Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 6:9
And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
9. this people ] A contemptuous designation of Israel, peculiar to Isaiah: cf. ch. Isa 8:6; Isa 8:12, Isa 9:16, Isa 28:11; Isa 28:14, Isa 29:13 f.
Hear ye indeed ] Rather:
Hear ye continually, but perceive not
And see ye continually, but understand not
The verbs, of course, are imperatives. On the force of the inf. abs. see Davidson, Synt. 86 c (where, however, a different view of this particular passage is taken).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
9, 10. The first effect of Isaiah’s prophetic work: to increase the spiritual insensibility of the people. The prophet’s words will go hand in hand with the “work of Jehovah,” the development of His purpose in history ( Isa 6:12, cf. Amo 3:7); the people shall hear the one and see the other, but neither will bring them to true insight.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And he said … – The expressions which follow are those which denote hardness of heart and blindness of mind. They would hear the words of the prophet, but they would not understand him. They were so obstinately bent on iniquity that they would neither believe nor regard him. This shows the spirit with which ministers must deliver the message of God. It is their business to deliver the message, though they should know that it will neither be understood nor believed.
Hear ye indeed – Hebrew In hearing, hear. This is a mode of expressing emphasis. This passage is quoted in Mat 13:14; see thenote at that place.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 6:9-13
And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not
Isaiah: his heaviness and his consolation
1.
Isaiah summed up his whole future life in those two words, Behold me; send me. Then on his ardent soul was poured the heavy message, Go, and thou shalt tell this people (God speaks of them no more as His own), Hear ye on, and understand not; and see ye on, and know not. Make thou dull the heart of this people, and its ears make thou heavy, and its eyes close thou; lest it see with its eyes, and with its ears hearken, and its heart understand, and it return and one heal it. Startling office for one so sanguine and so young! Heavy burden to bear for probably sixty-one years of life, to be closed by a martyrs excruciating death! Outside of that commission there was hope: hope, because the promises of God could not fail of fulfilment: hope, because in the worst times of Israel there had been those seven thousand which the prophet knew not of, but whose number God revealed to him, who had stood faithful to God amid the national apostasy; hope, because when God pronounces not a doom, we may take refuge in the loving mercy of Him who swears by Himself, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure individuals: the people, not to individuals, only as they were such as the mass of the nation was, as they themselves made up that mass. This, in all seeming, was the thankless office to which Isaiah was called, to be heard, to be listened to, by some with contempt, by others with seeming respect, and to leave things in the main worse than he found them.
3. Isaiahs office was towards those, in part at least, who were ever hearing, never doing, and so never understanding. And so (so to speak) he was only to make things worse. So St. Paul says, The earth which drinketh in the rain which cometh oft upon it–if it bring forth thorns and briars, is accounted worthless and nigh unto cursing, not yet accursed, yet nigh unto it, whose end–if it remains such unto the end–is to be burned. There were better among the people; there were worse; but such was the general character; it was an ever-hearing,–hearing,–hearing (such is the force of the words, hear ye hearing on, evermore), never wearied of hearing, yet never doing; ever seeing, as they thought, yet never gaining insight; and so becoming ever duller, their sight ever more and more bleared, until to hear and to see would become well-nigh, and to man, impossible. The more they heard and saw, the further they were from understanding, from being converted, from the reach of healing. Such they were, a little later, in Ezekiels time. So it was when He came of whom Isaiah prophesied. They thought that they knew the law, but only to allege their interpretation of it against Him. The more they heard, the more they were blinded. And their imagined seeing and their real blindness, was their condemnation (Joh 9:41). This is inseparable from every revelation of God, from every preaching of the Gospel, from every speaking of God inwardly to the soul, from every motion of God the Holy Ghost, from every drawing or forbidding of that, judge which He has placed within, our conscience, from every hearing of Gods Word. All and each leave the soul in a better condition or a worse. Not by any direct hardening from God, not through any agency of the prophet, but by mans free will, hearing but not obeying, seeing but not doing, feeling but resisting, the preaching of the prophet would leave them only more hopelessly far from that conversion, whereby God might heal them.
4. And what said the prophet? Contrary as the sentence must have been to all the yearnings of his soul, crushing to his hopes, he knew that it must be just, because the Judge of the whole world must do right. He intercedes, but only by those three words, Lord, how long? He appeals to God. Such could not be Gods ultimate purpose with His people. The night was to come; sin deserved it; but was it to have no dawn? Hope there is yet, but meanwhile a still-deepening night, a climax of woe; and that in two stages. In the first, cities left without inhabitants; and not cities only, as a whole, but houses too tenantless; nor these alone, but the whole land desolate, and God removes the inhabitants far away, and there shall be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. Nor this only, but when, in this sifting time, nine parts should be gone, and one-tenth only remain, this should be again consumed: only, like those trees which survived the winters and storms of a thousand years, while the glory, wherewith God once clad it, was gone, its hewn stem was still to live; a holy seed was to be the stock thereof. The vision, opened before him, stretches on until now and to the end. His question, How long? Until when? implied a hope that there would be an end; the answer until, declared that there would be an end. We have, in one, that first carrying away, the small remnant which should return; its new desolation; the holy seed which should survive; the restoration at the end, of which St. Paul says, then all Israel shall be saved.
5. And this message fell on one of the tenderest of hearts in its early freshness. As he is eminently the Gospel-prophet, the evangelist in the old covenant, so he had already been taught by the Holy Ghost the Gospel lesson, Love your enemies. He denounces Gods judgments; but he himself is the type of Him who wept over Jerusalem.
6. Yet where there is desolation for the sake of God, there is also consolation. Wherein was Isaiahs? Not in the solace of his married life. His daily dress was like John Baptists, the hair cloth pressing upon his loins, wearing to the naked flesh, although mentioned only when he was to put it off and himself to become a portent to his people, walking naked and barefoot (Isa 20:2). His two sons were, by their names, the continual pictures of that woe on his people. What, then, was his solace? Isaiah had seen, as man can see, Christs Deity (Joh 12:41). He had seen Him, the brightness of the Fathers glory and the express image of His person. Yet he had not seen the Son alone. He himself says, Mine eyes have seen the King, Him who is the Lord of hosts. And the Holy Ghost says by St. Paul that He spake by Isaiah in these words (Act 28:25-27). It was a human Form which he beheld, sitting enthroned as the Judge, and receiving the worship of the glowing love of the seraphim. How should not this vision live in him for those threescore years? So God prepared him to be, above all the goodly company of the prophets, the evangelic prophet, in that he had seen the glory of the Lord. He, too, was a man of longing. His darkest visions are the dawn streaks of the brightest light. He lived in a future for himself, a future which God had promised to the remnant of His people He looked on beyond this world of disappointment and shadows. God Himself is the everlasting bliss of those who wait for Him.
