And he said, Go; and thou shalt say unto this people, Hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive.
Isaiah has just seen the Lord, confessed his unclean lips, and volunteered to go. The message he is given sends him to people who will hear and take in nothing — so who shut their ears, God or the people?
Verse 9 comes straight after Isaiah's vision of glory. Commentators point out that the first effect of that glory is judgment, not blessing.
God purposed to set up His presence in glory among His people, and Christ will bring this about at the end of the age. So the record of the judgments breaks off after the first general statement. In chapter 6 the prophet sees this glory. Yet its first effect is judicial, and works to blind and condemn them. The earlier judgment (Isaiah 5) dealt with breaking the law and despising the word of the Holy One of Israel. But hatred and rejection of Christ bring judicial blindness, and they set a remnant apart.
These words describe a people who lack nothing. They have the message and take nothing from it.
Centuries before, Isaiah had prophesied that the nation would be stubborn, and that spiritual darkness would fall on them as a result... That was their condition. They held the place and the privilege of hearing and seeing, yet they were completely blind and deaf to heavenly sights and sounds. The message went on to warn what would come on the nation. It would be a righteous repayment for this gross abuse of their privileges.
So does God harden people, or do they harden themselves? Commentators say the order matters: He hardens those who have first rejected His grace.
The hardening is just as clear and certain. God never made any man bad. But He may, and in some cases does, give people up to the consequences of their own folly and evil. That is, He hardens in judgment those who make light of His grace and reject it... All are responsible. Sin destroys the capacity, not the responsibility of obeying God.
There is a wording side to this. The New Testament quotations follow the Greek Old Testament, and that wording puts the closing of the eyes on the people themselves.
Compare these passages. The quotations of this prophecy in the first three Gospels, and Paul's quotation when he spoke to the Jews at Rome, all point to one thing: the nation deliberately closed its own ears. Acts 28:27 says their ears are dull of hearing and that they have closed their eyes. That wording comes from the Greek version of the Old Testament, which gives the passage this turn. Their sin came from their own deliberate act, and so the nation bears responsibility for it.
Isaiah spoke these words in his own day, but their full weight landed centuries later.
Our Lord (Matt. 13:14-15) and the Spirit (Acts 28:25-27) use Isaiah 6:9-10 in a way that fully confirms this principle. The judicial sentence waited from the days of the prophet, and only fell in full in gospel times.
The New Testament names the speaker of verse 9. It also shows where the message went when Israel would not hear.
Isaiah saw in a vision Jehovah sitting on a throne, and He spoke these words to the prophet. Turn to the 12th chapter of John's Gospel and we find these words quoted again. There the writer adds something significant: Isaiah said these things when he saw His glory and spoke of Him (John 12:41). The Jehovah Isaiah saw on His throne was our Lord Jesus Christ... In the last chapter of Acts, Israel's unbelief and turning away stands fully proved. Paul speaks these words to the Jews gathered there and adds that the salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear.
The commission also carries one thread of hope.
Verses 9-15 give us the message Isaiah was commissioned to give. It was indeed very solemn. Things had reached such a state that hardening and blindness would fall on the people. They would not be converted and healed, and they would be driven out of their land. Their one gleam of hope was this: God would have His tenth in a holy seed. In other words, He would keep a godly remnant for Himself.
- Glory exposes. The commission follows the vision. The first effect of that glory was to blind and condemn, not to bless.
- Hearing without hearing. Their problem was never lack of access. They held the place and privilege of hearing and seeing, and stayed blind and deaf to heavenly things.
- Hardening answers refusal. God never made any man bad; He gives people up to the consequences of their own folly. Sin destroys the capacity to obey, not the responsibility.
- The sentence waited. Isaiah spoke it in his own day, but it fell in full only in gospel times. The Lord quoted it in Matthew 13, and the Spirit through Paul in Acts 28.
- Refusal redirects, it does not end. When the nation would not hear, salvation went to the Gentiles. God still kept His tenth: a holy seed for Himself.
Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and healed.
Isaiah has just seen the glory of God. He has confessed that he is a sinful man, has had his guilt taken away, and has offered himself for God's service. Then God gives him this errand. It raises the hardest question in the chapter: does God close eyes that would otherwise have seen?
The order matters. The man who had felt his own guilt and had it removed is the one sent with a message of judgment for others.
In his vision of the glory of God the prophet learned the truth about his own state as a sinful man. His iniquity was taken away. That fits him to carry the sentence of judgment: "Make the heart of this people fat," and so on. The sentence was to stay in force until the land was left desolate, the city with no inhabitant, the houses with no one in them.
Where the ESV says the heart is made "dull," older translations say "fat." The picture is of a body part so thick that it feels nothing.
"Without feeling, like fat, is their heart," is the literal translation. A fat heart is a slow heart, that might finally be brought to a halt and die. Cholesterol is a killer for the body as well as for the spirit!
Commentators are careful about the sequence. God's act of hardening is never the first move in the story.
Having hardened their own hearts, their hearts are then hardened as a punishment. They would not believe, so they could not believe. John's words are clear: a judgment sent by God had fallen on the people.
The same principle is stated as a rule that holds everywhere in Scripture.
It is not till man's will actively opposes God's that He manifests His sovereignty. It is when man will not that he cannot.
There is more than one wording of this verse. The Greek Old Testament, called the Septuagint, puts the weight in a different place from the Hebrew.
In the Septuagint version of Isaiah, this deadened condition is said to be the result of the people's own neglect, not something God inflicted, as it is in the Hebrew text. The Greek version runs like this: "Go, and say to this people, You will hear indeed, but you will not understand; and you will see indeed, but you will not perceive. For the heart of this people has grown thick, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have closed their eyes…"
Isaiah spoke these words in his own day. What they described did not arrive for centuries.
"Make the heart of this people fat," and so on (Isa. 6:10) — when did this actually happen? Seven hundred years later, after people had rejected Christ and even the testimony of the Spirit. Faith judges before the sentence is carried out, and the judgment is in God's mind long before it happens.
Whose glory did Isaiah see on that throne? The New Testament answers when it quotes this verse.
This verse carries the dread word that shut them up in blindness before the light they had so long despised. Then comes the inspired comment: Isaiah said these things when he saw Christ's glory and spoke of Him. It is Jehovah in the prophecy, Christ in the Gospel; but they are one — and Acts 28:25-27 lets us take in the Holy Spirit as well.
This pattern is not limited to one nation.
In the time before destruction, the people are ignorant because they choose to be. After that God closes their understanding and sends a deep sleep. This will happen to Christendom too. There will be "strong delusion" because they did not want the truth… God had already said of Israel, "Make the heart of this people fat," a word applied for the last time in Acts 28. So it holds for the pagan nations, for the Jews, and for Christendom, and it will be true for the Jews again.
The chapter does not end at verse 10. This sentence is not God's last word on His people.
The spirit of faith knows that it is impossible for God to abandon His people for ever. He brings judgment on them until the land is desolate; but the prophet asks, "Lord, how long?"… In winter the tree seems dead. In spring, when the grace of God shines on the people again, the tree recovers.
God keeps a believing few. Where are they now?
It was the same among the Jews in Paul's day, as Romans 11 shows, and it is the same today. The blindness of the nation still holds, and there is still a believing remnant — but now they are part of the church.
- Refusal. They hardened their own hearts first. Only then did God harden them as a judgment: they would not, so they could not.
- Sentence. A "dull" or "fat" heart is a heart without feeling — slow, and heading for death.
- Delay. Isaiah spoke the word, but it took seven hundred years to land — until people had refused Christ and then the testimony of the Spirit.
- Reach. The same word fell on the pagan nations and on the Jews, and it stands as a warning to Christendom — wherever people will not have the truth.
- Remnant. The tree only looks dead through the winter. God's grace keeps a believing remnant — today inside the church, and one day in a people restored.
