[1] The scene of the Vision is the Temple, and its features
will have the same whether we suppose them to have risen
before Isaiah's imagination while he was absent from the
spot, in the solitude of his chamber or his house-top, or
assume (as I myself prefer to do), that he was actually
praying in the Temple at the time.
Though it is unlikely that any of the successors to what
was but a small remnant of Solomon's kingdom perfectly
restored the Temple after it was deprived of its original
splendour by Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam, yet we see
the worthier princes from time to time repairing the
structure when it had been suffered to fall into decay, and
replacing, as far as they could, the treasures and the
costly decorations of which it was repeatedly despoiled to
buy off foreign invaders; and probably there was no period
in which the restoration would be more complete than in the
reign of Uzziah, who in his power, wealth, and
magnificence, came nearer than any other to Solomon. As
there will be much more of fact than of fancy in the
picture, if, for the clearer understanding of the scene of
the vision, we figure to ourselves the youthful prophet in
his rough hair or woollen garment (probably not unlike that
of the Capuchin friar as we now see him in the streets or
churches of Rome), going up to the Temple to worship;--and
if we look with him at the Temple as, at the end of 300
years from its building, it must have presented itself to
his eyes, with its ample courts, and colonnades, and porch,
and its holy house, and holy of holies, well-proportioned,
and of the most elaborate workmanship, though rather
massive than large according to our notions. As he crossed
the variegated pavement of "the great court of the
congregation," and stopped--for we have no reason to
suppose him a Levite--at the entrance to the inner, or
"priests'" court, on each hand would rise one of the tall
pillars which Solomon set up in token that the kingdom was
constituted by Jehovah, and would be upheld by His might
(1 Kings vii. 21; 2 Chron. iii. 17), and which, once of
"bright brass," but now mellowed into bronze, had their
square capitals richly wreathed with molten lilies,
chain-work, and pomegranates; before him, resting on the
back of the twelve oxen, and cast like them in brass, would
appear the "molten sea," a basin of thirty cubits in
circumference, and containing two or three thousand _baths_
of water, its brim wrought "like the brim of a cup with
flowers of lilies," and under these a double row of
ornamental knobs; while on each side stood five smaller
lavers, the bases of which rested on wheels, and were most
elaborately ornamented with oxen, lions, cherubims, and
palm-trees engraved upon them; and beyond these again he
would see the great brazen altar of burnt-offering, with
its never-extinguished fire; and overhead the roof of thick
cedar beams resting on rows of columns. These were the
courts of the palace of the Divine King of Israel, for the
reception of His subjects and His ministers. [Compare the
description of Solomon's own house, which besides its inner
porch had another where he sat to judge the people, 1 Kings
vii. 7. The arrangement of the Temple is plainly that of a
palace.] The house itself again consisted of two parts, the
outer of which, the holy place, was accessible to those
priests who were in immediate attendance on their unseen
Sovereign, while the inner, or holiest place, was the very
presence-chamber of the Monarch who dwelt "between the
cherubims," which spread their golden wings over the ark
containing the covenant He had vouchsafed to enter into
with His people, and itself forming a "mercy-seat," where
was "the place of His throne and the place of the sole of
His feet." In the position which I have, following the
requirements of the narrative in the chapter before us,
supposed Isaiah to be placed, he would see through the open
folding-doors of cypress, carved "with cherubims, and
palm-trees, and open flowers," and "carved with gold and
upon the carved work," into the holy place, which he could
not enter; and the light of the golden lamps on either side
would show him the cedar panelling of the walls, carved
with knobs and open flowers, with cherubims and palm-trees,
festooned with chain-work, and richly gilt; the mosaics of
precious stone; the cypress floor; the altar of incense;
the table with the shew-bread; the censers, tongs, and
other furniture of "pure and perfect gold;" and before the
doorway to the further end, and not concealed by the open
leaves of the olive-wood doors (carved and gilded like the
others), would be distinguishable the folds of the vail "of
blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen," embroidered
with cherubims. In the East the closed vail, or _purdah,_
declares the presence and secures the privacy of the
monarch, into which no man may intrude and live; and in the
Temple at Jerusalem it was the symbol of the awful presence
and unapproachable majesty of the King Jehovah, Lord of
hosts. . . . Perhaps on this occasion, or certainly on many
others, Isaiah had been joining in the public daily
sacrifice and worship, and had afterwards brought his own
free-will offering--a bullock or a lamb without blemish.
Such an offering, the symbol of his dedication of himself
to Jehovah's service, would be the natural expression of
his earnest desire for some token that at last it was
permitted him to enter on the actual functions of the
prophetic office for which he had been so long preparing;
and that this vision was the answer to such beautiful
prayerful desire--itself an inspiration from on high--we
may well believe.--_Strachey._
Some of you may have been watching a near and beautiful
landscape in the land of mountains and eternal snows, till
you have been exhausted by its very richness, and till the
distant hills which bounded it have seemed, you knew not
why, to limit and contract the view,--and then a veil has
been withdrawn, and new hills not looking as if they
belonged to this earth, yet given another character to all
that does belong to it, have unfolded themselves before
you. This is an imperfect, very imperfect, likeness (yet it
is one), of that revelation which must have been made to
the inner eye of the prophet when he saw another throne
than the throne of the house of David, another king than
Uzziah or Jotham, another train than that of priests or
minstrels in the Temple, other winged forms than those
golden ones which overshadowed the mercy-seat. Each object
was the counterpart of one that was then or had been at
some time before his bodily eyes. . . . The symbols and
service of the Temple were not, as priests and people often
thought, an earthly machinery for scaling a distant heaven;
they were witnesses of a Heaven nigh at hand, of a God
dwelling in the midst of His people, of His being
surrounded by spirits which do His pleasure, hearkening to
the voice of His words.--_F. D. Maurice._
[2] See my _Dictionary of Poetical Illustrations,_ No. 1501;
and my _Homiletic Encyclopædia of Illustrations,_ Nos.
2229-2240.
[3] P. D., 1489, 1493, 1496, 1502, 1504-1506, 1508, 1509, 1511,
1514, 1519, 1526, 2545, 2552, 2563; H. E. I., 2242.
[4] H. E. I., 854-857, 2241, 2243.