A note from Pastor Kenny: We have a member in our church who spends much of his time studying God’s Word and writing out his reflections on it. He wants to use the gifts God has given Him to encourage and challenge the body of Christ at MissionWay. I told him I would be happy to post some of these reflections on our church blog. The following is from John K.
He was seated on the throne of God.
He heard the voice of God saying,
“Who will go for us?”
The seraphs were calling out, "Holy, Holy, Holy."
This is the Trisagion, representing the Godhead:
Holy (the Father), Holy (the Son), and Holy (the Spirit) together.
Could it be that the seraphs repeated "Holy" three times to reflect the Trinity? We see this again on earth at Christ's baptism: The Father's voice, the Son Jesus, and the Spirit's dove together. All three were also present "in the beginning" (Genesis 1-2).
In both the Old and New Testaments, repetition in Scripture emphasizes God's words, directing our attention to matters of finality, intensity, and amplification. In English and many other languages, we show emphasis through bold, italics, underlining, or exclamation marks. However, Hebrew writings do not use these forms of emphasis. Instead, they employ repetition, with words and phrases repeated to drive home their importance.
Hebrew poetic texts contain elements like parallelism, condensed language, and rich imagery. In the Semitic tradition, a triple repetition of a word—often seen in both Old and New Testaments—expresses the superlative, such as “High-Higher-Highest.” This pattern often relates to God’s pronouncements and serves as a means of highlighting the divine nature of YAHWEH.
Here are a few examples of how Hebrew repetition works:
Genesis 39:10: "yom yom" means "every day."
Judges 16:20: "kefa'am befa'am" means "each time."
Leviticus 20:19: "'ish 'ish" means "any man."
Deuteronomy 14:22: "Shanah Shanah" means "year after year."
Ezekiel 21:27: "A ruin, a ruin, a ruin."
Jeremiah 22:29: "O land, land, land."
Revelation 4:8: "Holy, Holy, Holy."
So when you encounter repetition in the Scriptures - especially the Old Testament, it is meant to draw your attention in and emphasize what is being said. God is not just Holy, He is “Holy, Holy, Holy!”