Isaiah, Son of Amoz: The Prophet Who Stood Beside Hezekiah

Who he was and when he lived

Isaiah, whose name in Hebrew is יְשַׁעְיָ֫הוּ, is called "Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz" (2 Chronicles 26:22). He belongs to the era of the divided kingdom, and by the reckoning of Ussher, Annals of the World (1650), he was active 760 BC to 698 BC. Scripture names him in fifty-four verses across twenty-nine passages, the first at 2 Kings 19:2 and the last in Romans. He is named across nine books: Isaiah, 2 Kings, Matthew, Romans, John, 2 Chronicles, Acts, Mark and Luke. That spread is itself worth noticing. Few figures of the Old Testament are handled so often by the writers of the New.

The word to Hezekiah's servants

Isaiah first appears when Hezekiah sends men to him (2 Kings 19:2; the same scene stands at Isaiah 37:2). The prophet does not go to the palace; the palace comes to him. "So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah. Isaiah said to them, 'Tell your master this: "Yahweh says, 'Don't be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me"'" (2 Kings 19:5-6). The parallel in Isaiah reads almost identically: "So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah. Isaiah said to them, 'Tell your master, "Yahweh says, 'Don't be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me'"'" (Isaiah 37:5-6).

What is striking is how little of Isaiah's own personality the text gives us here. He is a mouth. The message is not his own; it is prefaced with "Yahweh says," and the comfort it carries rests on where the blasphemy was aimed. The words were spoken against God himself, and God answers them. Isaiah speaks again to the king in 2 Kings 19:20 and Isaiah 37:21. He is also named together with Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 32:20.

Sickness, sign, and shadow

The second block of scenes concerns the king's illness. Isaiah comes to him in 2 Kings 20:1, and the word of Yahweh comes to Isaiah in 2 Kings 20:4. Then this: "Isaiah said, 'Take a cake of figs.' They took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered. Hezekiah said to Isaiah, 'What will be the sign that Yahweh will heal me, and that I will go up to Yahweh's house the third day?' Isaiah said, 'This will be the sign to you from Yahweh, that Yahweh will do the thing that he has spoken: should the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?'" (2 Kings 20:7-9). The account continues at 2 Kings 20:11. The parallel record names him at Isaiah 38:1, Isaiah 38:4 and Isaiah 38:21.

Afterward Isaiah questions and then addresses the king again (2 Kings 20:14, 2 Kings 20:16, 2 Kings 20:19; and in the parallel, Isaiah 39:3, Isaiah 39:5, Isaiah 39:8).

Three years naked and barefoot

One scene shows what obedience cost him in his own body. "At that time Yahweh spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, 'Go, and loosen the sackcloth from off your waist, and take your sandals from off your feet.' He did so, walking naked and barefoot. Yahweh said, 'As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder concerning Egypt and concerning Ethiopia'" (Isaiah 20:2-3). The command is stated, and the obedience is stated in four words: "He did so." No hesitation is recorded, no complaint. God calls him "my servant Isaiah."

His two sons carry names that function the same way, as signs to be spoken: Shear-jashub (Isaiah 7:3) and Maher-shalal-hash-baz (Isaiah 8:1).

A prophet who wrote

Isaiah is also recorded as an author. "Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, first and last, Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, wrote" (2 Chronicles 26:22). He is named again in this connection at 2 Chronicles 32:32. His name stands in Isaiah 1:1, Isaiah 2:1 and Isaiah 13:1.

What Scripture does not charge against him

Honesty runs both ways. The passages gathered here record no sin, no failure, no rebuke of Isaiah. That silence is not a halo; it is simply what the text does and does not say. Where he is shown acting, he obeys, and where he is shown speaking, he speaks what Yahweh gave him.

What we do not know

No tribe or people is given for him. Beyond his father Amoz and his two sons, his family is not described in these passages. Nothing here tells us how his ministry ended or how he died.

The line to Christ

The New Testament reaches back to Isaiah constantly. John writes: "that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke, 'Lord, who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?' For this cause they couldn't believe, for Isaiah said again," (John 12:38-39), and adds John 12:41. His words are cited in John 1:23, Luke 3:4, Luke 4:17, Mark 1:2, Mark 7:6, Matthew 3:3, Matthew 4:14, Matthew 8:17, Matthew 12:17, Matthew 13:14 and Matthew 15:7. He is read aloud and asked about in Acts 8:28 and Acts 8:30, and quoted in Acts 28:25. Paul draws on him in Romans 9:27, Romans 9:29, Romans 10:16, Romans 10:20 and Romans 15:12. The prophet who walked barefoot three years as a sign became, in the hands of the apostles, one of the chief witnesses to Christ.