What does “Here I am, send me” mean?

The vision behind the words

“In the year that King Uzziah died,” about 740 BC, Isaiah sees the Lord on a high throne in the Temple, with six-winged seraphim calling “Holy, holy, holy” until the thresholds shake (Isaiah 6:1–4). His first reaction is not courage but terror: “Woe is me! For I am undone.” He is a man of unclean lips, and he has seen the King. A seraph touches his mouth with a live coal from the altar, and his guilt is taken away. Only then comes the question.

I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”

Hineni, the Bible’s answer of readiness

“Here I am” translates one Hebrew word, hineni. It is not about location. It means: I am present, I am listening, I am at your service. The great figures of the Hebrew Bible answer God with it.

• Abraham, when God calls him before the test on Mount Moriah: “Here I am” (Genesis 22:1).
• Moses, when God calls his name out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:4).
• Samuel, a boy asleep in the sanctuary at Shiloh, called in the night (1 Samuel 3:4).

Isaiah’s scene differs in one way. Nobody calls his name. God asks an open question, and Isaiah steps forward. He adds a second word, shelacheni, “send me.” The “us” in God’s question has its own debate. Many scholars and Jewish commentators picture God speaking with his heavenly court, as in the prophet Micaiah’s vision of “all the army of heaven” around the throne (1 Kings 22:19–22). Many Christian readers have heard in it the Trinity.

Volunteering before hearing the job

The mission is one of the hardest in the Bible. Isaiah is to tell his people, “You hear indeed, but don’t understand,” and his preaching will only make their hearts fatter and their ears heavier (Isaiah 6:9–10). When he asks, “Lord, how long?”, the answer is: until the cities lie waste, and even then only a stump will be left, though “the holy seed is its stump” (6:11–13). The New Testament returns to this commission when crowds refuse to listen (Matthew 13:14–15; John 12:39–41; Acts 28:25–27).

Other prophets resist their calls. Moses pleads, “Oh, Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:13). Jeremiah protests that he is only a child (Jeremiah 1:6). Jonah buys a ticket the other way, to Tarshish (Jonah 1:3), as told in why Jonah ran away. Isaiah is the volunteer, and he keeps at it for some forty years, from Uzziah’s death to the Assyrian siege of 701 BC under Hezekiah.

How the words are used today

The King James Version (1611) has “Here am I; send me,” the form many English speakers still quote. The verse is read at ordinations and at services that send out missionaries, and Dan Schutte’s hymn “Here I Am, Lord,” written in 1979, turned it into a hymn sung in churches around the world. In everyday speech, “Here I am, send me” means signing up before you know the cost. That is exactly what Isaiah did.