The Great Evangelical Prophet
Of Isaiah's history very little is known beyond what he himself records. Jewish tradition makes him to have been of the royal house of Judah, but this is doubtful. His father's name was Amoz, of whom nothing is known.
That Isaiah prophesied during the reigns of four kings of Judah (from Uzziah to Hezekiah), and that he was married with two sons, whose names, like his own, were symbolic, is nearly all that is known of him. The Jews say that he lived into the reign of Manasseh, by whom he was put to death by being sawn asunder in the trunk of a tree. From what is known of Manasseh's cruelty, this may not be improbable, and is thought by some commentators to be referred to by Paul in Hebrews eleven where he speaks about being "sawn asunder."
His period of prophecy extends over a great number of years. Commencing in the reign of Uzziah, (his sixth chapter recording the vision which he saw in the year that the king died, seems to indicate the period of his call to the prophetic office), and living into the reign of Manasseh, it would extend over a period of sixty-two years.
Isaiah has been called the great Evangelical prophet, and the Apostle of Christ on account of the vividness of his prophecy and the accuracy of his prophetic details as to the sufferings and death of the Saviour. His fifty-third chapter is one of the clearest Old Testament indications of the Saviour's work of atonement for His people. None of the prophets is so frequently referred to in the New Testament, both by our Lord Himself and His apostles - quite one-fifth of all the New Testament quotations from the Old Testament being from his writings.