Isaiah 42:23

23 Which of you will listen to this? Who will hear and give heed in the times to come?

Isaiah 42:23 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 42:23

Who among you will give ear to this?
&c.] To this prophecy of your destruction, and to what follows concerning it: who will hearken and hear for the time to come?
and receive instruction from hence, and repent and reform? none at all; so blind, and deaf, and stupid, were they both before, and at their destruction, and even ever since; they take no notice of the hand of God upon them, nor hearken to the rod, any more than to the word of God; which seems to be what is meant by "the time to come", or "hereafter"; and this will be their case till the veil is taken away, and then they shall see and hear, and turn to the Lord.

Isaiah 42:23 In-Context

21 ADONAI was pleased, for his righteousness' sake, to make the Torah great and glorious.

22 But this is a people pillaged and plundered, all trapped in holes and sequestered in prisons. They are there to be plundered, with no one to rescue them; there to be pillaged, and no one says, "Return them!"

23 Which of you will listen to this? Who will hear and give heed in the times to come?

24 Who gave Ya'akov to be pillaged, Isra'el to the plunderers? Didn't ADONAI, against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they refused to walk, he whose Torah they did not obey?

25 This is why he poured on him his blazing anger as well as the fury of battle - it wrapped him in flames, yet he learned nothing; it burned him, yet he did not take it to heart.