Isaiah 6

¹ In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple.

² Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft.

³ "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!" they cried one to the other. "All the earth is filled with his glory!"

⁴ At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke.

⁵ Then I said, "Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

⁷ He touched my mouth with it. "See," he said, "now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged."

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" "Here I am," I said; "send me!"

⁹ And he replied: Go and say to this people: Listen carefully, but you shall not understand! Look intently, but you shall know nothing!

¹⁰ You are to make the heart of this people sluggish, to dull their ears and close their eyes; Else their eyes will see, their ears hear, their heart understand, and they will turn and be healed.

¹¹ "How long, O Lord?" I asked. And he replied: Until the cities are desolate, without inhabitants, Houses, without a man, and the earth is a desolate waste.

¹² Until the LORD removes men far away, and the land is abandoned more and more.

¹³ If there be still a tenth part in it, then this in turn shall be laid waste; As with a terebinth or an oak whose trunk remains when its leaves have fallen. (Holy offspring is the trunk.)