God's own people called blind
Isaiah 29:9-14; Isaiah 42:16-20; Isaiah 43:8-10; Revelation 3:14-18.
What leads up to it
Isaiah speaks to a people who worship with their lips while their hearts are far away. In chapter 42 the promise to lead the blind sits two verses from the accusation that God's own servant is blind. Revelation 3 is a letter to a comfortable church.
What it says
God calls His own people blind and deaf: they have eyes but do not watch, ears but do not hear. The church at Laodicea says, "I am rich, I need nothing," and is told it is "wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked," and offered salve for its eyes. The blindness here is self-satisfaction: not seeing because you are sure there is nothing to see.
What the picture assumes about the blind
The figure assumes that blindness is a condition you can have without knowing it, which is true of the spiritual kind and false of the physical. A blind man knows. Laodicea did not. The picture works precisely because the hearers would have thought it obvious that a blind man knows he is blind, and would have been stung to be told they did not.
Who is called blind
The people called blind here are God's covenant partner, His servant, His witnesses, His church. The word is not aimed outward at pagans or unbelievers but inward, at the people who had the Scriptures and the Temple and the salve within reach. Isaiah 42 puts the two uses side by side: God will lead the blind by a way they do not know, and in the next breath asks who is blind but His own servant. The blind He leads and the blind He rebukes are not the same people.
From Brian
Open for Brian: What this passage says to someone who lives without sight.
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.
Isaiah 29, in Henry's reading: the prophets, rulers and seers were themselves blindfolded, and the prophecy had become to them "as the words of a book that is sealed up," known to be a vision but with nothing of its contents known, like a sealed letter in a scholar's hands. He adds the line that joins this page to the one before it: "it is easy to tell what the fatal consequences will be when the blind lead the blind."
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Isaiah 29.
On "who is blind but My servant," Henry sorts the verses: verse 18 may be spoken to Gentile idolaters, blind and deaf like the gods they worshipped, but verse 19 is God's own people and their priests and elders, ruined, he says, for want of observing what they saw. On Isaiah 43:8 he hears an echo of Psalm 115: idolaters are "blind people that have eyes," with the shape and faculties of men and not the use of them. The phrase itself settles the matter: these blind have eyes.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Isaiah 42 and 43.
Laodicea's eye-salve was a local trade. The 1915 encyclopedia says the city was a wealthy centre of industry, famous for black wool and for a Phrygian eye-powder made there, with a renowned school of medicine nearby; after the earthquake of AD 60 its citizens refused Rome's help and rebuilt at their own expense, which is the pride the letter answers. "Buy from Me salve for your eyes" was said to a city that sold it.
Source: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entries "Laodicea" and "Eyesalve."
Henry on Laodicea: they could not see their state, their way or their danger, "and they thought they saw." Then the clearest sentence on the shelf about where this figure lives: "the sight of the body will not enlighten the soul." The remedy he reads in the eye-salve is to give up one's own wisdom, "which are but blindness in the things of God."
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Revelation 3.
The passage
Isaiah 29:9-14
9 Stop and be astonished; blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not with wine; stagger, but not from strong drink.
10 For the LORD has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep. He has shut your eyes, O prophets; He has covered your heads, O seers.
11 And the entire vision will be to you like the words sealed in a scroll. If it is handed to someone to read, he will say, “I cannot, because it is sealed.”
12 Or if the scroll is handed to one unable to read, he will say, “I cannot read.”
13 Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.
14 Therefore I will again confound these people with wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of the wise will vanish, and the intelligence of the intelligent will be hidden.”
Isaiah 42:16-20
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.
17 But those who trust in idols and say to molten images, ‘You are our gods!’ will be turned back in utter shame.
18 Listen, you deaf ones; look, you blind ones, that you may see!
19 Who is blind but My servant, or deaf like the messenger I am sending? Who is blind like My covenant partner, or blind like the servant of the LORD?
20 Though seeing many things, you do not keep watch. Though your ears are open, you do not hear.”
Isaiah 43:8-10
8 Bring out a people who have eyes but are blind, and who have ears but are deaf.
9 All the nations gather together and the peoples assemble. Who among them can declare this, and proclaim to us the former things? Let them present their witnesses to vindicate them, so that others may hear and say, “It is true.”
10 “You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may consider and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none will come.
Revelation 3:14-18
14 To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Originator of God’s creation.
15 I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were one or the other!
16 So because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to vomit you out of My mouth!
17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have grown wealthy and need nothing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
18 I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, white garments so that you may be clothed and your shameful nakedness not exposed, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.