Isaiah 6:9

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(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 men’s eyes, and turn them from darkness to light” (Acts 26:18). It is significant that the words that followed were quoted both by the Christ (Matthew 13:14-15; Mark 4:12), by St. John (John 12:40), and by St. Paul (Acts 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 (Isaiah 8:11; Isaiah 28:11; Isaiah 28:14; Matthew 9:3; Matthew 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.

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 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, (John 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.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:9-13 God sends Isaiah to foretell the ruin of his people. Many hear the sound of God's word, but do not feel the power of it. God sometimes, in righteous judgment, gives men up to blindness of mind, because they will not receive the truth in the love of it. But no humble inquirer after Christ, need to fear this awful doom, which is a spiritual judgment on those who will still hold fast their sins. Let every one pray for the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, that he may perceive how precious are the Divine mercies, by which alone we are secured against this dreadful danger. Yet the Lord would preserve a remnant, like the tenth, holy to him. And blessed be God, he still preserves his church; however professors or visible churches may be lopped off as unfruitful, the holy seed will shoot forth, from whom all the numerous branches of righteousness shall arise.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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 Matthew 13:14; see thenote at that place.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

9. Hear … indeed—Hebrew, "In hearing hear," that is, Though ye hear the prophet's warnings again and again, ye are doomed, because of your perverse will (Joh 7:17), not to understand. Light enough is given in revelation to guide those sincerely seeking to know, in order that they may do, God's will; darkness enough is left to confound the wilfully blind (Isa 43:8). So in Jesus' use of parables (Mt 13:14).

see … indeed—rather, "though ye see again and again," yet, &c.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

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 God’s just judgment, they did and would do, as is manifest by Matthew 13:14 Acts 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.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire 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 Matthew 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.

Geneva Study Bible

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, Mt 13:14, Ac 28:26, Ro 11:8.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

9. this people] A contemptuous designation of Israel, peculiar to Isaiah: cf. ch. Isaiah 8:6; Isaiah 8:12, Isaiah 9:16, Isaiah 28:11; Isaiah 28:14, Isaiah 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).

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 (Isaiah 6:12, cf. Amos 3:7); the people shall hear the one and see the other, but neither will bring them to true insight.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 9. - Hear ye indeed... see ye indeed; literally, In hearing hear... in seeing see - with the force of "Listen and bear; look and see;" "Attend, "that is," with the outward souse, and catch all that sense can catch, but without perception of the inward meaning" (see Matthew 13:14; Mark 4:12, etc.). This is what they would do. Isaiah is bidden to exhort them, in grave irony, to do it. Isaiah 6:9

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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 Jeremiah 1:10 is sometimes quoted (cf., Jeremiah 31:28; Hosea 6:5; Ezekiel 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 (Psalm 119:70); the second, hicbı̄d, to make heavy, more especially heavy or dull of hearing (Isaiah 59:1); the third, השׁע or השׁע (whence the imperative השׁע or השׁע), 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 לו ורפא שׁב affirm what might have been the result if this hardening had not taken place, but what would never take place now. The expression ל רפא 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 Mark 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.