The Daily Office · For wonder
Holy, holy, holy
Isaiah 6:1–5
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What's happening here
"In the year that King Uzziah died" — Isaiah is careful to date his vision. Uzziah's long reign had been a span of relative stability; his death left Judah uncertain, Assyria looming. Into that political vacuum Isaiah sees a different king, high and lifted up, his robe filling the temple. The angels above the throne cry out a single adjective three times — the only adjective in the Hebrew Bible ever applied to God in triple repetition. Isaiah's response is not awe but undoing.
The word that matters
Hebrew · holy — set apart, other, not like anything else
Qadosh does not mean "morally perfect" in the first instance. Its root sense is separateness — reserved, withdrawn from common use. The Sabbath is qadosh because it is taken out of the working week. The temple vessels are qadosh because they do not go home with anyone. When the seraphim cry the word three times, they are not saying God is unusually good; they are saying God is unlike. The triple repetition is the Hebrew way of saying superlative — the holiest of the holy of the holy.
Where else this shows up
Leviticus 11:44
"Be holy, for I am holy." The whole Levitical theology in one line: qadosh is contagious.
Revelation 4:8
John, reaching for language a millennium later, writes the seraphim's Hebrew cry verbatim in Greek.
Luke 5:8
Peter, kneeling among the fish: "depart from me, for I am a sinful man." Isaiah's response compressed into one sentence.