Isaiah

The holy Prophet Isaiah lived in the eighth century before Christ, in Jerusalem, and is the first of the four major prophets of the Old Testament. The Church calls him the evangelist of the Old Testament, because centuries beforehand he announced with unusual clarity the birth of the Saviour from a Virgin, His sufferings and His glory. He died a martyr, sawn through with a saw.

Family and call

The name Isaiah means in Hebrew "God saves". He was the son of Amoz. An ancient Jewish tradition, which the Greek Synaxarion regards as legend rather than history, makes him kin to the royal house: his father is said to have been a brother of King Amaziah. He was married to a prophetess and had two sons, given symbolic names: Shear-⁠Jashub, "a remnant shall return", and Maher-⁠Shalal-⁠Hash-⁠Baz, "hasten the spoil", a sign of the coming Assyrian invasion.

He was called to the prophetic service in the year of King Uzziah's death. He himself tells that he saw the Lord seated on a high throne, and six-⁠winged seraphim crying to one another, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory". The prophet was seized with fear, counting himself a man of unclean lips, and one of the seraphim touched his lips with a burning coal taken from the altar and told him that his iniquity was taken away and his sin purged. When the Lord asked, "Whom shall I send?", Isaiah answered, "Here am I, send me".

His ministry

He prophesied for nearly sixty years, in the days of the kings Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah and perhaps even Manasseh. The times were hard for Judah: the people had turned to injustice and idolatry, and God allowed invasions by foreign nations in order to correct them. Isaiah rebuked sin and idol worship, announced the afflictions to come, and called to repentance. In times of danger he strengthened his people and awakened hope of deliverance.

When the Assyrian army of Sennacherib threatened Jerusalem, Isaiah encouraged King Hezekiah not to fear, and according to the book of Kings an angel of the Lord struck down the Assyrian army in one night. By the prophet's prayer, OCA adds, fifteen years were added to Hezekiah's life. The same source tells that in a siege of Jerusalem, when the people inside were exhausted with thirst, Isaiah drew by prayer a spring from beneath Mount Zion, called Siloam, "sent by God". To it the Saviour later sent the man born blind to wash.

The prophecy about Christ

The book of Isaiah, of sixty-⁠six chapters, contains rebukes, announcements of the Babylonian captivity and of the return from it in the time of King Cyrus, of the destruction and renewal of Jerusalem, and words about the neighbouring nations. What makes it most precious to the Church are the prophecies of the Messiah: the birth from a Virgin, Emmanuel, "God is with us", then the suffering of the Servant who bears our sins and by whose wounds we are healed, His resurrection and the spread of the Church. For this the holy Fathers called the book the "Gospel according to Isaiah". Modern scholars think the book had more than one hand, but the Church's tradition keeps Isaiah as the author of the whole.

Martyrdom and relics

According to tradition, in the time of King Manasseh, who had turned back to idolatry, Isaiah was sawn through with a wooden saw outside Jerusalem, in extreme old age, being, according to the Romanian Synaxarion, one hundred and twenty-⁠six years old. His body was buried near the pool of Siloam. The Epistle to the Hebrews (11:37) seems to allude to this death.

His relics were carried to Constantinople in the time of Emperor Theodosius the Younger (408-450) and placed in the church of the holy martyr Laurence at Blachernae. Part of his head is preserved at the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos. The Church celebrates him on 9 May.