The Year that King Uzziah Died
By Professor Tommy MacKay
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 (Isaiah 6:1)
“The year that king Uzziah died.” There is perhaps no text in the whole of Scripture that speaks more particularly to our position today as a nation – and to our church and its needs – than Isaiah 6:1. The whole nation of Judah was in mourning. Their great monarch had died – the great King Uzziah. No king had reigned longer in Judah or in Israel. The great David reigned for 40 years, as did the great Solomon. Uzziah reigned for 52 years. Most people living had known no other sovereign. When they were born, Uzziah was on the throne.
The parallels with our nation today are obvious. In the year that has passed we have lost our great sovereign, Her Majesty the Queen. Almost 90% of our population were born when she was on the throne. We have suddenly had to change much of our common thinking. Few recall ever singing any other anthem than “God save the Queen”. The “gold standard” of our language – the language of the world – was “the Queen’s English”. At every table where there was the loyal toast it was always to “the Queen”, and if any of the military were present we heard them join in with “God bless her”.
And so Isaiah begins, “In the year that king Uzziah died”. The form of words in itself says all we need to know. What would be the normal expression? “In the first year of the reign of Jotham, king of Judah”, just as we have it in “the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia”, “the first year of Nebuchadnezzar”, “the first year of Belshazzar”’, “the first year of Darius”. But here, it is “the year that king Uzziah died”; for that year would be remembered in no other way. Even so for us, no matter how great and glorious and God-honouring the reign of King Charles III may be, and we pray it will be all of these, we will remember 2022 as “the year the Queen died”.
If we consider the parallels between the death of Uzziah and the position of the British people we will clearly see that our own situation is the greater one. First, Uzziah reigned for 52 years. Our Queen reigned for longer than the natural span assigned to man on earth, 70 years and seven months. Second, for the last 11 years of Uzziah’s reign, Jotham was at the helm in running the practical affairs of state. The Queen was at the helm to the very end, appointing a new Prime Minister within a few days of her death. Third, the name of Uzziah became great far and wide, as far as to the shores of Egypt. The Queen’s greatness was unique in this world. There are kings and queens many, but there was only ever one who was “the Queen”. In every continent, and in every country she visited, it was simply a visit of “the Queen”. There was no need to say anything further.
The fourth comparison is a significant one. Uzziah was good. “He did that which was right in the sight of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 26:4). But then we come to telling words. “As long as he sought the LORD, God made him to prosper” (verse 5). However, he did not maintain doing right throughout his reign. At the height of his strength “his heart was lifted up to his destruction”, for he “went into the temple of the LORD to burn incense upon the altar of incense” (verse 16). The chief priest, and 80 other faithful priests with him, stood against Uzziah and remonstrated with him not to take upon himself that which was reserved to the priests, the sons of Aaron. Alas, in his pride he did not listen, and even as he sought to carry out this act, God smote him with leprosy.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We remember Saul, who thought he was more merciful and wiser than God, but “Saul died for his transgression” (1 Chronicles 10:13). We remember Uzzah. God gave a clear command: the ark of the covenant must not be touched. But Uzzah thought that God needed the help of man and took hold of the ark – and God struck him down (2 Samuel 6:7). And now we remember Uzziah. He thought he was doing good, burning incense to the Lord. Is it not good to worship the Lord? And was this not an act of worship? However, the standard of God is clear: “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22). God spared him, but he was a leper till the day of his death.
Our Queen, by contrast, was faithful to the end. On her first public broadcast, to the children of the Commonwealth in war, while at age 14 still a child herself, she said, “God will take care of us and give us victory and peace”. She was faithful in the beginning, and she was faithful to the end. While reigning equitably over all her subjects, she upheld the exclusivity of the gospel, stating, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God” (Queen’s Christmas Broadcast, 1993).
As a final comparison we may consider their respective burials. Uzziah was buried in a leper’s grave. “That lonely grave … would eloquently testify to coming generations that all earthly monarchy must bow before the inviolable order of the divine will, and that no interference could be tolerated with the unfolding of the purposes of God” (Dr Samuel Green, The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah after the Disruption, 1876). Our Queen had a funeral and burial so glorious and so God-honouring as to be a wonder to the whole world.
Thus, if the prophet and the nation had cause to be filled with mourning, heart searching and uncertainty for the future in the year that King Uzziah died, how much more for us as we look back on the year our Queen died – and not for Britain only, but for our overseas territories, for the 15 countries of which she was monarch and for the 56 countries which looked to her as head of the Commonwealth. And so, Isaiah looks and he sees a dead king, and an unknown future.
