As the highest spiritual category a person may attain in this world, seraphs serve as proxy saviors of others under the terms of the Davidic Covenant but on a higher level than God’s sons and daughters. Their intercession on behalf of God’s children evokes God’s intervention in delivering from harm many to whom they are sent as his angelic emissaries.
As agents of divine deliverance, they possess power over the elements and the ability to perform saving miracles. Their angelic ministry extends to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people to whom God sends them to bring out of them a people of God worthy to live in his presence. Their role is essential in bringing about Israel’s end-time restoration.
Isaiah traces his own spiritual journey from seeing Israel’s God in the temple to receiving a vision of the end from the beginning that accompanies ascent to seraph status. While persons in the seraph category may willingly sacrifice their lives as they seek additional blessings, many such persons are translated on the earth and become as the angels of God.
Isaiah 6:2Seraphs stood by him overhead, each having six wings—with two they could veil their presence, with two conceal their location, and with two fly about.
Isaiah 40:31They who hope in Jehovah shall be renewed in strength: they shall ascend as on eagles’ wings; they shall run without wearying, they shall walk and not faint.
Appearing under different personas in Isaiah’s prophecy—watchmen, God’s servants, and spiritual kings and queens under the terms of the Davidic Covenant—seraphs lead God’s sons and daughters out of destruction. God delivers his elect “for the sake of” his seraph-saviors. Empowered by God, they help bring about the prophesied “restoration of all things.”
Isaiah 62:6–7I have appointed watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, who shall not be silent day or night. You who call upon Jehovah, let not up nor give him respite till he reestablishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned in the earth.
Isaiah 65:8Thus says Jehovah: As when there is juice in a cluster of grapes and someone says, Don’t destroy it, it is still good, so I will do for the sake of my servants by not destroying everything.
Isaiah 49:22–23I will lift up my hand to the nations, raise my ensign to the peoples; and they will bring your sons in their bosoms and carry your daughters on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, queens your nursing mothers.
God’s servants in the seraph category use God’s power that is in them solely for the purpose of serving his children. Like all who ascend the spiritual ladder, however, they undergo a descent phase of trials and testing before they are re-created to seraph status. Their descent phase involves suffering for others’ sake so that God may deliver them.
Offering their whole souls to God in sacrifice after the pattern of Israel’s God, they are re-created in their ascent phase to become as “gods and sons of the Most High” (Psalms 82:6). Having passed his tests and trials of their loyalty, God makes an “eternal” or unconditional covenant with them of an endless posterity and of earthly and heavenly estates.
Isaiah 61:7–9Because their shame was twofold, and shouted insults were their lot, therefore in their land shall their inheritance be twofold and everlasting joy be theirs. . . . I will appoint them a sure reward; I will make with them an eternal covenant. Their offspring shall be renowned among the nations, their posterity in the midst of the peoples; all who see them will acknowledge that they are of the lineage Jehovah has blessed.
Isaiah 66:22As the new heavens and the new earth which I make shall endure before me, says Jehovah, so shall your offspring and name endure.
Isaiah 40:26Lift your eyes heavenward and see: Who formed these? He who brings forth their hosts by number, calling each one by name. Because he is almighty and all powerful, not one is unaccounted for.
Prominent in Isaiah’s seraph category is God’s end-time servant David. As God’s “arm” of righteousness, he bring to pass the “restoration of all things,” including the restoration of God’s people Israel. After experiencing a descent phase of persecution by enemies and “marring” or disfigurement, God empowers and exalts him in the eyes of all nations.
Isaiah 51:9–11Awake, arise; clothe yourself with power, O arm of Jehovah! Bestir yourself, as in ancient times, as in generations of old. Was it not you who carved up Rahab, you who slew the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the Sea, the waters of the mighty deep, and made of ocean depths a way by which the redeemed might pass?
Let the ransomed of Jehovah return! Let them come singing to Zion, their heads crowned with everlasting joy; let them obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away.
Isaiah 52:13–15My servant, being astute, shall be highly exalted; he shall become exceedingly eminent: just as he appalled many—his appearance was marred beyond human likeness, his semblance unlike that of men—So shall he yet astound many nations, kings shutting their mouths at him—what was not told them, they shall see; what they had not heard, they shall consider.
Isaiah 42:6–7I Jehovah have rightfully called you and will grasp you by the hand; I have created you and appointed you to be a covenant for the people, a light to the nations.