7. Be not dismayed, then, though men who think that they see, see not, or though they see not, because they think that they see. It is but the condition of the victories of faith over the soul, free, if it will, to disbelieve. Be not discouraged, if iniquity abound, or mankind seem to deafen itself in its pleasures or gains, or at the stupidity of an intellect which will not acknowledge a God whom it does not see, or own its own free will, which it has used against God continually, and, by repeated choices of its own evil against Gods good, has well-nigh enslaved to its master passion, which God would have subjected to it. Jesus foretold at once His victories and His sorrows; His victories in those who willed to look to Him as their Master, their Saviour, their Regenerator, their Life, their Resurrection, their Immortality of joy; His sorrows, in those who would not be redeemed. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
The prophets thoughts at this period
The prophets thoughts at this period are few, if great. They are in the main these three:
1. His though of the Lord, the King.
2. His thought of the people in their insensibility to the majesty and rule of the King.
3. These two thoughts when brought together inevitably create the third–that of the annihilation of the people down to a remnant, that the Lord may be exalted in that day. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
The importance of understanding truth
The vast importance of peoples understanding what they hear, our blessed Saviour frequently inculcated upon those who attended His ministry. He often introduced His subject by calling upon them to hear and understand: after discoursing to them He sometimes asked if they understood what they heard? He blamed them if they did not understated, and commended those who were so happy as to know the things which were freely given them of God. (R. Macculloch.)
Israels punishment necessary
We, reading this prophecy in the light of history, can say that if it were anywhere necessary thus to assert Gods righteousness against sin, most especially was it so in this the chosen nation of Israel. Israel had been set apart that in him all the nations of the earth should be blessed; and if he became reprobate, where were this promise to the world? If gold rusteth, what should iron do? Therefore the cities were to be wasted without inhabitant, and the land utterly desolate; and even after a partial recovery from this punishment, and a humble restoration of a small part of their ancient glory, the stern process should be repeated again and again: the invasion of Pekah and Rezin would be repaired only to be followed by that of Sennacherib; the captivity of Manasseh would succeed the peaceful reign of Hezekiah; Josiah would restore the kingdom only to be laid waste by the Egyptian and the Assyrian; the Roman would come after the Greek, and even Hadrian after Titus, All thought of an earthly glory of the nation must give way before such a, prospect. If the prophet could have looked so far forward, and with a patriots hopes alone, there was nothing but humiliation and despair before him; he could, at most, expect but such temporary alleviation and restoration as might enable him to do his work while he was there. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)
The meaning of the message intrusted to Isaiah
Did it represent the ministry to which he was solemnly deputed as a forlorn hope, because, from the moral temper and confirmed habits of the people, an unfavourable result was antecedently certain? This seems the sense in which it was understood by the authors of the LXX, and its form, if Hebrew idiom be taken into account, is by no means inconsistent with this meaning. It is a mode of expression, very characteristic of Hebrew thought, to represent the result of a course of action as designed which is only foreseen or confidently anticipated. Familiar with forms of government in which the sovereign power appeared wholly without control, the Hebrews transferred ideas derived from this source to the government of God. They had a conviction that the Judge of all the earth must do right, but the conception of the rights of the creature and correlative responsibilities of the Creator did not lie within the horizon of their thought. Their overwhelming sense of the Divine power, absolutely ordering all events and giving no account of its dealings, permitted them to say, without any idea that they were imputing evil to God, Why hast Thou made us to err from Thy ways, and hardened our heart from Thy fear? (E. W. Shalders.)
The message from God
It may be said that in the passage under consideration the utterance is not the prophets, but Gods. But this makes no difference, since Isaiahs mind was the field of revelation; and, strictly speaking, there is no more difficulty in the idea of Gods accommodating Himself to modes of human thought than in His employing our modes of speech. It is a necessity limiting the absolute truth of revelation. If mens minds are to be reached, the Spirit must use such avenues of approach as have been thrown up for other occasions. Gods communications to Isaiah would be tinctured by Isaiahs habits of thought as inevitably as the prophets publication of them. (E. W. Shalders.)
Incidental penalty
A college professor would not be doing his duty towards his conscientious and diligent students if he forbore to proceed to the higher branches of the subject of his prelections, because his teaching would have the inevitable effect of confusing and discouraging the idle men who had failed to master his elementary course. So it is the appointment of Isaiahs mission, notwithstanding its foreseen failure in the case of all but a remnant of the nation, which gives it a judicial character, and makes it a menace of judgment. (E. W. Shalders.)
Judgment and mercy
Hence our Lords use of the passage to justify His having recourse to parables while prosecuting His ministry in the midst of a nation that had already shown a strong disposition to reject Him. He puts His teaching into a form in which it could be apprehended by such as were willing to do the will of His Father, but which would hide it from those whose disobedience to known truth had deprived them of spiritual insight. This was a chastisement upon their perverse and prejudiced minds, because a virtual withdrawal of His saving ministry from them. It was like closing their day of visitation. Yet in another aspect the adoption of this course was an act of mercy; for teaching, the meaning of which is obscure to the unwilling hearer, is less hardening than plain truth, because it does not provoke such obstinate resistance. So also there was mercy in Isaiahs ministry to his hardened fellow countrymen. It was to be continued until their cities were desolate, without inhabitant, and the Lord had removed men far away. Then its gracious purpose to them would become manifest, for when suffering Divine judgments they would be thrown back upon neglected warnings. Though so long unavailing, as unavailing as if their very design had been to confirm them in their disobedience, these warnings would eventually become weird fingers pointing to the cause of their sufferings, and indicating the way of salvation through repentance and turning to God (verses 11-13). For the severest lines of the prophets message plainly imply that, even after a course of obstinate impenitence, to turn to put a constraint upon Gods mercy, and draw forth His forgiveness: lest, He says, they convert and be healed. (E. W. Shalders.)
A loud call to repentance
Four the prophet to represent God as actually no longer inviting men to repent, but only desiring their greater condemnation, was a new and most forcible call to repentance for men who had rejected many previous calls. It was like digging a grave for a man in his own sight, after you have failed to convince him by word that his course of conduct must end in death. It brought the far-off results of mens behaviour most vividly before their eyes. It roused them to thought by the unwonted cry that the hour of repentance was past. (P. Thomson, M. A.)
God vindicating Himself
It is most important, when a boy at school is careless, and makes little or no progress in learning, that his teacher should put himself in a right position–that he should be able to declare that he paid attention to him, and did his utmost to promote his education. It is most important, when a son turns out badly, that the parents should put themselves in a right position–that they should be able to declare that they did their duty by him. In like manner, it was most important that, relative to the people of Judah, God should put Himself in a right position, or in a position to appeal to facts; that He should be able even to appeal to themselves, as to whether He had not interested Him self in them, borne patiently with them, and wrought with them in every possible way to guide their feet into right paths. But if Isaiah had not been sent to them, would God have been in a position to appeal to facts? He would not. It is not strange, then, that he was commissioned to go to them in the character of a prophet, and deal with them in order to their reformation. (G. Cron, M. A.)
