‘Therefore they could not believe, for Isaiah again said, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and turn for me to heal them”. Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him.’

When does God blind men’s eyes and harden men’s hearts? It is when they have first closed their own eyes and deliberately hardened their own hearts. Compare the example of Pharaoh in Exodus. He first hardened his own heart, and then later on it was God Who hardened his heart. Thus having refused to respond such people become in danger of permanent blindness, for God’s actions from then on will only further blind and harden them. It is dangerous to play with God’s truth.

What a contrast there was between Isaiah and the people. Isaiah opened his eyes and saw the glory of God when God revealed His glory. (John may well have had in mind that in the same way Jesus was the revealer of the glory of God (Joh 1:14)). But the people closed their eyes to that revelation of God. The people here too were closing their eyes in the light of this new revelation of the glory of God (‘we beheld His glory’ – Joh 1:14) and may also become blinded by God. This was what those who had seen Jesus’ signs and failed to respond were in danger of doing.

‘Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him.’ In context the pronouns here refer to Jesus. The writer is thus stating that when Isaiah saw the glory of the Lord, it was the glory of the Lord Jesus that he saw. To him the Lord God and the Lord Jesus were inextricably linked. Once again we have the emphasis that Jesus is the ‘true Son of God’.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Joh 12:39-40. Therefore they could not believe, That is, by the just judgment of God for their obstinate and wilful resistance to the truth, they were so hardened, that the doctrine and miracles of our Lord could make no impression on them, as Isaiah had foretold, Isa 6:9-10 where see the note, and also on Mat 13:14. The meaning therefore is, not that the prophesy of Isaiah was the cause of their unbelief, but that their unbelief was the accomplishment of Isaiah’s prophesy. The evangelist, in this quotation, has not confined himself exactly to the words of the prophet, but the sense is plainly the same; and nothing was more usual with the Jewish rabbies, than to quote scripture in this way.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Joh 12:39-40 . ] as always in John (see on Joh 10:17 ): therefore , referring to what precedes , on account of this destiny contained in Joh 12:38 namely, because , so that thus with the reason is still more minutely set forth. Ebrard foists in an entirely foreign course of thought, because Israel has not willed to believe, therefore has she not been able to believe. Contrary to that Johannean use of , Theophylact, Beza, Jansen, Lampe, and several others, including Lcke, Tholuck, Olshausen, Maier, B. Crusius, Luthardt, take as preparative .

] not: nolebant (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Wolf), but and therewith the enigma of that tragic unbelief is solved they could not , expressing the impossibility which had its foundation in the divine judgment of obduracy. “Hic subsistit evangelista, quis ultra nitatur?” Bengel. On the relation of this inability, referred back to the determination of God, to moral freedom and responsibility, see on Romans 9-11.

] The passage is Isa 6:9-10 , departing freely from the original and from the LXX. In the original the prophet is said, at the command of God , to undertake the blinding, etc., that is, the intellectual and moral hardening (“ harden the heart,” etc.). Thus what God then will allow to be done is represented by John in his free manner of citation as done by God Himself , to which the recollection of the rendering of the passage given by the LXX. (“the heart has become hardened ,” etc.) might easily lead. The subject is thus neither Christ (Grotius, Calovius, and several others, including Lange and Ebrard), nor the devil (Hilgenfeld, Scholten), but, as the reader would understand as a matter of course, and as also the entire context shows (for the necessity in the divine fate is the leading idea), God . Christ first appears as subject in .

.] has hardened . See Athenaeus, 12, p. 549 B; Mar 6:52 ; Mar 8:17 ; Rom 11:7 ; 2Co 3:14 .

] and (not) turn , return to me.

] Future, dependent on . See on Mat 13:15 . The moral corruption is viewed as sickness , which is healed by faith (Joh 12:37 ; Joh 12:39 ). Comp. Mat 9:12 ; 1Pe 2:24 . The healing subject , however, cannot, as in Mat 8:15 , Act 28:27 , be God (so usually ), simply because this is the subject of , . . ., but it must be Christ; in His mouth, according to the Johannean view of the prophecy from the standpoint of its fulfilment, Isaiah puts not merely the utterance in Joh 12:38 , but also the words , and thus makes Him say: God has blinded the people, etc., that they should not see, etc., and should not turn to Him (Christ), and He (Christ) should heal them. Nonnus aptly says: , . Thus the 1st person is not an instance of “ negligence ” (Tholuck, comp. his A. T. im N. T . p. 3 5 f. Exo 6 ), but of consistency .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

