Isaiah 42:19

"“Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see."

Key Reflection

In Isaiah's time, this verse challenges a society where physical disabilities were often seen as divine punishments or curses. By addressing the deaf and the blind specifically, Isaiah uses these metaphors to call out his contemporaries for their spiritual blindness and deafness to God’s warnings and purposes. This call to attention is part of a broader prophetic tradition that contrasts the Israelites' supposed enlightenment with their actual ignorance and rebellion against God's will.

From the Scholars: Barnes' Notes

Who is blind, but my servant? -Some of the Jewish expositors suppose that by ‘servant’ here, the prophet himself is intended, who, they suppose is here called blind and deaf by the impious Jews who rejected his message. But it is evident, that by ‘servant’ here, the Jewish people themselves are intended, the singular being used for the plural, in a sense similar to that where they are so often called ‘Jacob’ and ‘Israel.’ The phrase ‘servants of God’ is often given to his people, and is used to denote true worshippers. The word is used here to denote those who professed to be the true worshippers of Yahweh.

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