Opposite effects from the same agencies
The same fire reddens the gold and burns the dross. Under the same threshing sledge the grain is cleansed and the chaff crushed out. By the same press beam the oil is separated from the dregs. The same sunshine and rain which cause the living tree to grow and flourish, are the most potent influences to bring the dead tree to decay. (Sunday School Chronicle.)
A hard ministry
On the morning before I was licensed, says the late Rev. John Brown, that text was much impressed on my spirit. He said, Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not, etc. Since I was ordained at Haddington, I know not how often it hath been heavy to my heart to think how much this Scripture hath been fulfilled in my ministry. Frequently I have had an anxious desire to be removed by death, from being a plague to my poor congregation. Often, however, I have checked myself, and have considered this wish as my folly, and begged of the Lord, that if it were not for His glory to remove me by death, He would make me successful in my work.
See ye indeed, but perceive not
Sight without insight
(with Mar 8:18):–They had sight, but no insight. They exercised the power of observation, but had no imagination. They were ritualistic, but not poetic. In their company could be found scribes, but no prophets. They had many politicians, but no statesmen. Eyes had they, but no vision. Life to these people was a superficies, not a profundity. Facts were planes, not cubes. Everything was a surface phenomenon, a mere skin with no wondrous internal ministry to arouse the imagination and to fill the being with awe. Now the suggestion of the Scriptures is this: Life is cubical, every fact being a cube. To see only the surface is elementary and primitive. The crown of life consists in being able to comprehend with all saints what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and height, of every fact which we encounter in the common paths of daily life. The practical which we can measure with a foot rule has mystical relationships; the material has spiritual significance. To see the larger relationships of things, to discern their spiritual pose and set, to peer into their possible issues, is vision. Thousands of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. (J. H.Jowett, M. A.)
Two ways of looking at things: the superficial and the cubical
Let me illustrate a little more clearly these two ways o flocking at things, the superficial and the cubical; the so-called practical and the imaginative; the way of sight and the way of vision.
1. There are two ways of looking at a little child. Sight exercises the power of observation and beholds a little animal, compounded of material atoms in varying quality, a cunning product of material forces; a little bundle of hungers and thirsts. Insight beholds in the child a germ of wondrous possibility, a promise of the eternal, a vehicle of unnamed endowments, a possible image of Christ.
2. There are two ways of looking at a flower. There is the way of sight–
A primrose by the rivers brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
And there is the way of insight–
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the cranny.
I hold you here root and all, in my hand,
Little flower, but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
3. There are two ways of looking at a book: sight and insight. Here is a book. It is a dictionary. A man gave years of ceaseless labour to its creation. What is it? A Chinese dictionary. Who compiled it? A missionary. And this when he might have been teaching the multitude, feeding the hungry, carrying consolation to the terrified and depressed. To what purpose is this waste? Why were not these years invested and given the poor? So says sight; How does insight regard the labour! The dictionary is a door of hope, the carrier of light, the key to an empire, a living way into the thought and heart of a vast people.
4. There are two ways of looking at the fabric of this building in which we at present worship. Sight says, How plain the structure, made of common brick! And the windows! nothing about them tasteful and refined. Insight gazes at the building and recalls the men and women who have found their Saviour here. A panorama of spiritual ministers passes before it, the consecration of wedlock, the dedication of little children, the illumination of death, the transfiguration of sorrow, the heightening of joy! To the souls vision this plain brick house is an earthly vessel, precious because of the heavenly treasure of which it has been, and is, the shrine.
5. There are two ways of looking at the bread upon the Communion table. To sight it is common bakers bread, bought at so much a loaf, and there is much more like it. To vision it is a token of a broken body and of shed blood. By vision we realise the spiritual significance of things, and by fixing our regard upon them we appropriate their contents into our own spirits. (J. H.Jowett, M. A.)
Religious, but without spiritual discernment
Now let me mention an astounding thing. This word of the prophets, and the stern warning as to the perils of blindness with which this book abounds, are addressed not to the men of the world, the jauntily irreligious, the men who treat the affairs of the Highest with levity or derision. They are addressed to the religious, to the regular churchgoers, to the recognised adherents of the synagogue and the temple. They are addressed to men and women who are religious but who have no vision, who pay scrupulous attention to ritual but who are devoid of spiritual discernment. They had given undue emphasis to the formal. Their life had been lived on the superficies. In the realm of religion they were geographers, not geologists; registrars, not poets. They lived and moved on the piano of rules, they did not enter into the roomy depths of principles. They were great at surface measurements; the measure of a Sabbath days journey, the length of a rope, the hang of a tassel, the fixing of a pin, the duration of a fast. Now when the formal is unduly emphasised it is at the expense of the moral. When ritual is obtrusive the spiritual is impaired. These exalted the trellis and forgot the fruit! But when the spiritual is minimised, life becomes callous. We become indurated by worship of form. What therefore do we find? We find that in the speech of the prophets it is the formally religious people who are denounced for their senselessness; the formal have become the brutal. They have lost their spiritual refinement, and with it their sympathy for their kind. And when the refinement has gone from the spirit, men lose their insight, their power of seeing the invisible. They have eyes, but they see not. (J. H.Jowett, M. A.)
Conditions of spiritual vision
How can we gain and keep the power of vision?
1. Let us seek our answer in the Book of Revelation: Anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see. Mark the connection of this passage. The anointing follows an adorning; before the eyes are mentioned attention has been drawn to the garments. The garment must be changed; the raiment must be made white. The life must attain unto purity. Then, succeeding the purity, comes the vision–the insight. First, there is the washing of regeneration; then the vision and faculty Divine. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things.
2. And there is one other condition which must be named. It is suggested to us by a word of the Apostle Paul: I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. When we have discerned a heavenly meaning, when we have seen the Divine significance of things, when we have entered into the spiritual purpose, we are to be true to what we have seen. I must bring my life into conformity with my light. Hold fast that which thou hast. I must not batter the gates of heaven for more light if I am rebellious to the light already given. I must be true to what I see. If I live truly I shall see truly. Obedience is the way to the larger vision. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.)
Israels detective insight
The great objects which were presented to the view of this people were, the astonishing wonders which were brought before their eyes, the many terrible judgments inflicted upon their enemies, the signal victories with which they were crowned, the glorious deliverances and remarkable interpositions of kind Providence in their behalf. (R. Macculloch.)
