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Joh_12:39-40. Διὰ τοῦτο … ὅτι ] as always in John (see on Joh_10:17): therefore, referring to what precedes, on account of this destiny contained in Joh_12:38—namely, because, so that thus with ὅτι the reason is still more minutely set forth. Ebrard foists in an entirely foreign course of thought, because Israel has not willed to believe, therefore has she not been able to believe. Contrary to that Johannean use of διὰ τοῦτο … ὅτι , Theophylact, Beza, Jansen, Lampe, and several others, including Lücke, Tholuck, Olshausen, Maier, B. Crusius, Luthardt, take διὰ τοῦτο as preparative.
οὐκ ἠδύναντο ] not: nolebant (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Wolf), but—and therewith the enigma of that tragic unbelief is solved—they could not, expressing the impossibility which had its foundation in the divine judgment of obduracy. “Hic subsistit evangelista, quis ultra nitatur?” Bengel. On the relation of this inability, referred back to the determination of God, to moral freedom and responsibility, see on Romans 9-11.
τετύφλωκεν ] The passage is Isa_6:9-10, departing freely from the original and from the LXX. In the original the prophet is said, at the command of God, to undertake the blinding, etc., that is, the intellectual and moral hardening (“harden the heart,” etc.). Thus what God then will allow to be done is represented by John in his free manner of citation as done by God Himself, to which the recollection of the rendering of the passage given by the LXX. (“the heart has become hardened,” etc.) might easily lead. The subject is thus neither Christ (Grotius, Calovius, and several others, including Lange and Ebrard), nor the devil (Hilgenfeld, Scholten), but, as the reader would understand as a matter of course, and as also the entire context shows (for the necessity in the divine fate is the leading idea), God. Christ first appears as subject in ἰάσομαι .
πεπώρ .] has hardened. See Athenaeus, 12, p. 549 B; Mar_6:52; Mar_8:17; Rom_11:7; 2Co_3:14.
καὶ στραφῶσι ] and (not) turn, return to me.
ἰάσομαι ] Future, dependent on ἵνα μή . See on Mat_13:15. The moral corruption is viewed as sickness, which is healed by faith (Joh_12:37; Joh_12:39). Comp. Mat_9:12; 1Pe_2:24. The healing subject, however, cannot, as in Mat_8:15, Act_28:27, be God (so usually), simply because this is the subject of τετύφλωκεν , κ . τ . λ ., but it must be Christ; in His mouth, according to the Johannean view of the prophecy from the standpoint of its fulfilment, Isaiah puts not merely the utterance in Joh_12:38, but also the words τετύφλωκεν … ἰάσομαι αὐτούς , and thus makes Him say: God has blinded the people, etc., that they should not see, etc., and should not turn to Him (Christ), and He (Christ) should heal them. Nonnus aptly says: Ὀφθαλμοὺς ἀλάωσεν ἐμῶν ἐπιμάρτυρας ἔργων … μὴ κραδίῃ νοέωσι … καί μοι ὑποστρέψωσι , νοοβλαβέας δὲ σαώσω ἄνδρας ἀλιτραίνοντας ἐμῷ παιήονι μύθῳ . Thus the 1st person ἰάσομαι is not an instance of “negligence” (Tholuck, comp. his A. T. im N. T. p. 3 5 f. ed. 6), but of consistency.