But that is not all that Isaiah sees. There are times of great national events when God reveals His presence in signs and wonders in the heavens. When the Queen died there were reports of rainbows and double rainbows over Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Balmoral. A blazing fireball was seen over Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are not a people looking around us for signs, but there are times when we are reminded afresh that God is still in His heaven, and His promises are still “yea” and “amen”. Yet a wonder greater by far was seen by Isaiah; for he did not just see a dead king. He cries out, “I saw also the LORD.” Have we really comprehended the astonishing fact being uttered here? “I saw also the LORD.”
Where was the Lord? He was “sitting upon a throne”. He was “high and lifted up”. The message is clear. Whatever is happening in this world, God is still on the throne. And if the church has one single need that surpasses all others at the present time it is this: to see the Lord. We see much that rightly concerns us in our churches: the needs of our congregations, the lifting up of the downcast, the afflicted, the mourning, the needs of reaching out into the highways and byways in evangelism and service, the needs of our persecuted brethren suffering throughout the world. But above all these needs, we need to see the Lord.
When we catch but one glimpse of Him we will see what was previously hidden from our eyes. What does the eye see when opened to behold spiritual realities? Elisha’s servant could only see the formidable ranks of the enemy. But Elisha’s prayer is, “Open his eyes”. Then it is reality that is seen. “Behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire” (2 Kings 6:15-17). Daniel lay in mourning on the banks of the Hiddekel. All was lost. Then “a certain man clothed in linen” stood before him. During his three weeks of prayer and fasting, and the heavens seeming as brass, he could not see the battle waging in heavenly places. Principalities and powers were involved. The warfare engaged the prince of the kingdom of Persia and Michael the archangel; Daniel could not see it, but his prayer had been heard and now it would be answered (Daniel 10:5-13). We see around us war and terror, suffering and anguish, evil and apostasy, but high and lifted up above it all is a throne, and One is seated on it who is the Lord of hosts and who will triumph gloriously.
Let us ask three simple questions regarding what Isaiah saw. How did he see these things? Where did he see them? What did he see?
In terms of how he saw these things, Isaiah 6 is generally spoken of as a “vision of God’s glory”. Our normal understanding of a vision is the idea that the prophet falls into a trance and God gives him a vision. Was that what happened? Several times Isaiah refers to a vision in this sense. He speaks, for example, of “the dream of a night vision” (Isaiah 29:7). However, he does not do that here. He says, “I saw also the Lord”. He cries out, “Woe is me, for I am undone”. He is the holy prophet of God but he cries out that he is a man of unclean lips and he dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips; and in fear he states, “Mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (6:5). What actually happened here? Did God remove the veil between earth and heaven, or was Isaiah caught up like Paul? We cannot tell, but surely here is a great mystery.
In terms of where Isaiah saw these things, was it a temple vision, as is commonly stated? Indeed, does it not state explicitly that “his train filled the temple”? Was he not seeing the winged angels who covered the mercy seat? Yet this is not the case. The angels he saw were not the cherubim of the temple but the six-winged seraphim, whose place is in heaven and who glorify the Lord day and night in his presence. What Isaiah saw was in heaven. “The LORD’s throne is in heaven” (Psalm 11:4). That is where the holy temple is, which was filled with the Lord’s glory. “The temple of God was opened in heaven” (Revelation 11:19).
In terms of what Isaiah saw, the answer is beyond question. He saw the LORD. He uses two of his names. First he says he saw Adonai (Isaiah 6:1), using the title of God, and second he says he saw Jehovah (verse 5), using the name of God. He saw “Jehovah of hosts”. The word “Jehovah” is the unpronounceable name of the Lord God Almighty. As a convention, the four Hebrew consonants, JHVH, in which it appears in the Hebrew scriptures, were assigned impossible vowel sounds to ensure that the name could not be pronounced and lead to the Lord’s name perhaps being taken carelessly in vain. Scholars have conjectured it might have been close to the term “Yahweh”, but the whole point is that we do not know. The Jews in reading the Scriptures simply say “ha shem” – the name, when the letters appear, and Jesus and the disciples addressed Him in their own language.
However, the wonderful truth is this. At John 12:40, there is a quotation from Isaiah 6, and then at verse 41 John says regarding Christ, “These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him”. Here is the One who sits on the throne. He is the King of Glory, the King of Zion. He is King of kings and Lord of lords, and to Him every knee shall bow. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw also the Lord; and before Him we bow and cry, “My Lord and my God”.