Responsibility of having the Gospel
A writer says, You may buy a New Testament for a few pence, yet it may be to you at last the most costly possession you ever had. (Sunday School Chronicle.)
Petrifaction
The petrifying well at Knaresborough well known, and may illustrate this subject. It is a cascade from the river Nidd, about fifteen feet high and twice as broad, and forms an aqueous curtain to a cave. The dripping waters are used for petrifying anything that may be hung up in the drip of the water ledge, which flows over, as it were, the eaves of the cave. This ledge of limestone rock is augmented unceasingly by the action of the water–which flows over it. In the cascade a great variety of objects are hung up by short lengths of wire, and these are petrified, turned into rock, by the water trickling over them; sponges, books, gloves, veils, animals, and birds subjected to the action of the shower are changed into stone. A sponge is petrified in a few months; some things require a year or two. Petrifying streams threaten our spiritual life, and unless duly resisted, steal away our vitality and leave us with the coldness and hardness of stone. (W. L.Watkinson.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 9. And he said] li, to me, two MSS. and the Syriac. Thirteen MSS. have raah, in the regular form.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
This people; not
my people, for I disown them, as they have rejected me.
Understand not, perceive not: the Hebrew words are imperative; yet they are not to be taken as a command what the people ought to do, but only as a signification and prediction. what by their own wickedness, and by Gods just judgment, they did and would do, as is manifest by Mat 13:14; Act 28:26, where they are so rendered. And imperative words among the Hebrews are frequently put for the future, as is well known to the learned. The sense is, Because you have so long heard my words, and seen my works, to no purpose, and have hardened your hearts, and will not learn nor reform, I will punish you in your own kind, your sin shall be your punishment. I will still continue my word and works to you, not in mercy, and for your good, but to aggravate your sin and condemnation; for I will blind your minds, and withdraw my Spirit, so that you shall be as unable, as now you are unwilling, to understand or perceive any thing that may do you good.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
9. Hear . . . indeedHebrew,“In hearing hear,” that is, Though ye hear theprophet’s warnings again and again, ye are doomed, because ofyour perverse will (Joh 7:17),not to understand. Light enough is given in revelation toguide those sincerely seeking to know, in order that they maydo, God’s will; darkness enough is left to confound thewilfully blind (Isa 43:8). Soin Jesus’ use of parables (Mt13:14).
see . . . indeedrather,”though ye see again and again,” yet, &c.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And he said, go, and tell this people,…. What is and will be their case and condition, as follows:
hear ye indeed; the words of the prophets sent unto them, yea, Christ himself incarnate preaching among them; the great Prophet Moses said should be raised up unto them:
but understand not; neither that he is the Messiah, nor the doctrines delivered by him; which were spoken to them in parables; see
Mt 13:13:
and see ye indeed: the miracles wrought by him, as raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, restoring sight to the blind, causing the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak:
but perceive not; that he is the Messiah, though all the characteristics pointed at in prophecy are upon him, and such miracles are done by him.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
This is confirmed by the words in which his commission is expressed, and the substance of the message. “He said, Go, and tell this people, Hear on, and understand not; and look on, but perceive not. Make ye the heart of this people greasy, and their ears heavy, and their eyes sticky; that they may not see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and their heart understand, and they be converted, and one heal them.” “This people” points back to the people of unclean lips, among whom Isaiah had complained of dwelling, and whom the Lord would not call “my people.” It was to go to this people and preach to them, and therefore to be the prophet of this people, that he was called. But how mournful does the divine commission sound! It was the terrible opposite of that seraphic mission, which the prophet had experienced in himself. The seraph had absolved Isaiah by the burning coal, that he as prophet might not absolve, but harden his people by his word. They were to hear and see, and that continually as the gerundives imply (Ges. 131, 3, b; Ewald, 280, b), by having the prophet’s preaching actu directo constantly before them; but not to their salvation. The two prohibitory expressions, “understand not” and “perceive not,” show what the result of the prophet’s preaching was to be, according to the judicial will of God. And the imperatives in v. 10 are not to be understood as simply instructing the prophet to tell the people what God had determined to do; for the fact that “prophets are often said to do what they announce as about to happen,” in proof of which Jer 1:10 is sometimes quoted (cf., Jer 31:28; Hos 6:5; Eze 43:3), has its truth not in a rhetorical figure, but in the very nature of the divine word. The prophet was the organ of the word of God, and the word of God was the expression of the will of God, and the will of God is a divine act that has not yet become historical. For this reason a prophet might very well be said to perform what he announced as about to happen: God was the Causa efficiens principalis , the word was the Causa media , and the prophet the Causa ministerialis . This is the force of the three imperatives; they are three figurative expressions of the idea of hardening. The first, hishmin , signifies to make fat ( pinguem ), i.e., without susceptibility or feeling for the operations of divine grace (Psa 119:70); the second, hicbd , to make heavy, more especially heavy or dull of hearing (Isa 59:1); the third, or (whence the imperative or ), to smear thickly, or paste over, i.e., to put upon a person what is usually the result of weak eyes, which become firmly closed by the hardening of the adhesive substance secreted in the night. The three future clauses, with “lest” ( pen), point back to these three imperatives in inverse order: their spiritual sight, spiritual hearing, and spiritual feeling were to be taken away, their eyes becoming blind, and their ears deaf, and their hearts being covered over with the grease of insensibility.
Under the influence of these futures the two preterites affirm what might have been the result if this hardening had not taken place, but what would never take place now. The expression is used in every other instance in a transitive sense, “to heal a person or a disease,” and never in the sense of becoming well or being healed; but in the present instance it acquires a passive sense from the so-called impersonal construction (Ges. 137, 3), “and one heal it,” i.e., “and it be healed:” and it is in accordance with this sense that it is paraphrased in Mar 4:12, whereas in the three other passages in which the words are quoted in the New Testament (viz., Matthew, John, and Acts) the Septuagint rendering is adopted, “and I should heal them” (God Himself being taken as the subject). The commission which the prophet received, reads as though it were quite irreconcilable with the fact that God, as the Good, can only will what is good. But our earlier doctrinarians have suggested the true solution, when they affirm that God does not harden men positive aut effective , since His true will and direct work are man’s salvation, but occasionaliter et eventualiter , since the offers and displays of salvation which man receives necessarily serve to fill up the measure of his sins, and judicialiter so far as it is the judicial will of God, that what was originally ordained for men’s salvation should result after all in judgment, in the case of any man upon whom grace has ceased to work, because all its ways and means have been completely exhausted. It is not only the loving will of God which is good, but also the wrathful will into which His loving will changes, when determinately and obstinately resisted. There is a self-hardening in evil, which renders a man thoroughly incorrigible, and which, regarded as the fruit of his moral behaviour, is no less a judicial punishment inflicted by God, than self-induced guilt on the part of man. The two are bound up in one another, inasmuch as sin from its very nature bears its own punishment, which consists in the wrath of God excited by sin. For just as in all the good that men do, the active principle is the love of God; so in all the harm that they do, the active principle is the wrath of God. An evil act in itself is the result of self-determination proceeding from a man’s own will; but evil, regarded as the mischief in which evil acting quickly issues, is the result of the inherent wrath of God, which is the obverse of His inherent love; and when a man hardens himself in evil, it is the inward working of God’s peremptory wrath. To this wrath Israel had delivered itself up through its continued obstinacy in sinning. And consequently the Lord now proceeded to shut the door of repentance against His people. Nevertheless He directed the prophet to preach repentance, because the judgment of hardness suspended over the people as a whole did not preclude the possibility of the salvation of individuals.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Judicial Blindness Threatened. | B. C. 758. |
9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. 10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. 11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, 12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. 13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.
