he asks 'how long?'  It was fitting that the man who was to utter woe after

woe against his own people should first of all be brought to say of himself

'woe is me'; and so here, even though he perceived the judgment to be just,

the prophet must have pleased the Lord by his evident pity.  The Lord's

answer is twofold, first, the desolation of judgment, and then the pledge of

'And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and

the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord

have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst

of the land.  But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and

shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in

them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the

substance thereof' (Isa. 6:11,12,13).

Here is no small disturbance among the people, but a laying waste and

depopulation that was to reduce the land to 'utter desolation'.

The removing 'far away' of verse 12 was but the sequel to Israel's

moral and spiritual separation from the Lord:

'Forasmuch as this people draw near Me with their mouth, and with their

lips do honour Me, but have removed their heart far from Me' (Isa.

In contrast to this, when at last Israel are restored and their

forsaking is for ever past (Isa. 54:7), then we read:

'In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from

oppression' (54:14).

The verses we are considering in Isaiah 6 foreshadow not only the

Assyrian and the Babylonian captivities, but also the great dispersion that

followed the overthrow of Jerusalem in a.d. 70, for at the end of the Acts,

Isaiah 6:10 is quoted for the last time.

The Lord's words in verses 11 and 12 indicate a long and severe

judgment, but the chapter ends with a note of hope.  If we turn back to

Isaiah 1, we learn there that Israel was saved from utter destruction 'as

Sodom and Gomorrah', because of a 'remnant' (Isa. 1:9).  Similarly in Romans

9 to 11, we find that the apostle uses the same argument, the remnant saved

in Romans 9:27 were a first -fruits, pledging the salvation of all Israel in

the future (Rom. 11:16,26).  So here, it is this same idea of a first -fruits

that we find in the last verse of Isaiah 6.

We must now pay careful attention to the wording of this last verse.

We observe first of all that the words 'their leaves' are in italics, and

therefore added by the translators.  The word 'cast', which precedes the

italics, refers to the felling of a tree rather than to the falling of

leaves.  Moreover there is no 'substance' in leaves that can in any sense be

regarded as a pledge of restoration, especially when we learn that the Hebrew

word for 'substance' is usually translated 'pillar'.  This latter word suits

the idea of the stem of a tree, and this is undoubtedly the intention of the

Some translators have looked upon the words 'shall return' in verse 13

as giving the idea of repetition, as though to imply the thought of repeated