39 Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again,

Ver. 39. Therefore they could not believe, &c. ] They could not, because they would not, saith Theophylact out of Chrysostom, who yet extolleth man’s free will more than is meet. Pelagianis nondum litigantibus, patres securius loquebantur, saith Augustine, contra Julian. i. 2.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

39. ] refers to the last verse, and sets forth the reason more in detail: see ch. Joh 5:16 : 1Jn 3:1 ; Mat 24:44 . The common interpretation (Theophyl., Vulg., Lampe, Tholuck, Olsh., alli [171] .), by which is referred forward to , would require some particle, , or , to denote a transition to the fresh subject. De Wette, Meyer, Lcke, edn. 3, Grot. alli [172] .

[171] alli = some cursive mss.

[172] alli = some cursive mss.

. ] could not i.e. it was otherwise ordained in the divine counsels. No attempt to escape this meaning (as “ nolebant ,” Chr [173] , Thl. &c.) will agree with the prophecy cited Joh 12:40 . But the inability , as thus stated, is coincident with the fullest freedom of the human will: compare , ch. Joh 5:40 .

[173] Chrysostom, Bp. of Constantinople, 397 407: Chr-montf, a MS. cited from Montfaucon; Chr-wlf, Wolfenbttel MS. of Chr. written in cent y . vi.; Chr-Fd, Field’s edn. of the Hom. on Mat 6

, not ‘ for ,’ but because. A more special ground is alleged why they could not believe: see above.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Joh 12:39 . seems to have a double reference, first to what precedes, second to the following, cf. Joh 8:47 . , “they were not able,” irrespective of will; their inability arose from the fulfilment in them of Isaiah’s words, Joh 6:10 (Joh 12:40 ), . refers to the blinding of the organ for perceiving spiritual truth, (from , a callus) to the hardening of the sensibility to religious and moral impressions. This process prevented them from seeing the significance of the miracles and understanding with the heart the teaching of Jesus. By abuse of light, nature produces callousness; and what nature does God does.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Therefore = On account of (Greek. dia. App-104.) this: i.e. the unbelief of Joh 12:37.

could not = were not able to.

believe. App-160. Judicial blindness follows persistent unbelief.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

39.] refers to the last verse, and sets forth the reason more in detail: see ch. Joh 5:16 : 1Jn 3:1; Mat 24:44. The common interpretation (Theophyl., Vulg., Lampe, Tholuck, Olsh., alli[171].), by which is referred forward to , would require some particle, , or , to denote a transition to the fresh subject. De Wette, Meyer, Lcke, edn. 3, Grot. alli[172].

[171] alli = some cursive mss.

[172] alli = some cursive mss.

.] could not-i.e. it was otherwise ordained in the divine counsels. No attempt to escape this meaning (as nolebant, Chr[173], Thl. &c.) will agree with the prophecy cited Joh 12:40. But the inability, as thus stated, is coincident with the fullest freedom of the human will: compare , ch. Joh 5:40.

[173] Chrysostom, Bp. of Constantinople, 397-407: Chr-montf, a MS. cited from Montfaucon; Chr-wlf, Wolfenbttel MS. of Chr. written in centy. vi.; Chr-Fd, Fields edn. of the Hom. on Matthew 6

, not for, but because. A more special ground is alleged why they could not believe: see above.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Joh 12:39. ) for this reason; because, namely, this just judgment on them had been foretold. The Evangelist stops short at this point: who may venture [strive to reach] farther? [First, they do not believe, as being refractory; then, they cannot believe. They are mistaken, who suppose what is said to be in the inverse order: they could not believe; therefore they did not believe.-V. g.]

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 12:39

Joh 12:39

For this cause they could not believe, for that Isaiah said again,-In their condition of heart, no amount or degree of signs could produce faith. [The cause of their failing to believe is not the fact that God, through Isaiah, said thus and thus, but he simply points out the cause of their unbelief in what he said. The reason why they could not believe was not that God had decreed their unbelief and destroyed their free agency, but that, in the exercise of their free agency, they had made themselves, by the operation of Gods moral laws, incapable of belief. Then, too, the same means that God uses, the gospel of Christ, to save the world, will soften the heart of one and lead him to heaven and at the same time harden the heart of another and cause him to be banished away from God at the last day. The gospel will either lift a man to heaven or else send him to hell. It all depends upon whether one opens his heart and cooperates with God as to which place he goes.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

they: Joh 5:44, Joh 6:44, Joh 10:38, Isa 44:18-20, 2Pe 2:14

because: Isa 6:9, Isa 6:10

Reciprocal: Exo 10:20 – General 1Sa 2:25 – hearkened Psa 69:23 – Their eyes Isa 48:8 – thou heardest Mat 13:14 – the prophecy Joh 8:37 – because Joh 8:43 – do Joh 10:35 – the scripture Joh 12:35 – lest Joh 19:24 – that Act 2:24 – because 2Th 2:11 – for Rev 17:17 – until