God takes Isaiah at his word, and here sends him on a strange errand–to foretel the ruin of his people and even to ripen them for that ruin–to preach that which, by their abuse of it, would be to them a savour of death unto death. And this was to be a type and figure of the state of the Jewish church in the days of the Messiah, when they should obstinately reject the gospel, and should thereupon be rejected of God. These verses are quoted in part, or referred to, six times, in the New Testament, which intimates that in gospel time these spiritual judgments would be most frequently inflicted; and though they make the least noise, and come not with observation, yet they are of all judgments the most dreadful. Isaiah is here given to understand these four things:–
1. That the generality of the people to whom he was sent would turn a deaf ear to his preaching, and wilfully shut their eyes against all the discoveries of the mind and will of God which he had to make to them (v. 9): “Go, and tell this people, this foolish wretched people, tell them their own, tell them how stupid and sottish they are.” Isaiah must preach to them, and they will hear him indeed, but that is all; they will not heed him; they will no understand him; they will not take any pains, nor use that application of mind which is necessary to the understanding of him; they are prejudiced against that which is the true intent and meaning of what he says, and therefore they will not understand him, or pretend they do not. They see indeed (for the vision is made plain on tables, so that he who runs may read it); but they perceive not their own concern in it; it is to them as a tale that is told. Note, There are many who hear the sound of God’s word, but do not feel the power of it.
2. That, forasmuch as they would not be made better by his ministry, they should be made worse by it; those that were wilfully blind should be judicially blinded (v. 10): “They will not understand or perceive thee, and therefore thou shalt be instrumental to make their heart fat, senseless, and sensual, and so to make their ears yet more heavy, and to shut their eyes the closer; so that, at length, their recovery and repentance will become utterly impossible; they shall no more see with their eyes the danger they are in, the ruin they are upon the brink of, nor the way of escape from it; they shall no more hear with their ears the warnings and instructions that are given them, nor understand with their heart the things that belong to their peace, so as to be converted from the error of their ways, and thus be healed.” Note, (1.) The conversion of sinners is the healing of them. (2.) A right understanding is necessary to conversion. (3.) God sometimes, in a way of righteous judgment, gives men up to blindness of mind and strong delusions, because they would not receive the truth in the love of it, 2 Thess. ii. 10-12. He that is filthy let him be filthy still. (4.) Even the word of God oftentimes proves a means of hardening sinners. The evangelical prophet himself makes the heart of this people fat, not only as he foretels it, passing this sentence upon them in God’s name, and seals them under it, but as his preaching had a tendency to it, rocking some asleep in security (to whom it was a lovely song), and making others more outrageous, to whom it was such a reproach that they were not able to bear it. Some looked upon the word as a privilege, and their convictions were smothered by it (Jer. vii. 4); others looked upon it as a provocation, and their corruptions were exasperated by it.
3. That the consequence of this would be their utter ruin,Isa 6:11; Isa 6:12. The prophet had nothing to object against the justice of this sentence, nor does he refuse to go upon such an errand, but asks, “Lord, how long?” (an abrupt question): “Shall it always be thus? Must I and other prophets always labour in vain among them, and will things never be better?” Or, (as should seem by the answer) “Lord, what will it come to at last? What will be in the end hereof?” In answer to this he is told that it should issue in the final destruction of the Jewish church and nation. “When the word of God, especially the word of the gospel, had been thus abused by them, they shall be unchurched, and consequently undone. Their cities shall be uninhabited, and their country houses too; the land shall be untilled, desolate with desolation (as it is in the margin), the people who should replenish the houses and cultivate the ground being all cut off by sword, famine, or pestilence, and those who escape with their lives being removed far away into captivity, so that there shall be a great and general forsaking in the midst of the land; that populous country shall become desert, and that glory of all lands shall be abandoned.” Note, Spiritual judgments often bring temporal judgments along with them upon persons and places. This was in part fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, when the land, being left desolate, enjoyed her sabbaths seventy years; but, the foregoing predictions being so expressly applied in the New Testament to the Jews in our Saviour’s time, doubtless this points at the final destruction of that people by the Romans, in which it had a complete accomplishment, and the effects of it that people and that land remain under to this day.
