Some Trinitarians appeal to Old Testament texts like Isaiah 48:16 to “prove” that the one God of Israel is a Trinity:

“The Lord GOD [the Father], and His Spirit, hath sent me [the Son]” (KJV).

The claim is that “the Lord GOD,” “His Spirit,” and “me” reveal three separate, distinct Persons within the triune Godhead. Yet some of their own standard Trinitarian commentaries warn against reading this verse in that way.

The Pulpit Commentary frankly notes that “it is against the analogy of [Trinitarian] faith that the Third Person should send the Second.” In other words, even following Trinitarian logic, it is out of order for “the Spirit” (the supposed Third Person) to be sending “the Son” (the supposed Second Person).

The NIV Application Commentary also cautions that:

“This kind of mixing of pronouns is not infrequent in the prophets.”

In other words, you cannot simply line up the pronouns and build a doctrine of the Trinity on them.

The fact is, Trinitarians often misread a couple of well-known literary devices that run all through the prophets.

The first is illeism—speaking about yourself in the third person. For example, in Zechariah 1:17 we hear Yahweh speaking in the first person:

“My cities will again overflow with goodness…” and immediately, in the very same sentence, the speaker shifts: “…and Yahweh will again comfort Zion and he will again choose Jerusalem.”

Here Yahweh says “my cities,” and then, without changing the speaker, we suddenly read “Yahweh… he will again choose Jerusalem.” This is not a second Yahweh; it is simply Yahweh speaking of Himself in the third person, a normal Hebrew rhetorical move.

A second, related feature is the frequent shifting of subjects and persons in prophetic speech. An article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society admits that “few contemporary commentators are persuaded… to read here a record of one Yahweh speaking of another Yahweh…. Such jarring interruptions of subject are not at all foreign to Hebrew syntax, especially when… there is a formulaic phrase.”

In other words, what can seem like different “Yahwehs” in English is often just normal Hebrew style—abrupt shifts in who is being spoken of or addressed, within a single prophetic utterance.

Isaiah 48:16 fits comfortably into this well-attested prophetic pattern. It does not require us to imagine Yahweh as three distinct Persons talking to each other. Rather, it reflects the familiar prophetic style of person-shift and illeism, with Yahweh’s chosen servant or prophet speaking in and out of direct divine speech.

To insist on finding later Trinitarian ways of speaking about the one God in the prophets is to ignore the way the prophets actually wrote and used their own Hebrew language. Instead of forcing these texts to say something no one in Israel believed, we should let them speak on their own terms and recognize that the one God of the prophets and of Jesus is a single divine Person with a personal Name, Yahweh, who speaks through the rich and flexible Hebrew language—not through later Trinitarian, speculative, mostly Gentile-created mumbo jumbo.