The prophet, the son of Amos. Highly, under God the Holy Ghost, is the church indebted to the ministry of this man. Amidst many events in this man's life, was that of this walking three years barefoot and naked. (See Isaiah 20:2) Was not this also typical of Christ's three years ministry? His name signifies salvation of the Lord; from Jashah, salvation; and Jah, the Lord. I cannot forbear mentioning the commonly-received opinion, that Isaiah was sawn asunder, in the beginning of the reign of Manasseh, and that his body was buried near Jerusalem, under the fuller's oak near Siloam. And the tradition concerning this event is, that it was brought upon him by the event of his publishing his vision, (Isaiah 6:1-13) in which he saith, "he saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up." Manasseh said, that this was blasphemy, as Moses had recorded the Lord's words, Exodus 22:20. "No man shall see me and live."

Isaiah prophesied many years, not less than threescore, though some make his ministry to have extended to four-score. Who can read the prophecy of Isaiah without the most profound admiration! It is not only unequalled in point of language, but it contains so much of Christ, that it looks more like an history than a prophecy. It is more like the writings of a person who was present at Pilate's hall, and Herod's judgment-seat, when describing the sufferings of Jesus, than of one who wrote those events, by the spirit of prediction, more than seven hundred years before the things there spoken of came to pass. St. Jerom calls Isaiah's prophecy, an abridgment of the holy Scriptures. And Grotius prefers Isaiah to all the writers of Greece and Rome. But how truly blessed are the predictions of Isaiah to the believer who hath lived to see the whole fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Ghost is led to discover not only the correspondence between them, but his own personal interest therein.