD Himself will, through such an enemy, have taken the survivors away to some other place, and the midst of the land will be emptied. In the end, it is clearly verse 12 that suggests the concept of a foreign invasion, since the survivors are dragged to another location; verse 11 itself might be read a few different ways. But with the insight of verse 12, verse 11 might be read more clearly.
The KJV renders the Hebrew very faithfully in the second half of verse 11. There is no question but that the event to come, the time in which Isaiah will be released from his duties to the people, is a desolation brought on by a foreign enemy. The cities are to be wasted and the land utterly desolate, the cities without inhabitant and the houses without man. Until verse 12 softens the blow somewhat, the implication seems to be a complete destruction, a holocaust of sorts. One interesting facet of the Hebrew words in this verse is a connection between "man" and "the land." The former is 'dm and the latter 'dmh, the etymological tie being rather obvious. 'dmh might be most literally translated "clay" or "earth" (in the sense of a handful of earth), and "man" means literally "that which comes from the clay" (the Hebrew word itself is the name "Adam"). In other words, there is a curious tie between the people to whom Isaiah speaks and the land in which they live. They are to be despoiled, and the land is to lie fallow. The separation of the people from the land implies a rending of the Abrahamic covenant, through which the two were originally tied. There is again a hint of the Day of Atonement in this chapter: the Abrahamic covenant is what is in question.
Verse 12
Again the Hebrew is well translated in the KJV. The absolute destruction of the previous verse is qualified as being, at least in part, a deportation of conquered people. The best reading of these two verses would probably to interpret two results of a foreign invasion at play: many are killed, and many are led away into a foreign land, into a wilderness of sorts. Speaking broadly, such a double interpretation calls to mind one of the most important features of the Day of Atonement rites: of two goats who took part in the ritual, one was killed as a sacrifice, and the other was led away into the desert to die, this latter carrying the sins of Israel upon his head. If all of the details above follow carefully a Day of Atonement theme, then these two verses carry the hint that in this Day of Atonement, Israel itself is to carry his own sins into the wilderness, and is itself to suffer as the sacrifice for sin. The hint is powerful to say the least.
Verse 13
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