Isaiah Stood Before Kings Who Could Not Silence Him

Ben Sira, writing in Jerusalem around 180 BCE, compiled what may be the oldest systematic praise of Israel's great figures. His text, Sefer Ben Sira, preserved in Hebrew fragments and in the Greek translation known as Sirach, moves through the patriarchs, the judges, the kings, and the prophets, finding in each one a particular form of honor to God. The passage that touches David's court describes the entire arc of Israel's intellectual and spiritual tradition: counselors in their understanding, seers in their prophecy, composers of psalms by decree, princes of proverbs by writing, men of valor and steadfast power, and tranquil upon their foundations.

Tranquil upon their foundations. That phrase, applied to the great figures of Israel's history, is doing something important. It is describing people who were not moved by pressure from below. The foundations held.

Isaiah was one of those people. He had stood before kings and not been silenced, and it eventually cost him his life. But before the martyrdom, there was the vision.

According to Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews, drawing on midrashic and apocryphal traditions assembled in the early 20th century, Isaiah's vision in the Temple came during the reign of a wicked king. He stood in the Temple and was seized by what the Merkavah tradition calls the throne vision, the same vision Ezekiel would describe a century later with more detail: the seraphim, the six wings, the call and response of holy, holy, holy (Isaiah 6:3). Isaiah was enthralled by the hymns of praise and, lost in admiration, failed to join in.

Then the rebuke came. Isaiah said: Woe is me, for I was silent. Woe is me that I did not join the chorus of the angels. Had I done so, like the angels, I might have become immortal. And then he added: I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

God's response to this was sharp. Of yourself you can say what you choose. But who gave you the right to call My children a people of unclean lips? The seraph took a live coal from the altar with tongs, then took a second pair of tongs to hold the first, because the coal was too hot to touch even with angelic hands, and touched Isaiah's lips. Not to destroy. To teach. From that day, Isaiah became the prophet whose primary work was defense of Israel, consolation of Israel, the declaration of Israel's brilliant destiny in plainer terms than any prophet before or after him.

The Ben Sira praise of Isaiah in the Apocrypha captures exactly this: With a great spirit he saw the end, and comforted the mourners of Zion. Eternally he told them what would be, and secrets before they occurred. He saw the end and told it to people who could not see it. He comforted mourners who had not yet lost what they would lose. He spoke in advance of the exile, in advance of the return, in advance of the temple that would be rebuilt.

Nehemiah is in the same passage: Glorious is his memory, who raised up our ruins and healed our breaches and set up gates and bars. The practical man after the visionary prophet. Isaiah saw the consolation from afar; Nehemiah built the wall that made it concrete. Both are called to the same honor in Ben Sira's catalog. The seer and the builder sit in the same row of the great.

And above them: Adam. The text ends its survey with a striking hierarchy. Few have been created upon the earth like Enoch. Like Joseph was ever a man born? And then: above every living thing was the glory of Adam. The prophet, the patriarch, the first man. Isaiah stood in a long line that stretched back to the beginning, the line of those who looked clearly at the world and spoke what they saw without softening it to suit the kings who were listening.

Righteousness was Isaiah's foundation. Ginzberg records that the wicked king Ahaz concealed himself from Isaiah, disguising himself when he went into the streets so the prophet would not recognize him and rebuke him. He could not silence the prophet, so he hid from him. That avoidance, joined to the fact that Ahaz had a pious son and had come from a pious father, is what kept Ahaz from losing his portion in the world to come entirely. The prophet survived the king. The king had to hide.

Ben Sira's catalog includes Nehemiah alongside Isaiah: glorious is his memory, who raised up our ruins and healed our breaches and set up gates and bars. Nehemiah was the practical man after the visionary prophet. Isaiah saw the consolation from a distance of centuries; Nehemiah built the wall that made it concrete. In Ben Sira's ranking, both belong in the same row of honor. The seer and the builder share the same dignity because they serve the same thing: the survival of what God entrusted to Israel, whether that means keeping a city safe or keeping a people awake to their own future.

And at the top of Ben Sira's list, above the prophets and builders and wise men, stands Adam. Above every living thing was the glory of Adam. Isaiah was great because he saw clearly and spoke what he saw. But Adam was the measure against which all seeing was calibrated. To be a prophet in Israel was to carry some trace of what Adam carried in the garden before the expulsion: direct awareness of the divine, so close it was almost unbearable to the human body.

The counselors in their understanding, the seers in their prophecy, the composers of psalms by decree. Each one tranquil upon their foundations. Each one holding something that the kings could not take away, because it was not given by kings in the first place.