Житие святого пророка Исайи

The time of the prophetic ministry of Saint Isaiah (in Hebrew this name is pronounced “Iesha-Jahwe” and means “salvation of Jehovah,” i.e., salvation received from the Lord) was a difficult time in the life of the Jewish people: during the days of this great prophet, the kingdom of Israel ended its existence, and the kingdom of Judah lived out its last years before the Babylonian captivity. This sad fate - the subjugation of the “chosen people” under the heavy hand of pagan kings was his punishment from the Lord for the fact that he left obedience to God, becoming more and more mired in lawlessness and idolatry. The apostasy from the covenant of God was especially great in the kingdom of Israel, which suffered accelerated punishment for this, “in the kingdom of Judah, from time to time, hope for a better future shone through,” and if the fire of holy zeal for God in Judea did not completely go out and the Lord still delayed in correcting it, then the kingdom of Judah owes this mainly to the prophetic activity of Saint Isaiah. The holy prophet Isaiah, who came from the tribe of Benjamin, was born around 760 BC; he was the son of Amos, about whom nothing is reported in the books of Holy Scripture and whom Jewish tradition identifies with Amos, the brother of King Amaziah. Saint Isaiah's place of permanent residence was Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. During the years of conscious childhood and adolescence of the prophet, the glorious reign of the wise and kind king Uzziah falls; this reign undoubtedly had a beneficial religious and political influence on the soul of the future prophet. Nothing is actually known about the days of Saint Isaiah’s early youth, but the revelation of the glory of the Lord to him and his election by the Lord to great service give indisputable evidence of the piety of the prophet even at this time of his life; His prophetic speeches speak about the same thing, from which one can see his excellent knowledge of the sacred books of his people; Obviously, from an early age Saint Isaiah studied the law of God. As a pious man, he also took a God-fearing wife, with whom he had two sons; it is known about his wife that she was also a prophetess (Is. 7:3, 8:3, 8:18). Saint Isaiah was called to prophetic service in the year of the death of King Uzziah (in 737) by a special vision. One day he was present in the church during the Divine service; before his eyes were the courtyard of the priests and the sanctuary. Looking prayerfully towards the sanctuary, Saint Isaiah suddenly saw that the church began to move apart; the interior of the sanctuary opens before his spiritual eyes, then the curtain disappears, hiding the mysterious Holy of Holies, where the amazed and shocked prophet sees a solemn vision of the Lord of heaven and earth, “sitting on a throne, high and exalted,” standing as if between heaven and earth; the edges of God's royal vestments filled the church. Around the Lord “stood the Seraphim; each of them had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And they called to each other and said: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory!” 3035 From the loud praise of the Seraphim, “the tops of the gates shook and the church was filled with incense.” Saint Isaiah was horrified and exclaimed in fear: - Woe is me! I'm dead! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people also of unclean lips 3036, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts 3037. Then one of the Seraphim flew to the distraught prophet, holding in his hand a burning coal taken with tongs from the altar, i.e., as St. Basil the Great explains, from the “heavenly altar.” He touched the prophet's lips with the words: “Behold, this has touched your lips, and your iniquity is taken away from you, and your sin is cleansed.” Immediately after this the prophet heard the mysterious voice of Jehovah asking: -Who should I send? And who will go for Us? 3038 Filled with sacred confidence, Saint Isaiah expressed his desire to take upon himself the responsible and difficult duty of being a preacher of the will of God for the “stiff-necked” Jewish people: “Here I am, send me,” he said. The Lord did not reject the proposal of Saint Isaiah and expressed His consent in the following words: “Go and tell this people: You will hear with your ears and not understand, and with your eyes you will look and not see.” For the heart of this people is hardened, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have closed their eyes, lest they should see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and be converted, that I may heal them. Isaiah asked the Lord: how long will the people remain in such moral brutality, and received from Him in response a terrible revelation about the coming disasters that would strike Israel: - Until the cities are desolate and left without inhabitants and houses without people, and until this land is completely desolate (Is. 6: 1-11) The vision ended, and the Spirit of God rested on Saint Isaiah, revealing to him a mysterious