In what two ways is the call of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 6) unique?
In the Bible, most prophets, when called by God, they were told to preach to people so that they may understand what God wanted. They were called by God to preach to His people to ask them to repent and turn away from sin. The Lord wanted to give them a chance to redeem themselves from sinning and set themselves to worshipping God as their forefathers did. However, this was not the case with the calling of Prophet Isaiah. In his calling, Prophet Isaiah was not given a prophecy of hope or that of repentance. He was given a prophecy of doom.
When preparing the Prophet Isaiah for his calling, the Lord told him that He did not intend the people to understand His message. The Lord’s message, no matter how hard or curiously one listened to it, they would not understand it. The people were also not see anything that Prophet Isaiah was to show them. They also not meant to hear anything that the Prophet was to say. In short, the Lord was giving Prophet Isaiah an impossible mission where he was to prophesy to people who could not understand or know the prophecy. However, the Lord promised Prophet Isaiah that the people would understand the message of the prophecy once their cities were in ruins and when they had perished. This was the first time that the Lord did not want people to survive through a warning by the prophets but their own set of ethics.
Unlike other prophets, during the call of Prophet Isaiah, he saw heaven and what heaven looked like. He saw the Lord in all his glory in the temple, surrounded by creatures with six wings that were worshipping and exalting the Lord. It is unique that Isaiah saw the Lord. Even the Mighty Prophet of God, Moses, never saw God. Just his finger. Other prophets felt his presence or heard his voice. In other prophets’ calling, the Lord would either appear to them in a voice and speak to them. None of them had the pleasure of seeing the Lord before accepting the calling. Another unique feature in the calling of Prophet Isaiah was the cleansing process that underwent before he became a prophet.
Unlike other prophets where the Lord convinced them that they were pure and holy and that he had hopes in them, He did not follow the same path with Isaiah. In Prophet Isaiah’s case, the Lord never asked him to repent or that he knew him since he was a child, like in Prophet Jeremiah’s case. When the Prophet Isaiah acknowledged that he was a sinner and not worthy of being God’s Prophet, one of the creatures singing and exalting the Lord took a burning coal from the alter using a pair of tongs and touched the lips of Prophet Isaiah with the coal. The fact that the creature of the Lord had to use tongs to pick up the coal meant that it was very hot. It is the first time that we see the Lord allowing the mutilating of a person in the naming of being chosen as a prophet. As soon as the burning of the lips with coal was over, the Lord forgave Isaiah his sins, and He gave him the mandate to be His Prophet. This is also unique, for it was the first time that God forgave a person’s sins without them repenting.
In essence, the task given to Prophet Isaiah was a difficult one. He was to preach and prophesy to people who would never, hear, see, or even understand what he was saying. He was preaching to stones. People would realize his prophecy when it was too late. He had the burden of carrying this knowing what the future holds and that he could do nothing to avert it. We also get to see a physical price that Isaiah had to pay to start his journey of prophecy. It is unlike any other prophet hence making him a unique prophet.