Isaiah 6:9

"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 Isaiah 8:11,28:11,14, and Isaiah 39:13,14."[9]

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 Acts 28:27, or as having occurred passively as in Matthew 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."[10]

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. For a somewhat extended comment on this subject, see our Volume 6 of the New Testament Series of Commentaries, pp. 376-379. Christ himself declared in both Matthew 13:14, and in Mark 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" (2 Corinthians 4:4). The "blinding" of this passage and the "strong delusion" of 2 Thessalonians 2:11 KJV, and the "working of error" (2 Thessalonians 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 Romans 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."[11]

"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 (2 Kings 25:12,22). 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."[12]

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 Isaiah 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."<12b>