and distant future as the present and strengthening him in the difficult struggle with moral disorders among his native people. The prophet’s people-loving heart did not know its political division, and obedient to the will of God, he did not limit his prophetic ministry to the boundaries of one kingdom. However, when Saint Isaiah delivered his prophetic sermon, the days of the kingdom of Israel were already numbered, and the prophet had no choice but to predict the great “woe” already hanging over Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom: - Woe (Samaria), the wreath of pride of the drunken Ephraimites, the withered flower of its beautiful decoration, which is at the top of the fat valley of those slain by wine. Behold, the mighty and mighty one is with the Lord... with force he throws him to the ground. The wreath of pride of the drunken Ephraimites is trampled under foot. And with the withered flower of its beautiful decoration... the same thing happens as happens with a fig that is ripe before its time, which, as soon as someone sees it, he immediately takes it in his hand and swallows it (Is. 28: 1-4). This sad prophecy was soon fulfilled. In 722, Samaria was taken by Sargon, king of Assyria, and the kingdom of Israel ended forever 3039. So the Israelites, who abandoned “all the commandments of the Lord God,” were rejected by Him from His presence. “There was none left but one tribe of Judah” (2 Kings 17:16–18). With the fall of Samaria, Saint Isaiah focused his prophetic gaze primarily on the fate of the kingdom of Judah, in which, with the accession of Ahaz, moral corruption especially intensified. After the kings of Amaziah, Uzziah and Jotham, the kingdom of Judah passed to Ahaz, elevated to a significant degree of state power, so that the Ammonites and many neighboring Philistine cities were tributaries of the Jews. At the same time, significant wealth accumulated in Judea, which in the hands of the wicked Ahaz was put to use unworthy of God’s chosen people. An Israeli by birth and a pagan by heart, Ahaz set out to make Jerusalem a complete resemblance to the capitals of the pagan states of Phenicia and especially Assyria. He introduced in Jerusalem the worship of the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies (2 Kings 23:5), and was not afraid to desecrate even the very church of Jehovah. In the house of the Lord, an idol of Astarte, the goddess of debauchery, was placed, and here at the church there were “houses of fornication”, where women wove clothes for Astarte (2 Kings 23:6-7); at the very entrance to the church there were white horses dedicated to the solar god; Some of the premises intended for the storage of sacred vessels and for the residence of priests who carried out their duties were converted into stables (2 Kings 23:11). Ahaz moved the very altar of burnt offering, erected by Solomon, from its place in front of the sanctuary to the north side of the church and replaced it with a new one, built according to the Assyrian model (2 Kings 16:14–15). Altars were built in all corners of Jerusalem so that those passing by could burn incense on them (2 Chron. 28:24); at the gates of Jerusalem and in other cities of Judah there were “high places” remaining from earlier times for making sacrifices to Jehovah (2 Kings 15:4, 35); their existence with the construction of the church of the Lord was already illegal (1 Kings 3:2; Deut.12:13–14). In honor of the Phoenician deity Moloch, a new church was erected under the very walls of Jerusalem, in the valley of Ginnomova; here stood a large copper idol of Moloch; Inside there was a stove, and under the outstretched hands there was an altar, to which the children were sacrificed. Ahaz himself set an example of zealous devotion to this inhuman idolatry: he sacrificed one of his sons to Molech (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chronicles 28:3). For this wickedness, which corrupted the kingdom of Judah and aroused the righteous anger of the Lord, Judea soon suffered punishment, which served as a harbinger of more formidable punishments of God in the future. The Israeli king Pekah and the Syrian Rezin invaded the kingdom of Judah with united forces; robbing and devastating everything on the road, they reached Jerusalem itself; In addition, the Edomites and Philistines rebelled, regaining their independence. “So the Lord humiliated Judah because of Ahaz, the king of Judah, because he corrupted Judah and sinned grievously against the Lord” (2 Chronicles 28:19). When the allied kings Pekah and Rezin stood at the gates of Jerusalem, horror and confusion reigned in the latter, like in an oak grove shaken by a strong wind (Is. 7:2). But the merciful Lord did not abandon His sinful people: along with punishment, He sent them consolation and warning through the prophet Isaiah. Having met, by the command of God, Ahaz on the road to the Belilnichye field at the water pipes of the upper pond, Saint Isaiah said to him: – Observe and be calm; Do not be afraid, and do not let your heart become sad... (Rezin and Pekah are