The Holy One of Israel: Set Apart and Bound to a People

Holy means set apart: other, separate, not to be touched. Of Israel means bound to a people: theirs, in their midst, answerable for them. Isaiah put the two words together and used the result as his name for God twenty-five times, and the tension inside the name is the whole of his book.

You are reading as a visitor, so your notes and your place in the series will not be kept. Sign in or create an account to keep them.

Lesson 9 of 12 · The prophet’s name

Holy, in Hebrew, is not first a moral word. It means set apart, other, belonging to a different order — the ground at the bush, the inner room of the temple, the seventh day. Applied to God it means that he is not one of the things in the world, and cannot be approached as one. Isaiah took that word and welded it to of Israel, and the name he made says two things that pull against each other: utterly other, and yours. Nearly every use of the name in his book is one of those two pulling on the other — Israel despising the Holy One who is theirs, or the Holy One saving the Israel that despised him.

What holy means

The seraphim’s song is where the word is said three times, and the setting says what it means.

One called to another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of Armies! The whole earth is full of his glory!” — Isaiah 6:3 · WEB

Read the comment on Holy, Holy, Holy

Holy, holy, holy, and the prophet’s response is not admiration but terror: woe is me, I am undone. Holiness in Isaiah 6 is the quality that makes a man expect to die for having seen it. Only after a coal from the altar touches his mouth can he stand in the room.

קָדוֹשׁ qâdôwsh H6918

or קָדֹשׁ; from קָדַשׁ; sacred (ceremonially or morally); (as noun) God (by eminence), an angel, a saint, a sanctuary; holy (One), saint.

Set apart, sacred, consecrated — from a root meaning to be separate, to be withheld from common use. Of things: the ground at the bush, the Sabbath, the temple’s inner room, the priests’ garments. Of God: the one who is other than everything made, and whose otherness is dangerous to the unprepared. The word does not at first mean morally good; it means not-common, and only through God’s character does it come to mean what he is like. "The Holy One of Israel" occurs thirty-one times in the Old Testament, twenty-five of them in Isaiah, who made it his name for God.

Despised, and saving

Isaiah uses the name most in two kinds of sentence, and they are the two halves of his message.

“Ah sinful nation, a people loaded with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken Yahweh. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are estranged and backward.” Isaiah 1:4 · WEB
They have forsaken Yahweh, they have despised the Holy One of Israel: the name in the book’s first accusation, the otherness spurned by the ones it was for.
“For I am Yahweh your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I have given Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in your place.” Isaiah 43:3 · WEB
I am Yahweh your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior: the same name, forty-two chapters later, given as the reason for rescue.
““To whom then will you liken me? Who is my equal?” says the Holy One.” Isaiah 40:25 · WEB
To whom then will you liken me? Who is my equal? says the Holy One: the name defending its own otherness against every comparison.
“Whom have you defied and blasphemed? Against whom have you exalted your voice and lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel!” 2 Kings 19:22 · WEB
Whom have you defied and blasphemed? The Holy One of Israel: Isaiah’s own words to Sennacherib, the name as the reason an empire will fail.

Despised and defied by those who were his; Savior and incomparable to the same. The name does not resolve the tension, and Isaiah never lets it.

The Holy One who will not destroy

Hosea uses the name once, and in the sentence that shows why the two halves belong together.

I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath. — Hosea 11:9 · WEB

Read the comment on I Am God, and Not Man

I will not execute the fierceness of my anger, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of you. Every reader expects holiness to be the reason for judgment; Hosea makes it the reason for mercy. Because God is other than man, he does not do what a man in his position would do, which is destroy. The otherness that terrified Isaiah is what spares Israel in Hosea, and the name holds both.

Be holy

The word is not God’s alone; it is what he asks of the people the name binds him to.

“Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘You shall be holy; for I, Yahweh your God, am holy. — Leviticus 19:2 · WEB

Read the comment on You Shall Be Holy

You shall be holy, for I Yahweh your God am holy. Set apart, as the one who chose you is set apart. Peter quotes the sentence to gentile churches (1 Peter 1:16), and the demon at Capernaum uses the title of Jesus — the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24) — in the terror Isaiah felt. The New Testament does not lower the word. It says who carries it.

What the name asks

It asks to be held in both hands at once. A God who is only other cannot be approached; a God who is only ours can be managed. Isaiah’s name refuses both, and the refusal is the shape of the whole Old Testament: the one who cannot be compared to anything has bound himself to a people, and will be neither escaped nor domesticated.