Holy holy holy ...

[MoreCoffee]

There are at least two passages that repeat the word holy three times, do you think that the three-fold repetition is intended to indicate that God Almighty is trinitarian?

(Isa 6:3) And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

(Rev 4:8) And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

 

[Josiah]

Maybe.

 

[Lamb]

I never noticed that before. Are there any other words that are repeated thrice in scripture?

 

[atpollard]

Isaiah 6:3

"The ancients quoted this passage when the wished to prove that there are three persons in one essence of the Godhead … I have no doubt that the angels here describe One God in Three Persons." - John Calvin

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts" Why do they repeat "holy" three times? Wasn't it enough to simply say that the LORD was "holy" once? It wasn't enough. In the Hebrew language, intensity is communicated by repetition. To say the LORD is holy says something. To say the LORD is holy, holy, says far more. To say, holy, holy, holy is the LORD is to declare His holiness in the highest possible degree.

i. What does it mean that God is holy, and holy in the highest possible sense? Holiness, at its root, has the idea of apartness. It describes someone, or something, which is set apart from other people or things. An object can be holy if it is set apart for sacred service. A person is holy if they are set apart for God's will and purpose.

ii. What is the LORD set apart from? He is set apart from creation, in that the Lord GOD is not a creature, and He exists outside of all creation. If all creation were to dissolve, the Lord GOD would remain. He is set apart from humanity, in that His "nature" or "essence" is Divine, not human. God is not a super-man or the ultimate man. God is not merely smarter than any man, stronger than any man, older than any man, or better than any man. You can't measure God on man's chart at all. He is Divine, and we are human.

iii. Yet, because we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), humanity is compatible with Divinity. They are different, but they do not automatically oppose each other. This is how Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, could add humanity to His deity when He became a man. Unfallen humanity is not deity, but it is compatible with it.

iv. God's holiness is a part of everything He is and does. God's power is a holy power. God's love is a holy love. God's wisdom is a holy wisdom. Holiness is not an aspect of God's personality; it is one characteristic of His entire Being.

 

[MoreCoffee]

The Cambridge Bible Commentary says

Isaiah 6:3

And one cried unto another] (frequentat. impf.). Cf. Rev 4:8.
Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of Hosts:
That which fills the whole earth is His glory.
The word “holy,” thrice repeated as if it struck the chord to which the whole nature of these pure beings vibrated (the ancient church found here an allusion to the mystery of the Trinity) sums up the meaning of the vision in so far as it is a revelation of God. The general notion of holiness is too complex to be analysed here. The root idea appears to be that of distance or separation. As a predicate of deity it expresses first of all the awful contrast between the divine and the human, and then those positive attributes of God which constitute true divinity, and call for the religious emotions of awe, reverence and adoration. What Isaiah here receives, therefore, is a new and overpowering impression of the Supreme Godhead of Jehovah; the whole impact of the vision on his mind is concentrated in the word which he hears from the lips of the seraphim. Although the idea of holiness in the O.T. is never to be identified with that of moral purity, it is clear from Isaiah’s immediate sense of guilt that ethical perfection is included among the attributes which make up the holiness or Godhead of Jehovah (see Robertson Smith, Prophets, pp. 224 ff.).

The second line of the Trisagion celebrates the “glory” of Jehovah, His manifestation of Himself in nature,—one of the leading thoughts of the second part of this book (ch. 40 ff.). The seraphim contemplate the universal diffusion of this “glory” (sub specie aeternitatis) as a present fact; elsewhere it is an ideal yet to be realised: Num 14:21; Hab 2:14.​

Perhaps it is the glory of God that reveals to Isaiah how unclean he himself is. The light reveals while darkness conceals.