John 12:35-41 / Isaiah 53:1-3 / Isaiah 6
Fulfillment
Then Jesus said to them, “A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them.
But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke:
“Lord, who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again:
“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts,
Lest they should see with their eyes,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.”
These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him.
Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Original 2
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:
“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
“Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”
Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
And He answered:
“Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant,
The houses are without a man,
The land is utterly desolate,
The Lord has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
But yet a tenth will be in it,
And will return and be for consuming,
As a terebinth tree or as an oak,
Whose stump remains when it is cut down.
So the holy seed shall be its stump.”
Our first plēroō from John is a double header, with John quoting two passages from (yet again) Isaiah.
The first quote is almost identical with the original (John adds "Lord," but that's it), which gives us some hope John will conform to our modern sensibilities. Unfortunately, the second quote differs wildly from the original. John quotes it as if the shutting hearts and closing eyes is something "He" (Jesus, according to John) is doing, whereas in the original it is a command from God to Isaiah.
So this plēroō passage provides yet another example of the original context not mattering. The passage John quotes is, as mentioned, clearly a command from God to Isaiah. The only aspect of what we would consider prophecy about the future is God's answer to the question "How long?"
It's clear that this Isaiah prophecy was already fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem under the Babylonians, and the remnant that remained at that time. It's also clear that John sees this prophecy as also applying to the ministry of Jesus (and perhaps, the destruction of Jerusalem under the Romans).
As such, I'm going to update Point One:
Revised Point One: Prophecies often have multiple fulfillments
Re-Revised Point Two: The context may be misleading in prophecy
Point Three: Past, Present, and Future do not matter in prophecy
Re-Revised Point Four: The exact wording does not matter in prophecy, or we have a different version of the Old Testament than Jesus
Point Five: A passage does not have to be explicitly prophetic to be prophecy
Next: [BTT038] John 13:18-19 / Psalm 41:9
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