4. That yet a remnant should be reserved to be the monuments of mercy, v. 13. There was a remnant reserved in the last destruction of the Jewish nation (Rom. xi. 5, At this present time there is a remnant); for so it was written here: But in it shall be a tenth, a certain number, but a very small number in comparison with the multitude that shall perish in their unbelief. It is that which, under the law, was God’s proportion; they shall be consecrated to God as the tithes were, and shall be for his service and honour. Concerning this tithe, this saved remnant, we are here told, (1.) That they shall return (Isa 6:13; Isa 10:21), shall return from sin to God and duty, shall return out of captivity to their own land. God will turn them, and they shall be turned. (2.) That they shall be eaten, that is, shall be accepted of God as the tithe was, which was meat in God’s house, Mal. iii. 10. The saving of this remnant shall be meat to the faith and hope of those that wish well to God’s kingdom. (3.) That they shall be like a timber-tree in winter, which has life, though it has no leaves: As a teil-tree and as an oak, whose substance is in them even when they cast their leaves, so this remnant, though they may be stripped of their outward prosperity and share with others in common calamities, shall yet recover themselves, as a tree in the spring, and flourish again; though they fall, they shall not be utterly cast down. There is hope of a tree, though it be cut down, that it will sprout again, Job xiv. 7. (4.) That this distinguished remnant shall be the stay and support of the public interests. The holy seed in the soul is the substance of the man; a principle of grace reigning in the heart will keep life there; he that is born of God has his seed remaining in him, 1 John iii. 9. So the holy seed in the land is the substance of the land, keeps it from being quite dissolved, and bears up the pillars of it, Ps. lxxv. 3. See ch. i. 9. Some read the foregoing clause with this, thus: As the support at Shallecheth is in the elms and the oaks, so the holy seed is the substance thereof; as the trees that grow on either side of the causeway (the raised way, or terrace-walk, that leads from the king’s palace to the temple, 1 Kings x. 5, at the gate of Shallecheth, 1 Chron. xxvi. 16) support the causeway by keeping up the earth, which would otherwise be crumbling away, so the small residue of religious, serious, praying people, are the support of the state, and help to keep things together and save them from going to decay. Some make the holy seed to be Christ. The Jewish nation was therefore saved from utter ruin because out of it, as concerning the flesh, Christ was to come, Rom. ix. 5. Destroy it not, for that blessing is in it (ch. lxv. 8); and when that blessing had come, it was soon destroyed. Now the consideration of this is designed for the support of the prophet in his work. Though far the greater part should perish in their unbelief, yet to some his word should be a savour of life unto life. Ministers do not wholly lose their labour if they be but instrumental to save one poor soul.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
9. Then he said, Go, and tell that people. (95) This shows still more clearly how necessary the vision was, that Isaiah might not all at once fail in his course. It was a grievous stumblingblock, that he must endure such obstinacy and rebellion in the people of God, and that not only for a year or two, but for more than sixty years. On this account he needed to be fortified, that he might be like a brazen wall against such stubbornness. The Lord, therefore, merely forewarns Isaiah that he will have to do with obstinate men, on whom he will produce little effect; but that so unusual an occurrence must not lead him to take offense, and lose courage, or yield to the rebellion of men; that, on the contrary, he must proceed with unshaken firmness, and rise superior to temptations of this nature. For God gives him due warning beforehand as to the result; as if he had said, “You will indeed teach without any good effect; but do not regret your teaching, for I enjoin it upon you; and do not refrain from teaching, because it yields no advantage; only obey me, and leave to my disposal all the consequences of your labors. I give you all this information in good time, that the event may not terrify you, as if it had been strange and unexpected.” Besides, he is commanded openly to reprove their blind obstinacy, as if he purposely taunted them.
“
My labors will do no good; but it matters not to me: it is enough that what I do obtains the approbation of God, to whom my preaching will be a sweet smell, though it bring death to you.” (2Co 2:15.)
(95) And he said, Go, and tell this people. — Eng. Ver.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(9) Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not.No harder task, it may be, was ever given to man. Ardent dreams of reformation and revival, the nation renewing its strength like the eagle, were scattered to the winds; and he had to face the prospect of a fruitless labour, of feeling that he did but increase the evil against which he strove. It was the very opposite mission of that to which St. Paul was sent, to open mens eyes, and turn them from darkness to light (Act. 26:18). It is significant that the words that followed were quoted both by the Christ (Mat. 13:14-15; Mar. 4:12), by St. John (Joh. 12:40), and by St. Paul (Act. 28:26-27), as finding their fulfilment in their own work and the analogous circumstances of their own time. History was repeating itself. To Isaiah, as with greater clearness to St. Paul (Romans 9-11), there was given the support of the thought that the failure which he saw was not total, that even then a remnant should be saved; that though his people had stumbled, they had not fallen irretrievably; that the ideal Israel should one day be realised. The words point at once to the guilt of this people we note the touch of scorn (populus iste) in the manner in which they are mentioned (Isa. 8:11; Isa. 28:11; Isa. 28:14; Mat. 9:3; Mat. 26:61)and to its punishment. All was outward with them. Words did not enter into their minds (heart, i.e., understanding, rather than feeling). Events that were signs of the times, calls to repentance or to action, were taken as things of course. For such a state, after a certain stage, there is but one treatment. It must run its course and dree its weird, partly as a righteous retribution, partly as the only remedial process possible.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
9. Hear ye but understand not Not a command, but a recognition in imperative form of what their hard predispositions indicated they would do: Hear and (as it is clear you purpose to do) refuse to appreciate the truth; shut it out from your cognizance; ignore it and persistently misunderstand it.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 6:9-10. And he said, Go, &c. In this commission given by God to the prophet, we have, first, the preface, in which he is enjoined to bear God’s denunciation to the Jewish people; whom God does not as usual call his people, but this people; Go and tell this people. We have, secondly, the words themselves, comprehending the divine command, and which God puts into the mouth of the prophet; words, which we find frequently repeated, at least as to their sense, in the gospels, where we shall have occasion to speak more fully concerning them. See Exo 9:34. In the style of Scripture, the prophets are said to do what they declare will be done; therefore the words, Make the heart of this people fat, is as much as to say, “Denounce my judgments upon this people, that their hearts shall be fat, &c.” This prophesy might relate, in some measure, to the state of the Jews before the Babylonish captivity, but it did not receive its full completion till the days of our Saviour; and in this sense it is understood and applied by the writers of the New Testament, and by our Lord himself. The prophet is informed in the 11th and 12th verses, which contain the third part of the divine commission, that this infidelity and obstinacy of his countrymen will be of long duration. There is a remarkable gradation in denouncing these judgments: Not only Jerusalem and the cities should be wasted without inhabitant, but even the single houses should be without men; and not only the houses of the city should be without men, but even the country should be utterly desolate; not only the people should be removed out of the land, but the Lord should remove them far away; and they should not be removed for a short period, but there should be a great, or rather a long forsaking in the midst of the land. And has not the world seen all these particulars exactly fulfilled? Have not the Jews laboured under a spiritual blindness and infatuation, in hearing but not understanding, in seeing but not perceiving the Messiah, after the accomplishment of so many prophesies, after the performance of so many miracles? And in consequence of their refusal to convert and be healed, have not their cities been wasted, and their houses without men? Have they not been removed far away, into the most distant parts of the earth? and has not their removal or banishment been now of about 1700 years duration? And do they not still continue deaf and blind, obstinate and unbelieving? The Jews, at the time of the delivery of this prophesy, gloried in being the peculiar church and people of God; and would any Jew of himself have thought or have said, that this nation would, in process of time, become an infidel and rejected nation; infidel and rejected for many ages, oppressed by men, and forsaken as a nation by God? It was above 750 years before Christ that Isaiah predicted these things; and how could he have predicted them, unless he had been illuminated by the divine vision; or how could they have succeeded accordingly, unless the spirit of prophesy had been the Spirit of God? See Bishop Newton on the Prophesies, vol. 1: p. 233 and Vitringa.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Reader, pray attend to these verses: for so important are they considered in the gospel-church, that no less than six times are they taken notice of, and referred to, in the after-writings of the scriptures. All the Evangelists quote them, and they are again spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles, and by the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans. See in proof, Mat 13:14 ; Mar 4:12 ; Luk 8:10 ; Joh 12:39-40 ; Act 28:26-27 and Rom 11:8 . And what awful confirmations have we of their truth, both in the word of God, and the experience of men in all ages! Even when Jesus himself; who spake as never man spake, was the preacher!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Isa 6:9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
Ver. 9. And he said, Go and tell this people. ] a Once my people, but now no more so, Loammi, but a people laden with iniquity, and so a people of my wrath and of my curse, no longer owned by me, but disavowed and abandoned, as their fathers once were. Exo 32:7
Hear ye, indeed, but understand not.
And see indeed,
But perceive not,
a Verba indignantis. – Piscat.
Hear ye indeed. Hebrew “a hearing, hear ye”. Figure of speech Polyptoton (App-6) for emphasis. See note on Gen 26:28.
see ye indeed. Hebrew “a seeing see ye”. Figure of speech Polyptoton, as above.
Isa 6:9-13
Isa 6:9-13
“And he said, Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and Jehovah have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land. And if there be yet a tenth in it, it also shall in turn be eaten up; as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth when they are felled; so the holy seed is the stock thereof.”
“Go and tell this people …” This must be contrasted with “Go and tell my people.” Israel is no longer God’s people, but “this people”. Furthermore, this designation was not confined to Israel, the northern kingdom; but “Even Judah, under certain circumstances, is addressed contemptuously as `this people’ in Isa 8:11; Isa 28:11; Isa 28:14, and Isaiah 39.
What is prophesied in this passage is the judicial hardening of Israel in their rebellion against God. The prophecy is stated in different forms. Here it appears imperatively; but in other places the prophecy is referred to as self-accomplished as in Act 28:27, or as having occurred passively as in Mat 13:13-15. Here, as Dummelow pointed out, “The result of Isaiah’s preaching is spoken of as if it were the purpose of it.
The Hardening of Israel, here prophesied by Isaiah, is a Biblical phenomenon of the utmost importance; and it is extensively illustrated by examples of it given in the holy Bible. Christ himself declared in both Mat 13:14, and in Mar 4:12 that this prophecy of Israel’s hardening was actually fulfilled in that rebellious people.
The classical example from the Bible is that of Pharaoh, of whom it is stated ten times that “Pharaoh hardened his heart …” after which it is said that, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” God never hardened anyone’s heart who had not already hardened his own heart many times. Thus it was said of this prophecy that Israel had themselves shut their ears, closed their eyes, and hardened their hearts.
Thus we may say that God hardened Israel, that Israel hardened themselves, and further, that Satan hardened their hearts. “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving” (2Co 4:4). The “blinding” of this passage and the “strong delusion” of 2Th 2:11 KJV, and the “working of error” (2Th 2:11, ASV) are all designations of exactly the same condition described here as “hardening.”
The consequences of judicial hardening are very extensive. The physical destruction of hardened individuals or nations was the result usually to be expected; and when Christ himself publicly announced the hardening of Israel as a fulfillment of this very passage, the followers of Christ accepted it as a judgment of doom and destruction upon the physical Israel. This Gentile hatred of the Jews (because most of Christ’s followers in that first century were Gentiles) resulted at once in an attitude of hatred toward the Jews just like that which the Jews of earlier times had developed toward the Gentiles; but the apostle Paul launched a blockbuster of a prophecy to counteract Gentile conceit which is recorded in Rom 11:25-26, indicating that the hardening of Israel would not result in their physical destruction but that the race would continue until “the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” Paul called this a “mystery”; and indeed it is, because the hardening of Israel did not issue in the total death of the people, as previously had been the case with hardened peoples, as with Pharaoh and the Egyptians, Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, and many others.
“How long …?” It was fulfilled primarily in the events of the conquest of Israel by Babylon, the destruction and captivity of many of the people; but the ultimate fulfillment came when the Romans under Vespasian and Titus destroyed Jerusalem, put to death 1,100,000, crucified 30,000 young men upon the broken walls of Jerusalem, deported thousands to Egypt, and destroyed the government of Israel for almost two millenniums.
Paul’s declaration that “all Israel shall be saved” is frequently misunderstood to be a declaration that all of the old racial Israel shall be saved; but the Israel Paul was speaking of in that passage is the spiritual Israel, from which the racial Israel is indeed not excluded, but which is not connected in any manner whatever with racial considerations. Jamieson commented as follows on this:
“According to Isaiah, not “all Israel” but the elect remnant alone, is destined to salvation. God shows unchangeable severity toward sin, but covenant faithfulness in preserving a remnant, and to that remnant Isaiah bequeaths the prophetic legacy of the second part of his book, Isaiah 40-66.
“And if there be yet a tenth in it, it also shall be eaten up …!” This statement is variously understood; but we find Lowth’s comment on this fully in line with all that is known about it.
“This prophecy has been made so clear by its accomplishment (fulfillment) that there remains little room for doubt of the fulfillment of it. Nebuchadnezzar took into captivity the great part of the people; the “tenth” remaining in the land, of the poorer people, followed Gedaliah (2Ki 25:12; 2Ki 25:22). Even these, fleeing into Egypt contrary to Jeremiah’s warning, perished there …” In the subsequent and more remarkable fulfillment in the Roman destruction (A.D. 70); after the great majority perished, the “tenth” remainder increased rapidly and became very numerous in the days of Hadrian, who, being provoked by their rebellions, slew half a million more, thus a second time almost exterminating the nation. Yet after such signal and near-universal exterminations, the stock of the old Israel still remains.
Furthermore, these repeated massacres and exterminations of Israel have continued throughout history and even down into current times when they were again repeated under Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany. In the light of all this, the meaning of Isa 6:12 is clear enough.
Some have pointed out that the Septuagint (LXX) reads somewhat differently from the American Standard Version in these final verses of Isaiah 6, but as Kidner noted, “The Dead Sea Scroll Isaiah supports our text.
Isa 6:9-10 TELL THIS PEOPLE . . . hear what I am saying but . . . do not understand. What a strange commission. It will appear that Isaiahs ministry is a complete failure. People will hear him but not understand. In fact, the more they hear the more adamant they will be against what they hear. They will become fat hearted, smug, self-satisfied. Their thoughts will be so thoroughly world-oriented they will be deaf and blind to spiritual things. God, using some irony of His own, commands Isaiah to tell the people to continue in this condition. Both Jesus and Paul repeated this characterization of Jews in their own ages (Mat 13:14-15; Act 28:26-27). Because Isaiah told them the truth the people would not believe. Truth has the awesome power to harden the one who morally rejects it. The more he told the truth, the more they (the majority) refused to accept it. Noah faced the same attitude in his preaching. Jesus faced it (Joh 8:39-47). Ezekiel and Jeremiah faced it (Jer 1:17-19; Eze 2:1 to Eze 3:15). How many men would be willing to say, Here am I; send me, today, if they knew that their mission would be as difficult and bereft of any apparent success (as the world measures success)? Yet we all need to renew in our minds the promise of Jesus, the servant is not above his Master. If they rejected Jesus, they will reject the messengers of Jesus. But we are not to become discouraged. God does not measure success like the world measures it. God demands faithfulness-and He, Himself, takes care of the success.
