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LXX Isaiah

Septuagint

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Chapter 6

1 And it happened in the year in which king Uzziah died, that I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, and the house was full of his glory.⁠ 2 And seraphs stood all around him:⁠ each one had six wings: and with two they covered their face, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one cried to the other, and they said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Sabaoth: the whole earth is full of his glory.⁠ 4 And the lintel shook at the voice they uttered, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said, Woe is me, for I am pricked to the heart; for being a man, and having unclean lips, I dwell in the midst of a people having unclean lips; and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts. 6 And there was sent to me one of the seraphs, and he had in his hand a coal, which he had taken off the altar with the tongs: 7 and he touched my mouth, and said, Look, this has touched your lips, and will take away your iniquities, and will purge off your sins. 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And I said, look, I am here, send me. 9 And he said, Go, and say to this people, You shall hear indeed, but you shall not understand; and you shall see indeed, but you shall not perceive. 10 For the heart of this people has become gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; for fear that they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.⁠ 11 And I said, How long, Lord? And he said, Until cities be deserted by reason of their not being inhabited, and the houses by reason of there being no men, and the land shall be left desolate. 12 And after this God shall remove the men far off, and they that are left upon the land shall be multiplied. 13 And yet there shall be a tenth upon it, and again it shall be for plunder, as a turpentine tree, and as an acorn when it falls out of its husk.

Texts in conversation

Compare Isaiah 6:1 and LXX Isaiah 6:1

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Isaiah 6 describes the prophet seeing God sitting on a throne and wearing a robe, a physical description of God. The Greek Septuagint changes this to say Isaiah saw the glory of God and removes the reference to the robe, removing all physical elements.

Passages

Isaiah 6:1

Hebrew Bible
1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord seated on a high, elevated throne. The hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs stood over him; each one had six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and they used the remaining two to fly. 3 They called out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! His majestic splendor fills the entire earth!”
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

LXX Isaiah 6:1

Septuagint
1 And it happened in the year in which king Uzziah died, that I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, and the house was full of his glory. 2 And seraphs stood all around him: each one had six wings: and with two they covered their face, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one cried to the other, and they said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Sabaoth: the whole earth is full of his glory.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Isaiah

References

"... when God is the object, not the subject, of bodily actions, the targumists were faced with a problem. It was obvious that the human actions themselves could not be metaphorical; but the object of them had to be understood in a different way. For instance, when the Bible says that someone saw God, it is clear that they saw something, and that something had to be identifiable as God, without suggesting that God himself was visible in bodily form. One solution to this is to introduce God’s “glory”, understood as a visible bright light ... The concept of the visible “glory” of God had already been introduced in the Bible itself: “You shall see the glory of God” (Exodus 16:7), “the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire” (Exodus 24:17), “the glory of the Lord will appear to you” (Lev 9:6), and so on; compare also 1 Enoch 14:20: “The great glory sat on the throne” (see also Testament of Levi 3:4). It also appeared previously in other translations; compare the Septuagint rendering to the Targum (Isaiah 6:1) ..."
Edward M. Cook, “The Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Targums,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 92–117.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Isaiah 6:1 and LXX Isaiah 6:1

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