Isaiah 6 · a question people ask
What is the "holy seed" at the end of the chapter?
The chapter doesn't say more than its last verse: "If there is a tenth left in it, that also will in turn be consumed, as a terebinth, and as an oak whose stump remains when they are cut down, so the holy seed is its stump" (6:13) (tap stump). In Hebrew holy seed is zera qodesh, the two words Ezra 9 has in "the holy offspring" (Ezra 9:2), and the chapter on Ezra 9 sets the two verses side by side. Isaiah has spoken before of those who are left: "Unless the LORD of Armies had left to us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom" (Isaiah 1:9), and "he who is left in Zion and he who remains in Jerusalem shall be called holy" (Isaiah 4:3). Chapter 6 doesn't say who the holy seed is, no New Testament verse quotes 6:13, and these notes don't name it.
The verses
“If there is a tenth left in it, that also will in turn be consumed, as a terebinth, and as an oak whose stump remains when they are cut down, so the holy seed is its stump.””
“For they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy offspring have mixed themselves with the peoples of the lands. Yes, the hand of the princes and rulers has been chief in this trespass.””
“Unless the LORD of Armies had left to us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom. We would have been like Gomorrah.”
“It will happen that he who is left in Zion and he who remains in Jerusalem shall be called holy, even everyone who is written among the living in Jerusalem,”