saying, Go to this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear and not understand, and seeing ye shall see and not perceive.
Paul was a prisoner in Rome. He spent a whole day showing the city's leading Jews how Moses and the prophets speak of Jesus. They left divided among themselves, and his parting word was not a new argument. It was an old sentence from Isaiah: a people who hear and hear, yet never take it in.
Paul does not say "Isaiah wrote." He says the Holy Spirit spoke. Two other passages name a different speaker again.
It is worth noting that when Paul quotes this passage he says the Holy Spirit "was right in saying" these words. Turn to Isaiah 6, and the prophet says about this message, "I heard the voice of the Lord" — that is, the Lord of hosts. Turn to John 12, and we find the comment, "Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him." We only have to look at the verses just before it to see that "His" and "Him" refer to Jesus. How plain it is, then, that we must identify the Lord of hosts with both Jesus and the Holy Spirit — three Persons, yet one God.
The problem is not deafness. They could hear perfectly well.
God commanded the prophet to "go and tell this people, Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive." That was their condition. They stood in the place of privilege, hearing and seeing, yet they took in nothing of heavenly sights and sounds.
So who closed their eyes? The wording Paul quotes answers that.
Compare these passages. The quotations from this prophecy in the first three Gospels, and the one by the apostle Paul in his speech to the Jews at Rome, all point to the nation deliberately closing its own ears. "Their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed." This wording comes from the Greek version of the Old Testament, which gives the passage that turn. Their sin therefore came from their own deliberate act, and so the nation bears the responsibility.
Paul was the third messenger to aim these words at the nation. He was also the last.
The leaders of the people refused to listen to Isaiah when he spoke to them... they had no heart for his message from God. The solemn words Paul quotes fell on them first. Yet that did not seal their fate. They had another opportunity. The Lord lived among them, full of grace and truth, and spoke to them Himself. But they threw that opportunity away, and the same solemn words came again... Yet God's patience was so great that their fate was not sealed by their rejection of the Lord Himself... The third and final testimony came from the Holy Spirit through Paul. They rejected that too, and their rejection was final. For eight hundred years God had waited, but now at last Isaiah's solemn prediction was fulfilled.
Is it fair to blind a people? Commentators answer that this blindness is a sentence from God, and the sentence comes last, not first.
...it points to the solemn fact of judicial blindness. God never pronounces it, still less carries it out, until His patience has had its perfect work and man has filled up the measure of his guilt beyond measure. Under such a sentence of hardening they could not believe. But the sentence came because their wickedness had reached its full measure. They wilfully rejected God and His will, and they did not believe, despite the fullest appeals to their hearts and consciences.
The verse describes the nation, not every individual in it. God's work with individuals went on.
Paul spoke these words knowing that during this gospel age Israel's day as a nation was over. As a nation they are blind and without understanding in the things of God, though very sharp about the things of the world. This of course does not conflict with what Romans 11 states: God is still calling out a remnant according to the election of grace.
Israel would not hear, so the message went to those who would. That is where Acts stops.
Meanwhile "this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles." The grace of God goes down to the lowest when the light of the knowledge of His glory shines. It shines now in the gospel, in the face of Jesus at His right hand. So Israel is set aside, the Gentiles hear, and the apostle was in chains. So the history ends.
- Spoken — Paul credits the words to the Holy Spirit. Isaiah heard them from the Lord of hosts. John says Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus. Three Persons, one God, one message.
- Heard — They had every privilege. They heard and saw, and still took nothing in.
- Closed — The wording Paul quotes says the people shut their own eyes. That is why they carry the blame.
- Waited — First Isaiah, then Christ, then the Spirit through Paul. God waited eight hundred years before the sentence fell.
- Sent — The nation's blindness did not stop grace. God still calls out a remnant, and salvation went to the Gentiles who would hear.
For the heart of this people has become fat, and they hear heavily with their ears, and they have closed their eyes; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.
Paul's last recorded words to the Jewish leaders in Rome are not his own. He hands them a sentence Isaiah had spoken centuries earlier, about a people whose heart had gone dull and whose eyes were shut. The verse raises two questions. Did God blind this people, or did they blind themselves? And is the closed door final?
Isaiah spoke these words long before Paul. They hung over the nation while God waited.
Paul arrives at Rome and sends for the Jews. Here, for the last time, we see their condition. We also see the judgment that had hung over their heads ever since the prophecy was spoken. Isaiah pronounced that judgment, and the Lord Jesus declared it would come upon them because they rejected Him. The patience of God held back the carrying out of it until they rejected the testimony of the Holy Spirit too.
Isaiah spoke. Then Christ came. Then the Holy Spirit testified through Paul. God's patience carried them past every refusal but the last.
The quotation is from Isaiah 6. The leaders of the people refused to listen to Isaiah when he spoke to them. They had no heart for his message from God, and the solemn words Paul quotes were first spoken against them. Yet that did not seal their fate. They had another opportunity when the LORD lived among them, full of grace and truth, and spoke to them Himself. But they threw that opportunity away. Again the solemn words were spoken, showing both their condition and their doom. Yet God's patience was so wonderful that even their rejection of the Lord Himself did not seal their fate. God spared them for one more testimony, for the Lord prayed for them, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The third and final testimony came from the Holy Spirit through Paul. Their rejection of that one was final.
The verse does not say their eyes were shut for them. Paul's wording puts the act on their side.
Compare these passages. The quotations from this prophecy in the first three Gospels, and the one the apostle Paul made in his address to the Jews at Rome, all point to the nation closing its own ears on purpose. "With their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed" (Acts 28:27). This wording comes from the Greek version of the Old Testament, which gives the passage this turn. Their sin was therefore their own deliberate act, and the nation is held responsible for it.
Pharaoh is the standing example of a man God hardened. The order matters. The hardening seals a man in what he has already chosen.
God never makes a man bad. But Pharaoh was a bad man, made still worse by resisting the most striking divine appeals. God put him on show. He raised him up from among men to such a height that his downfall might speak to consciences far and wide throughout the world. Hard at first, God sealed him up at last in a judicial hardening. God warned the Jews through Isaiah that this would be the case with their unrepentant hearts. He carried it out when they rejected Christ (John 12) and the Holy Spirit's appeal in the gospel (Acts 28:25-28).
The verse ends with healing on offer. The Healer had already proved Himself among them.
It was dangerous for them to trifle with God's offers of mercy. Grace and truth had come in His Person. To reject Him was to bring down on them that judicial blindness the prophet Isaiah spoke of… The Lord was the Great Physician, come to heal them. He had given repeated proofs of His power and His readiness to heal. But they "would not" (Matt. 23:37), and so their blind eyes were blinded further.
The chapter does not end in darkness. The same moment that closes the nation's day opens the message to everyone else.
But the gospel goes to the Gentiles. Despite all that had worked against it before, or might work against it later, they were to hear. And they have heard. We ourselves, thanks be to God, are the witnesses of it.
Within Israel, God has not stopped saving people.
As a nation they are blinded and without understanding in the things of God, though very sharp about the things of the world. Of course this does not conflict with God still calling out a remnant according to the election of grace, as Romans 11 states.
- Delayed. Isaiah spoke the sentence, and God held it back for centuries. He carried it out only after His patience had run its full course.
- Refused. God sent three testimonies — the prophet, the Son, the Holy Spirit. The third refusal was the last.
- Self-closed. The verse says they shut their own eyes. The blindness is their own responsibility.
- Sealed. God makes no one bad, but He does seal a man in the hardness he has chosen — as with Pharaoh, so here.
- Redirected. They refused healing. The gospel then went out to the nations, and God still saves a remnant of Israel by grace.