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

9

Could not. The first word is from DUNAMAI, and the definitions

of Thayer and Robinson agree, but the latter is clearer and I shall quote it as follows: “To be able, I can.” He then adds the following explanations: “Both in a physical and moral sense, and whether depending on the disposition and faculties of the mind, on the degree of strength or skill, or on the nature and external circumstances of the case.” Upon further consideration, I think it will be helpful to quote Thayer’s definition also: “To be able, have power,” and his comments are, “Whether by virtue of one’s own ability and resources, or a state of mind, or through favorable circumstances.” This information from the lexicons teaches us that these people had deliberately closed their eyes and hardened their hearts against the light of God’s truth. In such a state of mind they could not believe in the sense of the word as explained by the lexicons. Because that Esaias said means that Esaias (Isaiah) said it because God knew it would happen, and caused the prophet to write it. (See comments, preceding verse.)

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again,

[Therefore they could not believe, etc.] they were not constrained in their infidelity, because Isaiah had said, “Their heart is waxen gross,” etc.; but because those things were true which that prophet had foretold concerning them: which prophecy, if I understand them aright, they throw off from themselves, and pervert the sense of it altogether.

“R. Jochanan saith, Repentance is a great thing; for it rescinds the decree of judgment determined against man: as it is written, ‘The heart of this people is made fat, their ears heavy, and their eyes are closed, lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart: but they shall be converted and healed;’ ” For to that sense do they render these last words, diametrically contrary to the mind of the prophet.

They have a conceit that Isaiah was cut in two, either by the saw or the axe, by Manasseh the king, principally for this very vision and prophecy:

“It is a tradition. Simeon Ben Azzai saith, I found a book at Jerusalem……in which was written how Manasses slew Isaiah. Rabba saith he condemned and put him to death upon this occasion: he saith to him, Thy master Moses saith, ‘No man can see God and live’: but thou sayest, ‘I have seen the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.’ Thy master Moses saith, ‘Who is like our God in all things that we call upon him for?’ Deu 4:7; but thou sayest, ‘Seek ye the Lord while he may be found,’ Isa 55:6. Moses thy master saith, ‘The number of thy days I will fulfil,’ Exo 23:26; but thou sayest, ‘I will add unto thy days fifteen years,’ Isa 38:5. Isaiah answered and said, ‘I know he will not hearken to me in any thing I can say to him: if I should say any thing to the reconciling of the Scriptures, I know he will deal contemptuously in it.’ He said therefore, ‘I will shut myself up in this cedar.’ They brought the cedar, and sawed it asunder. And when the saw touched his mouth, he gave up the ghost. This happened to him because he said, ‘I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.’ ”

Manasseh slew Isaiah, and, as it should seem, the Gemarists do not dislike the fact, because he had accused Israel for the uncleanness of their lips. No touching upon Israel by any means!

Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels

Joh 12:39-40. For this cause they could not believe, because Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and he hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be turned, and I should heal them. For this cause does not refer so much to the words themselves of the preceding verse, as to that Divine plan which John sees that they express, and whose further progress, involving a judicial hardening of those who, as we have seen, had first hardened themselves, is expressed in the words that follow. The quotation is from Isa 6:9-10, and the changes, especially in that from the commanding to the narrative form, are only such as the prophet himself would have made had he taken up the position of our Evangelist and, at the close of his prophetic ministry, related what he had been made the instrument of effecting. Israel was so wilfully rejecting God in the prophets days, that the moment for Gods judicial treatment of His people had come. By him, therefore, God sent them a new message, that by their rejection of it the blinding of their eyes and the hardening of their hearts might be complete; that they might finally and conclusively reject the tidings through which, otherwise, Isaiah would have healed them. Was not this exactly what had happened now? He in whom all the prophets of Israel were fulfilled had come; and John sees Him uttering His mournful complaint over that wilful obstinacy of Israel which had provoked the judicial dealings of God, in the same language as that in which His servant of old, had he been speaking in the narrative form, would have spoken. Thus the words of the Lord to Isaiah (in chap. Joh 6:9-10), now quoted, describe the radical and unchanging condition of carnal Israel; and, as applied here, they mean that God had made the self-manifestation of Jesus the instrument of blinding and hardening those who had chosen unbelief. Thus also, it will be observed, God is the subject of hath blinded and of hardened: and I should heal them must be understood of Jesus Himself. Hence, accordingly, the remarkable words of the next verse.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Vv. 39, 40. And indeed they could not believe, because Isaiah said again, 40 He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, that they should not see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

