Isaiah Volunteered for the Prophet's Job Without Asking the Terms

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The Voice That Was Not Speaking to Him

Isaiah sat in the study hall with an idle afternoon on his hands. A voice came down through the roof, and it was not addressed to him. It was not addressed to anyone. It went out over the empty benches the way a notice is read aloud in a market at closing time. "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"

He was on his feet. "Here I am. Send me."

He had volunteered without asking what the errand was, or where it went, or how long it would take.

The Last Two Men Sent Came Back Marked

God did not take him up on it. God began talking about the others instead.

"I sent Micah." The people he was sent to picked up a rod and hit him across the cheek with it, a judge of Israel struck in the face while the town watched.

"I sent Amos." Nobody hit Amos. They gave him a name. His own name sat close enough to a word for a man thick and loaded down at the mouth that the crowd only had to say it slowly to turn him into a joke. Stutterer. They called him that until it stuck to him, and after that nothing he said arrived.

That was the record for the last two men who went. One bruised, one laughed out of the square, and between them not a single person turned around.

The question went out over the benches a second time. Isaiah did not change his answer. "Here I am. Send me."

The Condition Read Out Before the Sending

So God gave him the terms, which is what an open question is for.

"My children are troublesome and insubordinate. If you accept upon yourself to be demeaned by them and to be struck by them, you will go on My mission. If not, you will not go."

Not the errand first and the cost found out later on a road somewhere with a rod already swinging. The cost first, in the room, with the door still open behind him.

Isaiah answered with a line that would end up in his own book. "I gave my body to those who smite, and my cheeks to those who pluck." He put the beating in the past tense before it happened, as though he had already taken it and already walked away.

Then he said the thing no volunteer says. "But I am not worthy to go on a mission to Your children."

The Answer to a Man Who Called Himself Unworthy

He had accepted the rod and refused the honor in the same breath. He would take the blows. He did not believe he had the standing to face them and speak.

God told him why he had been picked, and it had nothing to do with nerve.

"You love righteousness. You love to vindicate My children. You detest wickedness. You detest condemning them."

That was the qualification. Not that Isaiah could carry a hard message, but that carrying one would hurt him to carry. God wanted a prosecutor who hated the job. "Therefore God, your God, has anointed you above your counterparts."

The Prophecy That Came Twice

Above your counterparts was not a compliment. It was a description of how the words would reach him.

Every other prophet in Israel had taken delivery secondhand. Moses carried the spirit and God drew some of it off him and laid it on seventy elders in the wilderness, and the elders prophesied with what had been drawn off. Elijah went up in the whirlwind, and the prophets standing on the far bank watched Elisha come down toward them and said to each other, the spirit of Elijah has rested on Elisha. It moved along a chain, mouth to mouth, thinning as it traveled.

Isaiah would take his straight from the mouth of God with nobody standing in between.

And there was one more clause. The others prophesied single. Isaiah would prophesy double.

Awaken, awaken. Rouse yourself, rouse yourself. I, I am the one who comforts you. Comfort, comfort My people.

Every word arrived twice, the way a name is called twice to someone who has stopped believing anyone is still looking for them. That was the wage set in front of a man who had just agreed to be struck in the face by the people he would be saying it to.