The Vision and the Martyrdom of Isaiah

Two things about Isaiah beyond his prophecies of Christ shape the Church’s memory of him: the vision of the Lord enthroned amid the seraphim who cry “Holy, holy, holy” — the source of the Sanctus of the Liturgy — and the tradition that he was martyred by being sawn in two. This file treats the throne-vision (which ties the collection to the bodiless powers) and pins the martyrdom tradition to its sources per METHODOLOGY §3.5 — the Martyrdom/Ascension of Isaiah and the possible allusion in Hebrews 11:37.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Throne-Vision and the Sanctus

Isaiah’s call is the greatest throne-vision of the Old Testament. “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings… And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:1–3). At the thrice-holy cry the posts of the door shake, the house is filled with smoke, and the prophet cries out his unworthiness — “Woe is me!… for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” — whereupon a seraph flies to him with a live coal from the altar, touches his lips, and purges his sin, and Isaiah answers the divine call: “Here am I; send me” (Isaiah 6:5–8).

This vision is woven into the deepest fabric of Orthodox worship in two ways. First, the seraphic hymn “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth” (the Sanctus or, in Byzantine usage, the Epinikios or “Triumphal Hymn”) is sung at the very heart of the Divine Liturgy, in the Anaphora, joined to the “Blessed is he that cometh” of the palms — so that at every Liturgy the Church on earth joins her voice to the ceaseless praise of the seraphim that Isaiah heard (see The Divine Liturgy). Second, the vision is a locus classicus for the Orthodox theology of the angelic orders: the seraphim (“burning ones”) are named here, and the Church, following St. Dionysius the Areopagite, ranks them highest of the nine angelic ranks, nearest the throne, aflame with love (see St. Dionysius the Areopagite; and, for the fuller treatment of the angelic hosts, the wave-sibling collection The Bodiless Powers). The live coal that purges Isaiah’s lips became a favored liturgical type of the Eucharist: the Church prays before communion in the words of the Isaian vision, and the communion spoon is called the labis, the “tongs,” recalling the tongs with which the seraph bore the coal — the burning coal of the Body of Christ that purges the sins of the one who receives it.

The Fathers read the throne-vision christologically and triadologically. The Evangelist John says that Isaiah “saw his glory, and spake of him” — that is, of Christ (John 12:41) — so that the Lord enthroned in Isaiah 6 is confessed to be the pre-incarnate Word; and the threefold “Holy” is read by the Fathers as an intimation of the Holy Trinity, three Persons and one Lord of Sabaoth. Thus Isaiah’s vision, like Moses’ Sinai, is a vision of the divine glory — but now the glory is heard confessing itself thrice-holy, and the prophet is drawn into the very worship the Church will offer at every altar.

The Martyrdom by Sawing — Pinned to Its Sources

The tradition that the Prophet Isaiah was put to death by being sawn asunder — sawn in two with a wooden saw, by order of the wicked king Manasseh — is old, widespread, and universally repeated in the Orthodox synaxaria; the icon and the hymnography know it. But it is not found in the canonical Scriptures, and per METHODOLOGY §3.5 it must be pinned to its actual sources rather than asserted as documented biography.

The martyrdom is narrated in a pseudepigraphon, the Martyrdom of Isaiah — the Jewish core (composed perhaps in the second or first century BC) of the composite work known as the Ascension of Isaiah or Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, which survives whole only in an Ethiopic version translated from a lost Greek original, with fragments in other languages, and which reached its final composite form as a Christian book by roughly the second century AD (M. A. Knibb, “Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985, on the text, its composite character, and its dating). In this account, under the apostate Manasseh — who “served Beliar” — Isaiah and his companions flee to the wilderness; Isaiah is captured and “sawn in two with a wood-saw,” and dies without crying out, absorbed in vision (Ascension of Isaiah 5; Knibb, in Charlesworth, OTP 2). The story is also known to and repeated by the Fathers (Justin Martyr already knows the sawing tradition, and accuses the Jews of having cut it out of their Scriptures; later synaxaria transmit it), and it is briefly noticed in the Lives of the Prophets, the collection that supplies most of the prophets’ death-and-burial traditions (on which see The Prophets in Icon, Relic, and Legend).

The one possible canonical allusion is in the roll-call of the faithful in Hebrews: “they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword” (Hebrews 11:37). The phrase “they were sawn asunder” (epristhēsan) has been read since antiquity as a reference to Isaiah’s death, and this is the standard patristic identification; but the honest statement of the evidence is that Hebrews does not name Isaiah, and the identification, while ancient and plausible, is an inference — Hebrews may allude to the tradition preserved in the Martyrdom of Isaiah, or the two may draw on a common stock of Second Temple martyr-tradition ([Disputed: whether Hebrews 11:37 “they were sawn asunder” refers specifically to Isaiah. The traditional patristic identification with Isaiah’s martyrdom-by-sawing is ancient and widely held; but Hebrews names no prophet, and the reference is an inference from the shared Second Temple tradition also preserved in the Martyrdom/Ascension of Isaiah. The verse is best described as a probable allusion, not a naming — Knibb, in Charlesworth, OTP 2; standard commentaries on Hebrews 11:37]).

The disposition this collection therefore adopts, per §3.5, is exact: the sawing of Isaiah is a martyrdom tradition attested in a Jewish pseudepigraphon of the late Second Temple period (the Martyrdom of Isaiah, embedded in the Ascension of Isaiah), received by the Fathers and the Byzantine synaxaria, and possibly alluded to in Hebrews 11:37; it is not recorded in the canonical Old Testament and is not to be presented as documented historical fact. This does not diminish the Church’s veneration of Isaiah as a prophet and (in the received tradition) a martyr — it locates the martyrdom account in its real textual home and grades its authority honestly, which is precisely what the veneration of a prophet-saint, rightly understood, requires (see The Prophets as Saints of the Church).

The Two Faces of Isaiah’s Sanctity

Isaiah’s holiness, in the Church’s memory, has thus two faces that this file sets side by side. He is the seer of the enthroned Lord, the man whose vision gave the Church her thrice-holy hymn and her image of the seraphim — the prophet of glory. And he is, in the received tradition, the martyr sawn in two for refusing the apostasy of his king — the prophet of witness unto blood. The first is anchored in the canonical text and lives at the center of the Liturgy; the second is anchored in the pseudepigrapha and the synaxaria and is honored as tradition, pinned to its sources. Together they show why Isaiah, more than any other prophet, is felt by the Church to stand at the threshold of the Gospel: he saw the glory of Christ and spoke of Him, and (the tradition holds) he suffered for Him before He came.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, KJV (Isaiah 6:1–8; John 12:41; Hebrews 11:37).
  • Knibb, M. A. “Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, ed. James H. Charlesworth. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985. (The composite text; the Jewish Martyrdom core and its date; the sawing narrative; the Ethiopic and Greek witnesses.)
  • The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, ed. Charlesworth (also the Lives of the Prophets, trans. D. R. A. Hare, for the brief notice of Isaiah’s death).
  • Prophet Isaiah (9 May), Orthodox Church in America, oca.org. (The received martyrdom tradition in the synaxarion.)
  • Dionysius the Areopagite. The Celestial Hierarchy (the ranking of the seraphim), trans. Colm Luibhéid, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.
  • Standard commentaries on Hebrews 11:37 for the ancient identification of “sawn asunder” with Isaiah (reported as a probable allusion, not a naming).