The omnipotence of God itself worked to the end of realizing that which His omniscience had foretold, and to make Israel do the impossible thing. Not only they did not believe (Joh 12:37); but they could not believe (Joh 12:39). The word (again) reminds us that there is here a second idea, serving to explain the fact by completing the first. This logical relation answers to the meaning of the two expressions of Isaiah quoted by John. The , for this cause, refers, as ordinarily in John (Joh 12:18, Joh 10:17, etc.), to the following ,because: And this is the reason why they could not believe: it is because Isaiah in another passage () said. It is in vain that Weiss tries to make the , for this cause, also refer to the preceding idea, namely, that of the fact; it refers to the following and consequently to the cause of the fact (see Keil). These words are taken from Isa 6:9-10.

The word of address, Lord, added by the LXX., passed thence to John. The quotation differs both from the Hebrew text and from that of the LXX., in that according to the former, it is Isaiah who is said to blind and harden the people by his ministry: Make the heart of this people fat; according to the latter, this hardening is a simple fact laid to the charge of Israel: The heart of this people is hardened; in John, on the contrary, the understood subject of the two verbs (he has blinded, he has hardened) can only be God. This third form is evidently a deliberate correction of the latter, in order to go back to the meaning of the former. For this fact accomplished by Isaiah, being the execution of the command of God, is rightly attributed by John to God Himself. This passage proves that the evangelist, while attaching himself to the Greek translation, was not dependent on it and was acquainted with the Hebrew text (vol. I., p. 197f.). , to make blind, designates the depriving of intellectual light, of the sense of the true and even of the useful, of simple good sense; , to harden the skin, the depriving of moral sensibility, the sense of the good. From the paralysis of these two organs unbelief must necessarily result; the people may see miracle after miracle, may hear testimony after testimony, yet they will not discern in the one whom God thus points out, and who gives all these testimonies to Himself, their Messiah. The subject of the two verbs is undoubtedly God (Meyer, Reuss), but God in the person of that Adonai who (according to Isa 6:1) gives the command to the prophet. The reading of nearly all the Mjj. is , and I shall heal them.This future might signify: And I shall end by bringing them to myself through the means of their very hardening. The two and…and, however, are too closely related to each other for such a contrast between the last verb and those which precede it to be admissible. The force of the formidable , in order that I …, evidently extends as far as the end of the sentence. The construction of the indicative with this conjunction has nothing unusual in it (1Co 13:3; 1Pe 3:1; Rev 22:14); it is frequent also in the classic Greek with . We might undoubtedly explain in this way: lest they should be converted, in which case I will heal them (for: I would heal them). But the other sense remains the more natural one: God does not desire to heal them; it is not in accordance with His actual intentions towards them. This is precisely the reason why He does not desire that they should believea thing which would force Him to pardon and heal them.

If such is the meaning of the words of the prophet and of those of the evangelist, how can it be justified? These declarations would be inexplicable and revolting if, at the moment when God addresses them to Israel and treats Israel in this way, this people were in the normal state, and God regarded them still as His people.

But it was by no means so; when sending Isaiah, God said to him: Go and tell THIS people (Isa 6:9). And we know what a father means, when speaking of his son, he says: this child, instead of my child: the paternal and filial relation is momentarily broken. An abnormal state has begun, which obliges God to use means of an extraordinary character. This divine dispensation towards Israel enters therefore into the category of chastisements. The creature who has long abused the divine favors falls under the most terrible of punishments; from an end it becomes for the time ameans. In fact man can, by virtue of his liberty, refuse to glorify God by his obedience and salvation; but even in this case he cannot prevent God from glorifying Himself in him by a chastisement capable of making the odious character of his sin shine forth conspicuously. God, says Hengstenberg, has so constituted man, that, when he does not resist the first beginnings of sin, he loses the right of disposing of himself and forcibly obeys even to the end the power to which he has surrendered himself. God does not merely permit this development of evil; He wills it and concurs in it. But how, it will be said, will the holiness of God, as thus understood, be reconciled with His love? This is that which St. Paul explains to the Jews by the example of their ancient oppressor, Pharaoh, Rom 9:17 : In the first place, this king refuses to hearken to God and to be saved; he has the prerogative to do so. But after this he is passively used for the salvation of others.

