The most certain and significant fact about Isaiah is that he was a citizen, if not a native, of Jerusalem, and had constant access to the court and presence of the king. Jerusalem is Isaiah's "immediate and ultimate regard, the centre and return of all his thoughts, the hinge of the history of his time, the summit of those brilliant hopes with which he fills the future. He has traced for us the main features of her position and some of the lines of her construction, many of the great figures of her streets, the fashions of her women, the arrival of embassies, the effect of rumours. He has painted her aspect in triumph, in siege, in famine, and in earthquake: war filling her valleys with chariots, and again nature rolling tides of fruitfulness up to her very gates; her moods of worship, panic, and profligacy. If he takes wider observation of mankind, Jerusalem is his watch-tower. It is for her defence he battles through fifty years of statesmanship, and all his prophecy may be said to travail in anguish for her new birth."
—From Hastings Bible Dictionary.