Isa 6:11-12 HOW LONG: This was a natural reaction. If his ministry was to be fraught with such apparent failure, how long would the Lord expect him to preach to deaf ears? Even Jesus indicated that the time comes when Gods messenger should refrain from giving that which is holy to the dogs and casting pearls before swine. Gods answer is that the prophet is to preach until the captivity takes everyone away and there are no more people to whom to preach. For Israel, the northern kingdom, that would be only twenty years hence. For Judah approximately 136 years. Isaiah, of course, would not be alive when Judah was exiled, but his prophecy would live on in written form,
Isa 6:13 A HOLY SEED SAVED: this will be the result of Isaiahs faithful persistence. Whatever or whomever is salvaged from apostacy by the ministry of Isaiah will be purged again by some form of testing (probably the captivity). Tenth is what we would call a round number. A figure of speech to indicate a small percentage of return for his preaching. But even that will undergo further purging. God is interested primarily in quality. When the message of Gods truth is preached without compromise quality will be the result. But when the messenger of God is inordinately concerned with quantity, there is a tendency to compromise the message. God demands that His messengers be faithful to the message and He will see to the quantity (numbers). Our success in the eyes of God is not judged on the basis of numbers.
There will be a small number of people turned back to the Lord through Isaiahs ministry and they will form the faithful remnant, This faithful remnant will continue through the captivity and pass on from generation to generation a faithfulness to the Lord and a hope in His promises. These generations will succeed one another in walking in the way of the Lord through 700 years until one of them, a virgin by the name of Mary of the tribe of Judah, will surrender herself to become the handmaiden of the Lord and give birth to the Incarnate Son of God. These generations will succeed one another until some of them become the nucleus of the Kingdom of God (the church).
Gods judgment would not result in annihilation of the people. Here is expressed the Messianic potentialities of the people of God. They will continue to exist (a remnant of them) till Shiloh comes (Cf. Gen 49:10). The scepter shall not depart from Judah; nor the rulers staff from between his feet, until Shiloh come. This prophecy was fulfilled in an amazing way. There never was a ruler of the Jews not from the tribe of Judah until Herod the Great who was King of the Jews when Jesus was born. Herod was an Idumean by birth and not even a Jew. The Christ is Shiloh and when He came the scepter had departed from Judah. He came and established the rule of the royal family forever! Now we see why the tenth had to be purged again! The Messiah must have a faithful, sanctified remnant through which to come!
Go: Isa 29:13, Isa 30:8-11, Exo 32:7-10, Jer 15:1, Jer 15:2, Hos 1:9
Hear ye: Isa 43:8, Isa 44:18-20, Mat 13:14, Mat 13:15, Mar 4:12, Luk 8:10, Joh 12:40, Act 28:26, Act 28:27, Rom 11:8
indeed: or, without ceasing, Heb. in hearing
indeed: Heb. in seeing.
Reciprocal: Exo 10:20 – General Deu 28:28 – General Deu 29:4 – General Jos 11:20 – it was 1Ki 22:23 – the Lord 2Ch 18:19 – Who shall entice Job 12:24 – He taketh Job 33:14 – perceiveth Psa 69:23 – Their eyes Psa 119:144 – understanding Isa 28:13 – that Isa 29:10 – the Lord Isa 29:14 – for the wisdom Isa 42:19 – Who is blind Isa 48:8 – thou heardest Jer 4:22 – For my Jer 5:21 – O foolish Jer 6:10 – their ear Jer 7:27 – hearken Jer 28:8 – prophesied Eze 12:2 – which Zec 11:17 – the sword Mat 15:10 – Hear Mar 3:5 – hardness Mar 7:14 – and understand Mar 8:18 – see Mar 11:33 – We Luk 19:42 – but Luk 20:7 – that Joh 8:27 – General Joh 8:43 – ye cannot Joh 9:39 – might be Joh 10:6 – they understood not Joh 12:39 – because Joh 12:41 – when 2Co 7:9 – that ye 2Th 2:11 – God
Isa 6:9-10. And he said, Go, and tell this people Not my people, for I disown them as they have rejected me. Hear ye indeed, but understand not, &c. The Hebrew words are imperative; yet they are not to be taken as a command, enjoining what the people ought to do, but only as a prediction foretelling what they would do. The sense is, Because you have so long heard my words, and seen my works, to no purpose, and have hardened your hearts, and will not learn nor reform, I will punish you in your own way; your sin shall be your punishment. I will still continue my word and works to you, but will withdraw my Spirit, so that you shall be as unable, as now you are unwilling, to understand. Make the heart of this people fat Stupid and senseless. This making of their hearts fat, is here ascribed to the prophet, as it is ascribed to God in the repetition of this prophecy, (Joh 12:40,) because God inflicted this judgment upon them by the ministry of the prophet, partly by way of prediction, foretelling that this would be the effect of his preaching, and partly by withdrawing the light and help of his Spirit. Make their ears heavy Make them dull of hearing. Lest they see with their eyes That they may not be able, as before they were not willing to see. And convert Turn from their sinful practices unto God; and be healed Of sin, (which is the disease of the soul,) by remission and sanctification, and of all the deadly effects of sin. This prophecy might relate, in some measure, to the state of the Jews before the Babylonish captivity, but certainly it did not receive its full accomplishment till the days of our Lord; and in this sense it is understood and applied by the writers of the New Testament, and by Christ himself.
6:9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, {o} Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
(o) By which is declared that for the malice of man God will not immediately take away his word, but he will cause it to be preached to their condemnation, when as they will not learn by it to obey his will, and be saved: by this he exhorts the ministers to do their duty, and answers to the wicked murmurers, that through their own malice their heart is hardened, Mat 13:14, Act 28:26, Rom 11:8 .
B. The prophet’s commission 6:9-13
The Lord proceeded to give Isaiah specific instructions about what He wanted him to do and what the prophet could expect regarding his ministry (Isa 6:9-10), his historic-political situation (Isa 6:11-12), and his nation’s survival (Isa 6:13).
God sent Isaiah back to the people among whom he lived, a people with unclean lips (Isa 6:5). He was to tell them to listen and to look at the revelations he brought from God, but they would not fully understand what the prophet meant (cf. Deu 29:2-4).
Does God really want to prevent people from understanding, repenting, and being healed? This verse and the next are strongly ironic. We could paraphrase Isaiah’s message to the Israelites as follow: "Go ahead; be stubborn!" [Note: The NET Bible note on Isa 6:10.]
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)