Whose voice cried? 2 Nephi 16:4

Whose voice cried? 2 Nephi 16:4

Nephi's younger brother Jacob is quoting Isaiah in this chapter. It is comparable to Isaiah 6.

I really, really love the words of Isaiah.

Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne "in the year that king Uzziah died" - which is probably sometime around 740/739 BC from that really valid and useful source known as Wikipedia, which here is quoting some guy named Edwin R. Thiele who I don't really want to spend a lot of time figuring out whether or not I think he's a valid source because honestly, it doesn't really matter much to me exactly what year this thing happened - a really long time ago.

Isaiah describes what he sees. It was something like this, I guess:

The Lord was sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, his robes(?) filling the temple.

Above (the robes? the temple?) were seraphim - multiple heavenly beings that, by all accounts, sound super alien and strange: they each have six wings. I don't know how many there were.

One seraphim says to the other: "holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory."

The door posts moved when he (the seraphim) cried, and the entire place was full of smoke.

Then Isaiah freaks out and basically says, "crap, I suck. I am totally unworthy to see any of this." Specifically, he mentions that his mouth is unclean.

Then one of the seraphim takes a hot coal from the altar and puts it on Isaiah's mouth, purifying him.

Obviously, there's a lot of symbolism here that is difficult to understand through the veil of modern times and culture. Like, a whole lot. For example, when I think of a live coal, I don't think of purification. I think of intense, horrible pain and the branding of slaves and animals. And when I think of smoke, I don't think of the presence of God or prayers ascending to reach God. I think of danger from fire and how my smoke alarm is going to go off at any second.

I think Isaiah literally saw this, which is...well, it's weird, to say the least. I would have to really think and study a lot more to come closer to understanding what any of it means.

Answer:

It was the voice of one of the seraphim standing above the Lord (or his robes, or his train) in the temple who cried.