the ends of the smoking brands) plotting evil against you, saying: “Let us go against Judea and stir it up and take possession of it”... But the Lord God says this: this will not happen and will not come true. Seeing Ahaz’s distrust of his words, Saint Isaiah said to him: “Ask yourself a sign from the Lord your God: ask either in the depths or on the heights.” To this Ahaz, hiding his unbelief by his reluctance to tempt the Lord, objected: – I will not ask and I will not tempt the Lord. Then the prophet, reproaching the king for unbelief, points to the coming miraculous birth of the Messiah-Christ from the Virgin as a sign confirming the fulfillment of his words; Having predicted the speedy removal of Rezin and Pekah, he at the same time predicts a future more terrible invasion of the Assyrians: - Listen to the house of David!... The Lord Himself gives you a sign: behold, a virgin will be with child and give birth to a Son, and they will call His name Immanuel 3040. He will eat milk and honey; Until he understands to reject the bad and choose the good, the land that you fear will be abandoned by both of its kings. But the Lord will bring upon you and upon your nations, and upon your father’s house days such as have not come since Ephraim fell away from Judah, he will bring upon the king of Assyria (Is. 7:1–17). But the unbelieving Ahaz preferred hope in God to hope in the king of Assyria, against whom the prophet warned him. Seeking protection against the kings who entered Judea, Ahaz entered into an alliance with Tiglath-Pelasser II, the king of Assyria, and at the same time gave him all the treasures not only from his royal house, but also from the church; he himself went to Feglathpelassar in Damascus to bow and here he received a drawing of the already mentioned Assyrian altar. As a reward for this submission, the Assyrian king ravages Syria and part of Palestine, which made up the kingdom of Israel. Ahaz, having plundered the church, closed its great doors; the lamps of the church went out; incense was no longer offered and the holy place was left in complete neglect. The true worship of Jehovah, replaced by the ever-growing disgusting idolatry, was almost forgotten (2 Kings 16:5-10; 2 Chronicles 28:5-25). With the death of Ahaz, his twenty-year-old son Hezekiah, who was one of the best kings of the chosen people, ascended the throne (in 728). Hezekiah's father left him with a sad legacy. The kingdom of Judah, which paid a humiliating and ruinous tax to Assyria, was also shaken by the vices that undermined its internal structure. Among the upper classes of the population, who concentrated the court in their hands, untruth reigned, and violence against the poor was common on the part of money-loving judges (Mic. 3:9-11; Is. 1:17, 1-23, 3:14-15); priests and teachers of the people suffered from the same vices (Micah 3:11), and the voice of true prophets was drowned out by false self-seeking prophets (Isa.30:20-21; Hos.9:8). The entire people, mired in debauchery (Is. 1:21), and far from the Lord in heart, at best, fulfilled only the ritual part of the law 3041, without following its instructions in life. Therefore, the Lord, through the prophet Isaiah, addressed such a touching and formidable admonition to His people, calling them to correction: “I,” says the Lord, “raised and elevated my sons, but they rebelled against Me.” The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger; But Israel does not know Me, My people do not understand. Alas, a sinful people, a people burdened with iniquities, a tribe of evildoers, sons of destruction!..., they forsook the Lord (Jehovah), despised the Holy One of Israel, and turned back. What else should we hit you with if you continue to persist? The whole head is full of ulcers, and the whole heart is withered. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there is no healthy place: ulcers, spots, festering wounds, uncleaned and unbandaged and not softened with oil... Hear the word of the Lord, princes of Sodom; Hearken unto the law of our God, O people of Gomorrah. Why do I need the multitude of your sacrifices?.. I am satisfied with burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle; and I do not want the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before My face, who demands of you that you trample my courts! Bear no more vain gifts: smoking is disgusting to Me; I cannot tolerate the new moon and Saturdays, holiday gatherings: lawlessness and celebration. My soul hates your new moons and your holidays: they are a burden to Me; It's hard for me to carry them. And when you stretch out your hands, I close My eyes from you; and when you multiply your prayers, I do not hear; your hands are full of blood ( Isa. 1:2-15 ). Your silver has become dross; your wine is spoiled by water. Your princes are lawbreakers and accomplices of thieves; they all love gifts and chase bribes; the orphans do not protect, and the widow’s cause does not reach them (Isa. 1:22–23). Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove your evil deeds from before My eyes; stop doing evil; learn to do good, seek truth, save the oppressed, defend the orphan, stand up for the widow. Then come and let us reason together... Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they will be as white as wool (Isa. 1:16–18). King Hezekiah, a maternal descendant of the prophet Zechariah, was the complete opposite of his father, a wicked man and inclined towards everything Assyrian: Hezekiah was devoted to national morals and customs and, burning with love for the true faith, set the goal of his life to restore the veneration of Jehovah and cleanse the land desecrated by paganism. This activity was not easy among the people, the majority of whom were distinguished by pagan inclinations. Here, the prophets he respected came to the aid of the pious king, and at their head was Saint Isaiah. He gathered around him many students who, being enlightened by their teacher, in turn themselves acted as educators of the people. Thus, the prophetic school created by Saint Isaiah provided powerful support to King Hezekiah in the religious and moral revival of the people. – Hezekiah’s first task was to cleanse the temple from pagan abominations and restore worship there (2 Chronicles 29:3-36); At the same time, by destroying the “high places,” Hezekiah put an end to private worship. In an effort to eradicate idolatry, he did not even spare the national sacred treasure: on his orders, the copper serpent, idolized by many Jews, made almost 800 years ago by Moses (Num. 21:9) and standing in the middle of Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:4) was destroyed. Then, after the fall of the kingdom of Israel, to which Hezekiah, fearing for his own, could not help, the Passover was solemnly celebrated in Jerusalem in the presence of many Jews in 3042, which had probably previously been celebrated privately, in families (2 Chron. 30). Meanwhile, the conqueror of Samaria, Sargon, died and his youngest son Sennacherib ascended the throne. The death of Sargon marked the beginning of an uprising that spread in a wide wave among the peoples languishing under the heavy yoke of the Assyrians, who inhabited a vast area that covered all of Western Asia and from here extending further to the banks of the Nile. The rebels were led by the Egyptian pharaoh Seti and Tirgak, the king of the Ethiopians. King Hezekiah also joined the indignant nations. With huge hordes, Sennacherib moved to pacify the rebels. Having set Egypt as the final goal of his campaign, he first entered Palestine from the north. Having again subjugated some indignant nationalities here to the Assyrian power, Sennacherib moved part of his troops to Jerusalem. After taking by storm and plundering 46 fortified cities of Judea, Sennacherib’s detachment soon besieged its capital, Jerusalem; Sennacherib himself surrounded Lachish, also a city of the Kingdom of Judah on the border with Egypt. Horror gripped the inhabitants of besieged Jerusalem, to whom Saint Isaiah did not fail to address with a word of encouragement, predicting that God’s punishment would await the Assyrians and precisely in the land of the chosen people (Is. 14:24–25). But the prophet’s word did not infuse courage into souls troubled by fear. The siege of the city dragged on, since Hezekiah did not want to surrender Jerusalem and strenuously strengthened it; To complete the disaster, famine appeared, and some, in despair, began to indulge in debauchery, which caused a formidable denunciation from Saint Isaiah (Is. 22: 1-2, 12-14). Finally, seeing the futility of resistance to the Assyrians, Hezekiah decided to surrender: he sent ambassadors to Lachish to Sennacherib with an expression of submission. Sennacherib lifted the siege of Jerusalem, imposing a tribute on the kingdom of Judah in a larger amount than before, so that to pay it it was necessary to remove the gold that still remained from the previous looting of the church on the gates and doorposts leading to the sanctuary. But then Sennacherib heard that the Egyptian pharaoh Seti, with Tirgak, the king of the Ethiopians, who had moved his troops from the banks of the Upper Nile, had come out against him and was amazed by him. Under such circumstances, Sennacherib's submission to Hezekiah seemed nothing more than a treacherous desire to gain time until the allied kings came to the rescue. Therefore, Sennacherib, not paying attention to the agreement that had just been concluded with Hezekiah, again sent a detachment with three military leaders to Jerusalem, among whom was Rapsaks, the chief of staff. The detachment found the gates of Jerusalem locked and its walls ready for defense. The leaders of the Assyrian army entered into negotiations with representatives of King Hezekiah, convincing Jerusalem to voluntarily surrender; out of necessity, negotiations were conducted through the walls of the city in the presence of many people. They ended with the following blasphemous speech from Rapsak, addressed to all the besieged: – Listen to the words... of the great Assyrian king. Thus says the king: Let not Hezekiah deceive