God paralyses in him both the sense of the true and the sense of the good; he becomes deaf to the appeals of conscience and even to the calculations of self-interest properly understood; he is given up to the inspirations of his own foolish pride, in order that, through the conspicuous example of the ruin into which he precipitates himself, the world may learn what it costs wickedly to resist the first appeals of God. Thereby he at least serves the salvation of the world. The history of Pharaoh is reproduced in that of the Jews in the time of Jesus Christ. Already at the epoch of Isaiah the mass of the people were so carnal that their future unbelief in the Messiah, the man of sorrows, appears to the prophet an inevitable moral fact (Isaiah 53). We must even go further and say, with Paul and John, that, things being thus, this unbelief must have been willed of God. What would have become of the kingdom of God, indeed, if an Israel like this had outwardly and without a change of heart received Jesus as its Messiah and had become with such dispositions the nucleus of the Church?

This purely intellectual adherence of Israel, instead of advancing the divine work in the heathen world, would have served only to hinder it. We have the proof of this in the injurious part which was played in the Apostolic Church by the Pharisaic minority who accepted the faith. Suppose that the Jewish people en masse had acted thus and had governed the Church, the work of St. Paul would not have been possible; the Jewish monopoly would have taken possession of the gospel; there would have been an end of the universalism which is the essential characteristic of the new covenant. The rejection of the Jews thus disposed was therefore a measure necessary to the salvation of the world. It is in this sense that St. Paul says in Rom 11:12 : that the fall of Israel has become the riches of the world, and Joh 12:15 : that its rejection has been the reconciliation of the world. How, indeed, could the Gentiles have welcomed a salvation connected with circumcision and the Mosaic observances? God was therefore obliged to make Israel blind, that the miracles of Jesus might be as nothing in their eyes and as not having taken place, and to harden them, that His preachings might remain for them as empty sounds (Isaiah 6). Thus Israel proud, legal, carnal, rejected and could be rejectedfreely. This decided position did not in reality make Israel’s lot worse; but it had for the salvation of the Gentiles the excellent results which St. Paul develops in Romans 11. Far more than this, by this very chastisement, Israel became what it had refused to be by its salvation, the apostle of the world; and, like Judas its type, it fulfilled, willingly or unwillingly, its irrevocable commission; comp. Rom 11:7-10. Moreover, it is clear that, in the midst of this national judgment, every individual remained free to turn to God by repentance and to escape the general hardening. Joh 12:13 of Isaiah and Joh 12:42 of John are the proof of this.

As to the relation of the Jewish unbelief to the divine prevision (Joh 12:37-38), John does not indicate the metaphysical theory by means of which he succeeds in reconciling the foreknowledge of God with the responsibility of man; he simply accepts these two data, the one of the religious sentiment, the other of the moral consciousness. But if we reflect that God is above time, that, properly speaking, He does not foresee an event which is for us yet to come, but that He sees it, absolutely as we behold a present event; that, consequently, when He declares it at any moment whatsoever, He does not foretellit, but describes it as a spectator and witness, the apparent contradiction between these two seemingly contradictory elements vanishes. Once foretold, the event undoubtedly cannot fail to happen, because the eye of God cannot have presented to Him as existing that which will not be. But the event does not exist because God has seen it; God, on the contrary, has seen it because it will be, or rather because to His view it already is. Thus the real cause of Jewish unbelief, foretold by God, is not the divine foreseeing. This cause is, in the last analysis, the moral state of the people themselves. This state it is which, when once established by the earlier unfaithfulnesses of Israel, necessarily implies the punishment of unbelief which must strike the people at the decisive moment, the judgment of hardening.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

John again affirmed that most of the Jews did not believe on Jesus because they could not. God had judicially hardened their hearts because they had refused to believe Him previously (cf. Exo 9:12; cf. 2Th 2:8-12).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)