And I said, Lord, how long? And he said, Until the cities be wasted, without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land become an utter desolation,
God has just sent Isaiah with a message that hardens the people instead of healing them. His only reply is a question about time. The answer describes a land emptied of people, and its reach runs far past Isaiah's own century.
The prophet is not arguing with the sentence. He asks how long it will last. One writer separates two kinds of judgment the question could point to:
The expression "How long?" is often used in the Psalms, and in Isaiah 6 it refers to discipline, and not to final punishment. How long is Israel to stumble or fall? (Rom. 11). In Isaiah 6 the prophet has just spoken those words, "Make the heart of this people dull," and so on — words the Lord takes up in John 12. Then he says, "How long?" He was living in faith toward God and counting on God. Because he has God's mind, he cannot believe that God will give them up. So he asks how long the discipline is to continue.
Notice what Isaiah does not ask God to do:
The prophet enters into the mind of God. He does not pray for the judgment to be turned aside. He does not pray for forgiveness as Solomon did, asking God to hear from the highest heaven and, when He heard, to forgive... The prophet recognises the righteous judgment, and only asks "How long" this judgment without equal is to last... But the judgment is not yet past. The land is desolate, because Israel's blindness is not yet removed. When the veil is taken away, they will turn to the Lord (2 Cor. 3).
Yet his question is still a form of pleading:
But the Spirit of prophecy, even when it pronounces God's sentence on the people's unbelief, is just as much a spirit of intercession.
Centuries passed before the sentence fell. One writer measures the gap:
God is patient: seven hundred years passed between the threat and the day God carried it out. When He sent the Heir, every means had already been used... We must admit that the judgment is just, but God is faithful. It is only for a time.
Another writer counts the chances God gave after that:
They had another opportunity when Jehovah lived among them, full of grace and truth, and spoke to them Himself. They threw that opportunity away... Yet God was so wonderfully patient that rejecting the Lord Himself did not seal their fate. God spared them for another testimony, for the Lord prayed for them, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The third and final testimony was that of the Holy Spirit through Paul, and their rejection of that was final.
The answer was exact, and one writer points to the result still in plain sight:
There is no more surprising moral fact than the way this divine sentence on the Jews has been carried out to this day. Thousands of years have passed... There the Jews are before everyone's eyes, dead while they live, the standing witnesses of a judicial blindness charged against them by their own wronged and thrice Holy God, Jehovah of hosts, after incomparable patience with their unbelief. And the mark proves all the more permanent, because God did not allow them to stay in the land they defiled. That land was to become an utter waste, and He removed them far away.
God's answer opens with "Until." Read with the verses that follow, the desolation has an end:
Nothing could picture the long winter of Israel's desolation more vividly. But in the remnant God would give a principle of restoration and blessing, as Paul shows in Romans 11.
- Question. Isaiah does not protest the sentence or beg God to lift it. He asks only how long the discipline will last, counting on God's faithfulness.
- Answer. God gives no date, only a condition. Cities lie empty, houses stand without people, the land becomes a waste, and God removes the people far away.
- Patience. Seven hundred years stood between the threat and the day it fell. God gave further testimony through Christ, and then through the Holy Spirit.
- Proof. The scattering stands as visible fact: a nation still bearing the mark, still outside the land it defiled.
- Limit. "Until" is a boundary, not a full stop: after the long winter God keeps a remnant, and restoration and blessing follow the judgment.
and Jehovah have removed men far away, and the solitude be great in the midst of the land.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
But a tenth part shall still be therein, and it shall return and be eaten; as the terebinth and as the oak whose trunk [remaineth] after the felling the holy seed shall be the trunk thereof.
Isaiah's commission ends in blindness for the nation and ruin for the land. Then the last line turns to a stump. Commentators read that stump as the key to Israel's future: what survives the judgment, and what the "holy seed" is.
The verse answers the prophet's cry, "How long?" One writer hears faith in that question.