you... and do not encourage you... by the Lord, saying: The Lord will save us, and this city will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me, and let everyone eat the fruit of his vine and his fig tree, and let everyone drink water from his own well, until I come and take you to a land like your land, a land of grain and wine, a land of fruits and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, and you will live and not you will die. Do not listen to Hezekiah, who deceives you by saying: The Lord will save you. Did the gods of the nations, each his own land, save from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Separvaim, Ena and Ivva? Have they saved Samaria from my hand? Who of all the gods of these lands saved their land from my hand? So will the Lord really save Jerusalem from my hand? (2 Kings 18:28–35). When this speech was conveyed to Hezekiah, he tore his clothes as a sign of great sorrow and, putting on sackcloth, went to the church; to the prophet Isaiah he sent Eliakim and Shebna, court officials, along with the oldest priests; Hezekiah's messengers, dressed in sackcloth like the king, said to Saint Isaiah: - a day of sorrow and punishment, and this day of shame... Perhaps the Lord your God will hear all the words of Rapsak, whom the king of Assyria sent... to blaspheme the living God and revile with words that the Lord your God heard. Bring a prayer for those who remain who are still alive (2 Kings 19:3-4). To these words, which breathed with some uncertainty, the prophet of God gave an answer full of firm faith in the help of the Lord: “Then tell your master,” thus says the Lord: “Do not be afraid of the words that you heard with which the servants of the king of Assyria reviled Me.” Behold, I will send a spirit into him, and he will hear the message and return to his land, and I will smite him with the sword in his land 3043 (2 Kings 19:6-7). Encouraged by the prophet, Hezekiah responded to the ambassadors of the Assyrian king by refusing to surrender the city, although after this he sent an embassy to Sennacherib on his part, wanting to save his country from the invasion of the Assyrians by assuring him of the absence of treasonous plans. Hezekiah's envoys found Sennacherib already in Lachish itself and were unsuccessful; Sennacherib didn’t even listen to them. To secure the rear of his troops, he decided to take Jerusalem. Not wanting to waste time besieging the city, he first tried to persuade Hezekiah to surrender the city without a fight; Therefore, Sennacherib sent a second embassy to Hezekiah with a letter in which, trusting in his power, he convinced him to abandon hope for the salvation of the city by Jehovah. Having received the scroll, Hezekiah went to the church of God, unfolded it before the face of the Lord and turned to Him with the following heartfelt prayer: - Lord God of Israel, who sits on the Cherubim! You alone are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You created heaven and earth. Incline, O Lord, Thy ear and hear (me); Open, O Lord, Thy eyes and look and hear the words of Sennacherib, who sent to revile You, the living God. True, O Lord! The Assyrian kings destroyed the peoples and their lands, and threw their gods into the fire. But these are not gods, but products of human hands, wood and stone - that’s why they destroyed them. And now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, and all the kingdoms of the earth will know that You, O Lord, are one God (2 Kings 19:15–19). The holy prophet Isaiah also added his prayer to Hezekiah’s prayer (2 Chronicles 32:20). And their prayer was heard. The Lord, through the prophet Isaiah, addressed Hezekiah with this soul-strengthening word: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: what you prayed to Me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard.” This is the word that the Lord spoke about him: The virgin daughter of Zion will despise you, the virgin daughter of Zion will laugh at you, the daughter of Jerusalem will shake her head after you. Whom did you blame and revile? And to whom did you raise your voice and raise your eyes so high? On the Holy One of Israel... Because of your insolence against Me, and because your arrogance has reached My ears, I will put a ring in your nostrils... and I will bring you back the same way you came. And here is a sign for you, Hezekiah: this year you shall eat what has grown from the fallen grain, and the next year - the native grain; and in the third year you shall sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof. And what remained in the house of Judah remained will again take root below and bear fruit above 3044. For out of Jerusalem will come the remnant, and the saved from Mount Zion 3045 . Therefore, this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: he will not enter this city and will not throw arrows there, nor will he approach it with a shield, nor will he build a rampart against it... I will guard this city to save it for Myself and for the sake of David My servant (2 Kings 19:21-22, 28-34). And the Lord