Isaiah 6:9-10 (Hardened Hearts)
And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
— Isaiah 6:9-10 (ESV)
Interpretations
Jewish Interpretation
Jewish scholars understand Isaiah 6:9-10 within its immediate historical context. Isaiah received his prophetic commission around 740 BCE to preach to the kingdom of Judah, whose land was corrupted by greed, arrogance, drunkenness, injustice, oppression, and violence. The "hardening" was not arbitrary but a divine response to a people who had already repeatedly hardened their own hearts against God.
The mechanism is similar to Pharaoh's hardening in Exodus: Scripture records ten times that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and ten times that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. God's judicial hardening comes as a consequence of persistent self-hardening. Isaiah's contemporaries had "shut their ears, closed their eyes, and hardened their hearts"—Isaiah's prophetic ministry would therefore result in increased callousness among those already resistant to God's message.
Traditional Jewish commentaries offer specific applications. The Talmud explains "both houses of Israel" (a related passage in Isaiah 8:14) as referring to the captivity in Babylon and the leadership in the land of Israel. Rashi and other medieval commentators applied Isaiah's warnings to various factions and leaders within Judah who resisted the prophet's message.
The passage addresses Isaiah's own generation—those who would witness the Assyrian crisis and eventual Babylonian exile as consequences of their unfaithfulness.
Christian Interpretation
Christians believe this prophecy found renewed application in the first century. The New Testament quotes Isaiah 6:9-10 at least five times to explain widespread Jewish rejection of Jesus despite his miracles and teaching.
Jesus cited this passage to explain his use of parables, indicating that truth was being revealed to his disciples but concealed from the crowds due to spiritual insensitivity:
With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: "'You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.'" — Matthew 13:14 (ESV)
The Apostle John utilized this prophecy to explain why people did not believe in Jesus despite the signs he performed (John 12:40). Decades later, the Apostle Paul cited the same passage to Jewish leaders in Rome who rejected his message about Jesus (Acts 28:25-26), seeing their unbelief as a continuation of the spiritual blindness Isaiah foretold.
This theme serves as the theological explanation for the "mystery" of Israel's partial hardening described by Paul in Romans 11:25.