The Commentary | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 30, 1867

The Commentary.

Tell me the meaning of Scriptures. One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles of earthly streams.—M'Cheyne.

Isaiah vi, 10.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

The orientals, in some cases, deprive the criminal of the light of day, by sealing up his eyes. A son of the Great Mogul was actually suffering this punishment when Sir Thomas Roe visited the court of Delhi. The hapless youth was cast into prison, and deprived of the light by some adhesive plaster put upon his eyes, for the space of three years; after which the seal was taken away, that he might with freedom enjoy the light; but he was still detained in prison. Other princes have been treated in a different manner, to prevent them from conspiring against the reigning monarch, or meddling with affairs of state: they have been compelled to swallow opium and other stupefying drugs, to weaken or benumb their faculties, and render them unfit for business. Influenced by such absurd and cruel policy, Shah Abbas, the celebrated Persian monarch, who died in 1629, ordered a certain quantity of opium to be given every day to his grandson, who was to be his successor, to stupefy him, and prevent him from disturbing his government. Such are probably the circumstances alluded to by the prophet: “They have not known nor understood; for he hath shut their eyes that they cannot see; and their hearts that they cannot understand.” Isa. xliv, 18. The verb rendered in our version, to shut, signifies “to overlay,” “to cover over the surface;” thus, the king of Israel prepared three thousand talents of gold, and seven thousand talents of refined silver, to overlay the walls of the Temple. 1 Chron. xxix, 4. But it generally signifies to overspread, or daub over, as with mortar or plaster, of which Parkhurst quotes a number of examples; a sense which entirely corresponds with the manner in which the eyes of a criminal are sealed up in some parts of the East. The practice of sealing up the eyes, and stupefying a criminal with drugs, seems to have been contemplated by the same prophet in another passage of his book: “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert and be healed.”—Watson.