did not hesitate to miraculously demonstrate His power over the Assyrian king and His favor to Judea. With the sun's dawn, which dissipated the darkness of the night, the fear and anxiety that hung over Jerusalem dissipated: that same night “the Angel of the Lord went and struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp; and they arose in the morning, and behold, all the bodies were dead” (2 Kings 19:35), and the king of Assyria “returned in shame to his land” (2 Chronicles 32:21). The inhabitants of Jerusalem received enormous booty, filling the Assyrian camp that had lost its defenders 3046. Enjoying the peace, Hezekiah set about the peaceful improvement of his state, which gradually gained the respect of the surrounding nations (2 Chronicles 29:22-23). But these peaceful and happy days were replaced by a new alarm: King Hezekiah fell mortally ill; The prophet Isaiah appeared at his bedside and conveyed the sad word of the Lord, so that Hezekiah would make a will regarding his home, since a quick death awaited him. Living in the times of the Old Testament, when in the darkness beyond the grave there was barely a glimpse of the Coming Redeemer, the Conqueror of hell and death, moreover, deprived of an heir to whom he could transfer the kingdom, and not yet saturated with life, Hezekiah turned in despair to the wall from the sunlight and wept bitterly: “Oh! “Lord,” he exclaimed, “remember that I walked before You faithfully and with a heart devoted to You, and did what was right in Your sight” (2 Kings 20:3). The prophet Isaiah, who left the sick king, “had not yet left the city, when the word came to him” of the Lord, who heard the prayer of His faithful servant: “Go back and say to Hezekiah, the ruler of my people: Thus says the Lord God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you; On the third day you will go to the house of the Lord: and I will add fifteen years to your days, and I will save you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for Myself and for the sake of David My servant (2 Kings 20:5-6). To heal Hezekiah’s illness, the prophet Isaiah ordered the use of the most common medicine in the East, namely a layer of figs: it, by order of the prophet, was applied to the abscess 3047 that appeared on the king’s body. To encourage the king and at his request, the Lord gave him a miraculous sign, destroying any doubt that the recovered Hezekiah would “go to the house of the Lord.” The prophet Isaiah said to the king: “Here is a sign from the Lord for you, that the Lord will fulfill the word that He has spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten steps or turn back ten steps?” – It’s easy for a shadow to move forward ten steps; no, let the shadow go back ten steps. – And Isaiah the prophet cried to the Lord, and brought the shadow back on the steps, where it went down the steps of Ahaz ten steps 3048 (2 Kings 20:8-11). The book of the prophet Isaiah records the prayer that Hezekiah said upon receiving the good news of his recovery. This prayer, in such touching words, depicts the mood of the king’s soul on the eve of death and upon deliverance from it: “I said within myself: at the end of my days I must go to the gates of the underworld; I am deprived of the remainder of my years, I said: I will not see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living; I will no longer see a person among those living in the world. My dwelling is removed from its place and carried away from me, like a shepherd’s hut; I must cut off my life like a weaver: He (i.e. God) will cut me off from the warp; day and night I waited for You to send me death. I waited until the morning; like a lion, He crushed all my bones; day and night I waited for You to send me death. I made sounds like a crane, like a swallow, I yearned like a dove; My eyes sadly looked to the sky: Lord! I’m cramped: save me. What will I say? He told me, and He did. I will spend all the years of my life quietly, remembering the sorrow of my soul... It was for my good that great sorrow came, and You delivered my soul from the pit of destruction (i.e. from the grave), threw all my sins behind His back 3049 (Is. 38:11–15, 17). The rumor about the miraculous recovery of King Hezekiah quickly spread and reached even such a distant country as Babylonia. Its king, Merodach Baladan, who still retained the independence of the state under the mighty pressure of the Assyrians, took this opportunity to send an embassy to Hezekiah under the guise of congratulating him on his recovery and finding out in more detail about the miraculous sign that accompanied him; the real purpose of the embassy was to conclude an offensive and defensive alliance with Hezekiah; The embassy brought a letter and gifts from the Babylonian king to Hezekiah. Hezekiah rejoiced at the embassy coming from the king of a vast state, and showed him all his treasures. This embassy was a test for Hezekiah from God, “to reveal everything that was in his heart.” And the pious king could not stand the test: having just recently seen the manifestation of God’s mercy above him, combined with a miraculous sign, Hezekiah, carried away by vanity, in which there was no place for the thought of the glory of the Lord, transfers his trust from God to people and to himself. But the very revelation by Hezekiah to the ambassadors of the Babylonian sovereign of all the secrets of his state was a revelation of the weakness of the human mind in the knowledge of the inscrutable destinies of God, according to which Judea was supposed to fall precisely from the invasion of the Babylonian ruler. With such a sad revelation, the former punishment of Hezekiah for arrogance, the prophet Isaiah appeared to the king of Judah, after the removal of the ambassadors. Having learned from Hezekiah himself that the ambassadors had come “from a distant land from Babylon” and that “there was not a single thing left that the king would not show them in all his dominion,” Isaiah said to the king of Judah: - Hear the word of the Lord: Behold, the days will come, and everything that is in your house, and everything that your fathers have gathered up until today, will be taken to Babylon; there will be nothing left. Of your sons who will come from you, whom you will give birth to, they will be taken and they will be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. “The word of the Lord is good, which you have spoken,” the repentant Hezekiah answered with humility, praying at the same time that peace and prosperity would accompany at least only his days (2 Kings 20:13–19; 2 Chronicles 32:31; Isaiah 39). The Lord did not reject the prayer of the erring king: Hezekiah “slept in peace with his fathers” (2 Kings 20:21) and was buried with all possible honors, in the presence of a multitude of Jews, over the tombs of the sons of David in Jerusalem 3050 (2 Chronicles 32:33). Soon the great prophet Saint Isaiah also ended his days: according to Jewish tradition, accepted by Tertullian, Lactantius and Blessed Jerome, Saint Isaiah died a martyr, sawn apart by a saw 3051 under Hezekiah’s successor Manasseh. If, as Saint Cyril of Jerusalem says, “not one of the prophets was unaware of Christ,” then this should be said especially about the prophet Isaiah. His book contains predictions about Christ the Savior so complete and clear that, rightly, through the mouth of the church fathers, Saint Isaiah was given the title “Old Testament Evangelist.” In this great Old Testament prophet we find a detailed image of the Coming Messiah. Prefaced by the coming of the Forerunner (Is. 40:3), the Messiah, descending in humanity from the line of Jesse (Is. 11:1), will be born of a husbandless Virgin (Is. 7:14) and will be filled with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Is. 11:2) and bear names that undoubtedly indicate His Divine dignity (Is. 9:6). The humble and meek Servant of God, beloved by the Lord and called by Him to proclaim the truth to the peoples, the Messiah “will not break a bruised reed or quench the smoking flax,” while at the same time showing great power in establishing his kingdom on earth (Isa. 9:1–4), which will be the kingdom of righteousness and peace and knowledge of God, “then the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the ox will live together, and a little child will lead them, and a cow will graze with the she-bear, and their cubs will lie down together, and a little child will lead them, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and the child will play in the asp’s hole, and the child will stretch out his hand into the snake’s nest. They will not do evil or harm in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9). But the advent of this kingdom must be preceded by humiliation, suffering and, finally, the death of the Messiah for the sins of people: “Lord,” exclaims the prophet, as if standing at the cross of the Crucified Savior, “who believed what was heard from us (i.e., the sermon about the incarnate Son of God) and to whom was the arm of the Lord revealed? For He rose up before Him as an offspring and as a sprout from dry ground; There is no form or greatness in Him; and we saw Him, and there was no appearance in Him that would attract us to Him. He was despised and belittled before men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with pain, and we turned our faces away from Him; He was despised and we thought nothing of Him.” Whereas “He took upon Himself our infirmities, and bore our diseases, and we thought that He was smitten, punished and humiliated by God. But He was wounded for our sins and tormented for our iniquities; the punishment of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we were healed; We all went astray like sheep, each of us turned to his own way, and the Lord laid the sins of us all on Him. He was tortured, but He suffered voluntarily and did not open His mouth; as a sheep was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. He was taken from bonds and judgment, but who can explain His family? For He is cut off from the land of the living; He suffered execution for the crime of his people. They assigned