The spirit of faith knows that it is impossible for God to abandon His people forever. He subjects them to judgment, all the way to desolation. But the prophet says, "Lord, how long?" He knows that there is a limit, and that in the end grace abounds for the people. There will be a tenth (v. 13). Then it is cut down again. But the holy seed, that is, the remnant, will appear. During winter the tree seems dead; but in spring, when the grace of God shines again on the people, the tree recovers.
The verse names two trees, not one. A reference note explains the Hebrew words behind them:
The Hebrew word elah is thought to mean the terebinth, though it is often translated "oak." Isaiah 6:13 names "the oak" (allon) as well as the elah, so the two Hebrew words doubtless point to different trees. It is now generally thought that allon means the oak and elah the terebinth.
William Kelly explains what is left in the stump.
A vital principle survives, the nucleus of what will sprout again.
Even the surviving tenth is consumed again. One paraphrase traces how far the sifting goes, and where it stops.
Even after the entire desolation first mentioned (v. 11), in the desolated land there shall remain a tenth — a round figure for a small proportion. And even this tenth shall return and be for a consuming, that is, shall again be consumed. But still not completely. Like the terebinth and the oak, which when felled still have substance or life in them, so a holy seed shall be the substance, the vital principle, of it… However often the people may seem to be destroyed, a remnant will survive. However often that remnant may appear to perish, there shall still be a remnant of the remnant left. This indestructible residue shall be the holy seed… the 'remnant according to the election of grace.'
Some link this stump with the "stem of Jesse" in Isaiah 11. The same writer marks both the difference and the tie:
Some have connected Isaiah 11:1 with this passage. The word for "substance" in chapter 6 and the word "stem" in chapter 11 are different words, but both are used of a tree's trunk. In chapter 6 the trunk stands for the nation, or at least the remnant. In chapter 11 it stands for the family of David — "the stem of Jesse." No doubt the preservation of the remnant, and the keeping of its life and blessing, are bound up with the Branch that shall grow out of Jesse's roots, with David's Son and David's Lord.
The word "remnant" sounds like leftovers. Scripture uses it the other way round.
A remnant now is marked by faithfulness to Christ, the brightest trait at the beginning. Many think a remnant is only the tail end, but it is not so in Scripture.
One writer sets the full meaning of this prophecy long after Isaiah's own day.
So this is a prophecy that only comes true in full after Christ's rejection by the Jews. It foretells the total desolation of the land, and the scattering and destruction of the people. But still a remnant is left. They shall return, and be the "holy seed," the real heart and substance of the nation.
The pattern has appeared before, and Isaiah's own family carried it in a name.
Yet God is full of mercy. Isaiah spoke not only of the judgment of a stubborn people, but of a remnant — a holy seed that should spring up again, just as an oak tree springs up after being cut down (v. 13). So in John 12, when most refused to believe the word of Jesus, "many even of the authorities believed in Him." And in Acts 28, "Some were convinced by what he said." God got His remnant — His tenth, as Isaiah speaks of them — out of the nation… The name given to one of Isaiah's sons, Shear-jashub, means "the remnant shall return."
Another writer traces the same two facts into the present day:
The position was the same among the Jews in Paul's day, as Romans 11 shows, and it is the same today. The nation is still blind, and there is still a believing remnant — but now part of the church.
- Stump. Judgment fells the tree but leaves the stock alive: "a vital principle survives, the nucleus of what will sprout again."
- Tenth. Judgment leaves a small proportion, then consumes even that tenth — yet never all of it, because there is always "a remnant of the remnant."
- Seed. The survivors are not the tail end of the nation but "the real heart and substance" of it — and their life is bound up with "the Branch that shall grow out of Jesse's roots."
- Return. Isaiah named a son "the remnant shall return." The same pattern appeared in the few who believed in Jesus' day, and in Paul's.
- Spring. "During winter the tree seems dead; but in spring, when the grace of God shines again on the people, the tree recovers."