Text: Isaiah 6:9
OT Text Referred to: Deuteronomy 29:2
Subject: obstructing eyes, ears, hearts
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Analogy
Anchor Text: Isa 6:9-10 — Hearing They Do Not Understand
Significance: Isaiah 6:9-10 commissions Isaiah to preach judgment: "Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people calloused." Deuteronomy 29:2-4 provides the historical precedent: Moses told Israel "You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes... Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear." Both texts use the same three organs of perception — heart (לֵב, lev), eyes (עֵינַיִם, einayim), ears (אָזְנַיִם, oznayim) — to describe spiritual imperception. Isaiah's hardening commission deliberately echoes Moses' assessment of Israel's constitutional inability to perceive what God has done, establishing a pattern of divinely permitted spiritual blindness that runs from the wilderness through Isaiah's day.