him a grave with the evildoers, but He was buried with a rich man, because He committed no sin and there was no lie in His mouth.” Next to this image of the suffering Messiah, majestic in its immeasurable humility, the prophet depicts the Messiah, the Founder of the Church, glorified for His suffering: “It pleased the Lord to strike Him and He gave Him over to torture; when His soul brings a sacrifice of propitiation, He will see long-lasting offspring, and the will of the Lord will be successfully fulfilled by His hand; He will look at the feat of His soul with contentment; through his knowledge He, the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify many and bear their sins on Himself. Therefore, I will give Him a portion among the great, and with the mighty He will have the spoil for the fact that He gave His soul to death and was numbered with the evildoers, while He bore the sin of many and became an intercessor for the criminals” (Isaiah 53:1-12). The gift of prophecy was received, prophet-martyr, Isaiah, preacher of God, you explained to everyone the incarnation of the Lord, exclaiming in a loud voice at the end: behold, the Virgin will receive with child. This doxology of the Seraphim, indicating three times the holiness of the Divine, is recognized as a revelation of the three persons of the Divine not only by Christians, but also by some rabbis. Here St. Isaiah probably likens himself and his people to lepers, who, according to the law of Moses (Lev. 13:45), had to cover their mouths, warning those they met with the cry: “Unclean, unclean.” The Lord said to Moses: “Man cannot see Me and live” (Ex. 33:20). Hosts are the Lord of the armies (of heaven). This plural pronoun - Us, referring to the One God, is also a revelation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Wed. Gen.4:26, 11:7. The annals of Sargon himself say the following about this event: “I besieged the city of Samaria and took it. I took 27,280 citizens captive; I chose 50 chariots for myself from among the chariots taken; I left all the other wealth of the people of this city to my servants to take. I appointed permanent commanders over them and imposed on them the same tribute as was paid before. In place of those taken captive, I sent there the inhabitants of the lands I conquered and imposed on them the tribute that I demand from the Assyrians.” Wed. 2 Kings 17:6. From the combination of the remnants of the Israeli population with the pagans forcibly resettled here by the Assyrian king, that mixed nation was formed, which later bore the name Samaritans. St. Ev. Matthew, in the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ from the Blessed Virgin Mary, sees the fulfillment of this prophecy of Saint Isaiah: “All this happened, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, who says: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which means God with us.” (Matthew 1:22–23) At the end of the reign of Ahaz, as has already been seen, the church was closed. Although Hezekiah invited the Israelites remaining from Sargon’s resettlement to the celebration, the latter rejected this invitation with contempt (2 Chron. 30:5–10). Sennacherib actually died a few years later in Assyria, killed by his own sons (2 Kings 19:37). All the harvests of Judah were removed or trampled by the Assyrian armies; therefore, Judea was apparently threatened with inevitable famine. But the Lord, says the prophet, will not allow this to happen: the grains that fall to the ground will bear fruit sufficient for food, not only in the year the Assyrians left, but also in the next year. Thus, “the surviving remnant (of cereals) will again take root below and bear fruit above.” Here, by “remnant” we mean the “remnant” of those faithful to the true God who were constantly among the unfaithful Jewish people (Is. 1:9; 10:22; Ezek. 6:8; Rom. 8:29), from which the Old Testament righteous came, to which Christ’s apostles belonged, and from which the Church grew - the salvation of the world. The enthusiastic joy and gratitude of the chosen people to God the deliverer found its expression, as some interpreters suggest, in Ps. 45:1–12, 46:1–10, 75:1–13. In the Hebrew text, Hezekiah's illness is called "shekhin"; it is assumed that it was a plague abscess. This refers to the sundial built by Ahaz on the Babylonian model; they could represent either a tall building with ascending steps or a horizontal circle with features located on it in a certain order; the sun's shadow, falling on this clock, gradually moved along the steps or features, which, in fact, served as an indicator of time. It is noteworthy that according to astronomical calculations, on September 26, 703, the year falling during Hezekiah's illness, there was a partial solar eclipse visible in Jerusalem; it could have been the cause of that miraculous phenomenon (the return of the sun's shadow ten steps back) about which the Bible reports. Hezekiah died according to most reliable sources in 699. Probably indicates the martyrdom of Saint Isaiah. Hebrews 11:39. You might be interested in: