God’s Revelation of the Trinity of the Godhead in Isaiah 48

Isaiah 48:12-16

 Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, My called! I am He; I am the first, I also am the last.

Mine hand also laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand stretched out the heavens; I call to them, they stand up together.

All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear; which among them hath declared these things? The LORD hath loved him: he will do his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans.

I; I, have spoken; yea, I have called him: I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous.

Come near unto me; hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.”

Perhaps the most doctrinally-important portion of the book of Isaiah, demonstrates the plurality of the members of the godhead.

The Speaker is He of Whom Israel and Jacob are His called. (v 1)

He is “the first, and also the last,” as YHWH declares Himself to be in multiple places (Is 41:4; 44:6) and Who is also declared by Jesus Christ to be Himself (Rev 1:11, 17; 21:6), Who “was dead and is alive” (Rev 2:8), and to be the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. (Rev 22:13) Jesus further states that Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, is “… the Lord, which is and was and is to come; the Almighty.” (Rev 1:8)

The Speaker is He Who “laid the foundation of the earth” and “stretched out” or “holds the heavens”, and Who calls to them. YHWH God is He Who created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1; Is 40:12; 42:5; 45:18; Ex 20:11), and calls the heavens and its bodies by name. (Is 40:26; Ps 147:4)

And then the Speaker declares in verse 16 that “the Lord YHWH, and His Spirit, has sent Me.”

Jesus Christ declared of Himself that God the Father had sent Him. (John 5:23, 30 – 37; 6:39, 44, 57; 8:16, 18, 29, 42; 10:36; 12:49; 1 John 4:14).

Therefore, in this short passage of Isaiah 48, God has revealed the Father as YHWH Who sent the Speaker; that Jesus Christ, the first and the last, and Him Whom the Father sent, is the Speaker and therefore also YHWH; and that the Spirit of YHWH had a role as an independent entity, in sending the Son, thereby revealing His membership in YHWH. Here God openly displays the trinity of persons in the singularity of the godhead.

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