The blindness of Israel.
The "blindness" of Israel is a subject of continual remark in Scripture from the time of Moses (Deuteronomy 28:28, Deuteronomy 28:29) to that of St. Paul (Romans 11:25). Four things may be noted of it.
I. IT IS SELF-CAUSED. The Israelites "blinded themselves," and so became blind (Isaiah 29:9, with the comment). They "winked with their eyes," closed them against the light which shone on them from on high, and thus gradually by disuse lost the power of spiritual discernment (see the homiletics on Isaiah 29:9, Isaiah 29:10). The process is a natural one. It is a law of nature that every disused part of an organism shall dwindle away and decay. "There are certain burrowing animals—the mole, for instance—which have taken to spending their lives beneath the surface of the ground. And Nature has taken her revenge upon them in a thoroughly natural way—she has closed up their eyes. If they mean to live in darkness, she argues, eyes are obviously a superfluous function. By neglecting them, these animals made it clear that they did not want them. And as one of Nature's fixed principles is that nothing shall exist in vain, the eyes are presently taken away, or reduced to a rudimentary state. There are fishes which have had to pay the same terrible forfeit for having made their abode in dark caverns, where eyes can never be required. And in exactly the same way the spiritual eye must die and lose its power by purely natural law, if the soul choose to walk in darkness rather than light".
II. IT IS NEVERTHELESS A DIVINE JUDGMENT ON THEM, Nature's laws are God's decrees. In making it a law of nature that destruction of an organ or a function should follow disuse, God was passing a sentence on those who wilfully scorned any of his gifts. Hence he is constantly said in Scripture to "blind men's eyes" and "harden their hearts" (Exodus 4:21; Exodus 9:1-35..12; Deuteronomy 28:28; Matthew 12:16; John 12:40; Romans 11:8, etc.), and Israel's "blindness" is distinctly ascribed to him in Isaiah 6:10; Isaiah 29:10. "Because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind" (Romans 1:28).
III. IT IS PARTIAL. "Blindness in part is happened unto Israel" (Romans 11:25). At no time did God leave himself without a witness. At no time did the whole of Israel become blind. At the worst period of the Phoenician idolatry, there were yet in Samaria seven thousand who had not bowed -the knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18). In Isaiah's time, God had still left him in Judah a "remnant" (Isaiah 1:9; Isaiah 10:20; Isaiah 46:3). When our Lord came, it was from among the Israelites that he gathered his "little flock" (Luke 12:32). Since then in every age there have been converts—many of them "shining lights"—to Christianity from Judaism. Even now the Christian will not lightly let fall the hope of an ultimate great in-gathering of Israel into the one fold. "The veil shall be taken away" some day (2 Corinthians 3:16), and then shall Israel "turn to the Lord" and worship his Christ.
IV. IT IS, TO SOME EXTENT, CURABLE. Isaiah calls upon the blind to "look, that they may see" (verse 18). There are infinite intermediate conditions between perfectly healthy sight and absolute blindness. Comparatively few of the Israelites were at any time absolutely blind. The great majority were more or less dim-sighted. So long as this is the case, whether physically or morally, there is a possibility of recovery. The organ is not destroyed; it may by care and use be rendered capable of once more properly performing its function. Isaiah speaks of a time when "the eyes of the blind would see out of obscurity and out of darkness" (Isaiah 29:18). May it not be hoped that the time is approaching for the Jewish people—the time when "Israel after the:flesh" will once more become an important portion of the "Israel of God"?
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON