The eyes of the blind will be opened
Psalm 146:7-9; Isaiah 29:18-19; Isaiah 35:4-6; Isaiah 42:6-7; Isaiah 42:16; Luke 4:16-21.
What leads up to it
The promises. The psalm lists opening the eyes of the blind among God's acts of care for the oppressed, the hungry and the prisoner. Isaiah repeats it as a sign of the day of salvation and as the servant's task. Jesus read Isaiah's words aloud in Nazareth and said they were fulfilled.
What it says
God opens the eyes of the blind. Whether Isaiah meant eyes or understanding is a question the text leaves open, and Jesus answered it both ways at once: He healed blind people, and He named the healing as the sign that the promise had come. Matthew 11 puts "the blind receive sight" first on the list of proofs.
What the picture assumes about the blind
The promise assumes that blindness is something God intends to undo, which cuts both ways for a blind reader: it names the condition as part of a broken world, and it names the blind first among those God remembers. The psalm's company is telling. The blind stand with the bowed down, the hungry, the prisoner and the stranger: people God is for.
Who is called blind
Here, finally, the word falls on blind people and means them. The promise is to those who cannot see, and Jesus kept it to actual men by actual roads. Isaiah 42:16 adds a second promise that is easy to miss: not sight, but a guide. "I will lead the blind by a way they did not know." For a reader who has not been healed, that is the verse in this group that is addressed to him.
From Brian
Isaiah 42:16. So many thoughts here. We have to be willing to be led sometimes. Every blind person needs to hear these words. For me personally, He has led me to places I never dreamed I would go.
This is part of why I count blindness among the greatest gifts God has given me, behind my salvation and my wife Barb. Daily I have to rely on Him for so many obvious needs, let alone the things everyone takes for granted.
Other voices
Open: other blind people and their families will be asked the same question, and their answers will appear here with their permission.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
Did the commentators read the promises as eyes or as understanding? Henry reads Psalm 146:8 and Isaiah 35:5 both ways at once. On the psalm he says God "gives sight to those that have been long deprived of it," and that the verse points to Christ, since no one had opened the eyes of a man born blind until He did. On Isaiah 35 he is plainest: "Wonders shall be wrought on men's bodies: the eyes of the blind shall be opened," naming the man born blind, and then "greater wonders" on souls.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Psalm 146 and Isaiah 35.
Isaiah 29:18, 42:7, 42:16 and Luke 4:18 Henry reads as spiritual only: ignorance becoming understanding, Christ presenting the object by His word and preparing the organ by His Spirit, those "by nature blind" led by a way they knew not, with Paul struck blind on the road as his example. Edersheim sums up the Nazareth reading as "the healing which He offers to those whom sin had blinded." No commentator on the shelf reads Isaiah 42:16 as a promise of guidance to people who cannot see. That reading, on this page, is a blind reader's, Brian's, offered as perspective and not as a correction of the commentators.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Isaiah 29 and 42 and Luke 4; Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book III, chapter XI.
How these verses were heard in Jesus's day: Edersheim notes that the rabbinic collections apply Isaiah 35:5-6 to the days of the Messiah, as does the Midrash on Psalm 146:8, which is why Jesus could answer John the Baptist by pointing to the blind who saw. At Nazareth, he says, Jesus read the prophetic lesson from the Isaiah scroll handed to Him by the attendant; unrolled, far more than the passage He read would have lain under His eyes.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book III, chapters III and XI, and Appendix IX.
The passage
Psalm 146:7-9
7 He executes justice for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free,
8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind, the LORD lifts those who are weighed down, the LORD loves the righteous.
9 The LORD protects foreigners; He sustains the fatherless and the widow, but the ways of the wicked He frustrates.
Isaiah 29:18-19
18 On that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of the deep darkness the eyes of the blind will see.
19 The humble will increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 35:4-6
4 Say to those with anxious hearts: “Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance. With divine retribution He will come to save you.”
5 Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
6 Then the lame will leap like a deer and the mute tongue will shout for joy. For waters will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.
Isaiah 42:6-7
6 “I, the LORD, have called you for a righteous purpose, and I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and appoint you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the nations,
7 to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of the dungeon and those sitting in darkness out from the prison house.
Isaiah 42:16
16 I will lead the blind by a way they did not know; I will guide them on unfamiliar paths. I will turn darkness into light before them and rough places into level ground. These things I will do for them, and I will not forsake them.
Luke 4:16-21
16 Then Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. As was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath. And when He stood up to read,
17 the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 Then He rolled up the scroll, returned it to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him,
21 and He began by saying, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”