[12:37–43] Jesus has done many signs, but as
elsewhere in biblical narratives, God’s gracious and saving work on behalf of
his people does not inevitably produce understanding or faith. Moses laments
that although God had done “signs and great wonders” in the land of Egypt,
Israel had neither seen nor understood what the Lord had done for his people
(Deut 29:2–4). Isaiah speaks of the lack of belief or response to the work and
word of God, and John includes two Isaianic quotations here that underscore the
negative response to Jesus: “Lord, who has believed our report? To whom has the
arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isa 53:1); “He has blinded their eyes and
hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and understand with
their heart and turn, and I should heal them” (Isa 6:10). Through Jesus’ signs
and words, “the arm of the Lord” (God) has been revealed: the Son has made the
Father known (see comments on 1:18; 5:37; 6:46; 14:9). Some people have
responded with faith (John 1:10–13). But others have not “believed our report,”
thus fulfilling Isaiah’s words that God has “blinded their eyes and hardened
their heart.” These difficult utterances echo the Johannine note that no one
sees or responds to Jesus unless they are taught or drawn by God, unless their
eyes are opened to see (see comments on 6:44, 65; 9:38–41; and Excursus 8: “The
Johannine Vocabulary of Faith and Discipleship”).
Up to this point, citations of Scripture have been introduced with
some variation of the formula “as it is written.” Now, as the Passion Narrative
begins, scriptural citations are regularly introduced with a variation of the
phrase “that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (with a form of the verb plēroō or teleioō). It is particularly important for John, as for other early
Christian writers, to stress that Jesus’ crucifixion was not an unforeseen or
chance happening. Collectively, all these quotations interpret Jesus’ death and
the unbelief of his contemporaries as reflective of things written in
Scripture.
All four Gospels, and also the book of Acts, quote Isa 6:9–10 to
explain the lack of response to Jesus or his emissaries. In the Synoptic
Gospels this quotation accounts for the failure to understand Jesus’ parables;
in Acts, it explains the rejection of Paul’s preaching. John has recast the
prophetic rebuke not as a failure to hear
and see, but entirely as a failure to
see. Isaiah’s word of judgment links
or equates hearing and seeing as means of knowing or apprehending the truth:
the people will hear, but not understand, see but not perceive; their ears will
be heavy and their eyes closed; they will neither see nor hear in order to turn
and be healed. John condenses the passage from Isaiah so that it refers only to
seeing, not to hearing: “He has
blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their
eyes and understand with their heart and turn, and I should heal them” (John
12:40, citing Isa 6:10). John then adds the editorial remark, “Isaiah said
these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him” (12:41). By
eliminating the references to “hearing” in his citation of the passage from
Isaiah, and adding the note that Isaiah saw
Jesus’ glory, John highlights the failure of Jesus’ contemporaries to see his
glory (cf. 1:14; 2:11)—something that Isaiah had not missed. Scripture accounts
for the unbelief of Jesus’ contemporaries: they “could not” believe, because in
writing about those who could not believe, Isaiah had written of them, even as
he wrote of Jesus’ glory. In Scripture, God’s glory refers to a visual phenomenon; it appears or is
revealed or seen (Exod 33:22; Num 14:22; Isa 66:18–19; Ezek 39:13, 21). John
uses the passage from Isaiah to emphasize “seeing” or discerning the glory of
Jesus; judgment falls on those who do not perceive it, on those who do not
understand him as the one sent (John 2:11; 6:36, 40) to do God’s work of
bringing light into darkness, life into death.
Greek philosophers and historians also distinguished between the
knowledge gained through hearing (secondhand reports) and seeing (firsthand
experience). The dictum of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “Eyes are surer
witnesses than ears,” was echoed by ancient Greek historians. But while Dio
Chrysostom echoes the sentiment, he also recognizes the greater difficulty of
convincing the eyes: “The popular saying that the eyes are more trustworthy
than the ears is perhaps true, yet they are much harder to convince and demand
much greater clearness; for while the eye agrees exactly with what it sees, it
is not impossible to excite and cheat the ear” (Dei cogn. [Or. 12] 71).
The Jewish exegete Philo also quoted Heraclitus’s pronouncement (Ebr. 82). He speaks of “the more certain
testimony of sight” and declares that “hearing stands second in estimation and
below sight, and the recipient of teaching is always second to him with whom
realities present their forms clear to his vision and not through the medium of
instruction” (Conf. 57, 148; cf. Abr. 57, 61). Philo also draws a
contrast between Ishmael and Israel in terms of hearing and seeing, to the
detriment of the former:
“Ishmael” means “hearkening to God.” Hearing takes the second place,
yielding the first to sight, and sight is the portion of Israel, the son
freeborn and firstborn; for “seeing God” is the translation of “Israel.” It is
possible to hear the false and take it for true, because hearing is deceptive,
but sight, by which we discern what really is, is devoid of falseness. (Fug. 208)
However valued personal access to an event or person in the form of
“seeing” might be, seeing does not guarantee understanding or insight. In John,
“sight” becomes the “insight” of faith through God’s work and instruction that
is granted through reading Scripture, in the community of disciples, following
the resurrection of Jesus, and under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. But as
Isaiah lamented, even the Lord’s signs “in their presence” (emprosthen autōn, John 12:37) did not
lead to faith.
And yet “many of the authorities” do believe in Jesus (v. 42). Fearing
ostracism from their community, being “put out of the synagogue,” they do not
confess that faith. Since the Greek doxa
can be rendered as either “glory” or “honor,” here is wordplay not visible in
English: John writes that Isaiah saw “his glory” (ten doxan autou, v. 41), but that the authorities love
“human honor” (tēn doxan tōn
anthrōpōn) more than “God’s honor” (tēn
doxan tou theou, v. 43). Wanting to preserve their own honor in the
eyes of their neighbors, and fearing the dishonor and disgrace that would be
theirs as followers of Jesus, these would-be disciples cannot take the step of
publicly identifying themselves as those who believe in Jesus. They cannot
confess that they see what Isaiah saw. The public ridicule of the man born
blind, the threat of being made aposynagōgos,
and the rift created with his parents—all amply testify that there is a price
to be paid for following Jesus, that it is paid in the coin of social
ostracism, and that such a price is high indeed. (Marianne Meye
Thompson, John: A Commentary [The New Testament Library; Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015], 274-75)
