It’s a time of international anxiety. Great powers are manoeuvring, and long established alliances seem to be shifting. The sense of security felt by former generations now seems like naïve complacency; exceptionalism, even. For there are wars, and fears of war, and they are no longer far away. Erstwhile allies now feel like threats. There are reports of chilling war crimes. This is the world we enter when we open Isaiah at chapter 6. Sorry, did you think I was talking about something else?
B ut the political background is important to understanding the significance of this well-known passage. Because the action starts in the year that king Uzziah died. Perhaps we don’t notice this. Perhaps we hear the words and hurry on to the excitement of what follows. But these words are a marker of threat. They would have evoked more than a frisson of anxiety in Isaiah’s day.
A bit of back-story. After the death of king Solomon, generations earlier, there was a civil war, which resulted in the permanent division of the nation of Israel (1 Kings 12). From that time on, they were separate two nations. The southern one, called Judah, had Jerusalem and the temple within its territory. It also had an uninterrupted dynasty of kings descended from David.
In the northern nation, things were quite different. They got to keep the name Israel (although we should notice that the prophets use ‘Israel’ to refer to the people of God in general, or even occasionally the nation of Judah). But they didn’t have the temple – which led to all sorts of problems – and they didn’t have the Davidic dynasty.
In fact, although Israel was sometimes more prosperous than Judah, it was very troubled in every other way. Their kings were less faithful – we might say even less faithful – than the kings of Judah. And they didn’t have a single enduring dynasty, but they endured coup after coup after coup, with all the instability and threat that such things bring.
But our action is set in Judah, in the southern, more stable nation. Or, more stable until now. Because this is the year that king Uzziah died.
Uzziah, also known in the book of Kings as Azariah, has had a 52-yearlong reign. It’s been prosperous and peaceful. And perhaps the people of Judah felt just a bit complacent in those days. The news of empires Not that things were stable beyond Judah’s borders. When messengers arrived with news from Israel, they had troubling tales to tell. In Uzziah’s 38th year, king Zechariah was assassinated by a man called Shallum, who took the throne in his place. But Shallum didn’t get to enjoy the throne for long. Only one month into his reign, he in turn was assassinated, by a man called Mehanem. 2 Kings 15:16 records an appalling war crime that he committed.
