Isaiah 6:9 - Meaning and Application

God takes Isaiah at his word and sends him on a strange mission. He is to announce the ruin of his people and even help prepare them for it. By misusing the message, they would make it a warning that ends in judgment. This also stood as a picture of the Jewish church in Messiah’s day, when they would stubbornly reject the gospel and be rejected by God in turn.

These verses are quoted or referred to six times in the New Testament. That shows that, in gospel times, these spiritual judgments would be common. They make little noise and often come without public notice, yet they are among the most terrible judgments of all. Isaiah is taught four things here.

First, most of the people he is sent to will ignore his preaching. They will close their ears to it and shut their eyes against the truth God shows them (Isaiah 6:9). He must preach to them, and they will hear the sound of his words, but only that. They will not pay attention, because they do not want to understand. They are set against the true meaning of what he says, so they refuse to see its concern for them. Many hear the sound of God’s word, but never feel its power.

Second, because they will not be made better by his ministry, they will be made worse by it (Isaiah 6:10). Those who choose blindness will be given over to blindness as a judgment. Their hearts will become dull, their ears heavy, and their eyes closed tighter. In the end, they will lose the chance to recover and repent. They will no longer see the danger they are in, hear the warnings they need, or understand the things that lead to peace, so that they may turn and be healed.

Conversion, or turning back to God, is a healing work. Clear understanding is necessary for that turning. God sometimes gives people over to blindness of mind and strong deception because they would not receive the truth with love (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12). The one who is filthy may be left filthy still. Even God’s word can become a means of hardening sinners. Isaiah’s preaching would harden some because they treated it as a pleasant song and drifted into false security. It would harden others because they felt it as a rebuke and grew more angry under it.

Third, this would lead to their complete ruin, as Isaiah 6:11-12 show. The prophet does not question the justice of the sentence. He only asks, “Lord, how long?” He seems to ask whether this terrible condition will last forever, or what the end of it will be. In answer, he is told that it will end in the final destruction of the Jewish church and nation. When God’s word, especially the gospel word, has been so abused, they will be cut off as a covenant people and brought to ruin.

Their cities and country homes will be empty. The land will lie waste, untilled and desolate, because the people who should live there and work it will be removed by sword, famine, or plague. Those who survive will be carried far away into exile, so that the land is left with a great and general emptiness. That once-thriving country will become a desert. Spiritual judgments often bring outward, earthly judgments with them, both on people and on places. This was partly fulfilled when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldeans, and the land rested desolate for seventy years. But because the New Testament applies these words so clearly to the Jews in Christ’s time, they point most fully to their final destruction by the Romans, where they were completely fulfilled.

Fourth, even then, a remnant would be kept as monuments of mercy (Isaiah 6:13). In the final destruction of the Jewish nation there was still a remnant, as Paul says, “At this present time there is a remnant” (Romans 11:5). Here it is described as a tenth, a very small number compared with the many who would perish in unbelief. Under the law, a tithe was God’s portion, so this remnant would be set apart for his service and honor.

This saved remnant would return, both from sin to God and from captivity to their land (Isaiah 6:13; Isaiah 10:21). God would turn them, and they would be turned. They would also be accepted by God, as the tithe was food in his house (Malachi 3:10). Their preservation would be a comfort to the faith and hope of all who long for God’s kingdom. And they would be like a tree in winter, alive even when stripped of leaves, such as a teil-tree or oak, whose life remains in it after the leaves fall.

Though they might lose outward prosperity and share in common troubles, they would recover again. They would rise like a tree in spring. Though they fall, they will not be destroyed completely. There is hope for a tree even after it is cut down, because it can sprout again (Job 14:7). This marked remnant would also be the support of the public good. The holy seed within a person is the true substance of that person. A working principle of grace in the heart keeps life alive there. The one born of God has God’s seed remaining in him (1 John 3:9).

So the holy seed in the land is the true strength of the land. It keeps the nation from falling apart and supports its very foundations (Psalm 75:3). See also (Isaiah 1:9).

Some take the earlier words with this verse and read them like this: as the support at Shallecheth is found in the elms and oaks, so the holy seed is the land’s support. The trees on both sides of the raised way, or terrace path, that led from the king’s palace to the temple (1 Kings 10:5), near the gate of Shallecheth (1 Chronicles 26:16), held up the causeway by keeping the earth from crumbling away. In the same way, the small remaining group of serious, praying people supports the state and helps keep everything from falling into decay.

Some understand the holy seed to mean Christ. The Jewish nation was kept from total ruin because Christ was to come from that people in respect to his human nature (Romans 9:5). “Do not destroy it, because there is a blessing in it” (Isaiah 65:8), and once that blessing had come, the nation was soon destroyed.

This thought is meant to encourage the prophet in his work. Even if most people should perish in their unbelief, his message would still bring life to some. Ministers do not lose all their labor if they are the means of saving even one poor soul.