This is the first post in a four-week series on the end of Jesus' public ministry in John. Subscribe to get the next installment in your inbox!
In January's series, we considered the climax of Jesus' public ministry in the gospel of John. The raising of Lazarus sets the stage for Jesus to be crucified. After this, Jesus enters Jerusalem and teaches the crowd. Beginning in chapter 13, he will teach his disciples many more things in private, before he is arrested and executed. But at the end of chapter 12, John gives a final evaluation of Jesus' public ministry:
When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
"Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"
Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
"He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them."
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. (John 12:36b–43, ESV)
Our next series will consider John's message in this passage in more detail. In today's post, we ask: whose glory, exactly, did Isaiah see?
To explain the people's unbelief, John quotes two passages from the prophet Isaiah. The first is Isaiah 53:1. This passage has come to form the backbone of Christian understanding of who Jesus was. In Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the prophet speaks about a figure who is a "man of sorrows," who suffers for the sins of his people. Toward the beginning of this poem about the Suffering Servant comes the line that John quotes: "Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"
The second passage John quotes is from Isaiah 6. This chapter begins with Isaiah seeing a vision of the Lord sitting upon a throne, with the temple in Jerusalem as his footstool.
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
The Lord commissions Isaiah to act as a prosecutor against the people of Judah, with the following command:
Go, and say to 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 blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed. (Isaiah 6:9–10)
After quoting both of these passages to explain the people's unbelief, John says that "Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory." So, what is John referring to? What did Isaiah see?
First of all, "glory" can mean different things depending on the context. When Isaiah saw the Lord sitting on his throne, he did have a vision of God's "glory" (although the word isn't explicitly used). This is the transcendent radiance of a divine being. D. A. Carson raises an interesting possibility. What John could be saying is that (i) Isaiah saw the glory of the Lord, and (ii) that glory is identical to Jesus himself. In that case, John would be saying that Jesus is the glory of the Lord.
But "glory" can also refer to the splendor of a human being. In light of this, consider how the Septuagint (the Greek translation John is quoting from) translates the beginning of the Suffering Servant song in Isaiah 52:14–53:1:
Jack VanDrunen
Just as many shall be astonished at you – so shall your appearance be without glory from men, and your glory [be hidden] from the men – so shall many nations be astonished at him, and kings shall shut their mouth, because those not informed about him shall see and those who did not hear shall understand.
Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? (NETS, with modification)
This "glory" of the Suffering Servant, which is hidden from the onlookers, is not transcendent radiance, but human splendor. This seems to be a more promising connection to our passage in John 12, for the following reasons.
First, this is the only place where John quotes the Septuagint version of Isaiah verbatim. In other places, including here in John 12, he either paraphrases or uses his own translation from the Hebrew. So, if John takes pains to quote the Septuagint precisely, we should pay attention.
Second, there is a literary parallel between Isaiah 52:14 and John 12:36. In John 12:36, Jesus "hides himself from [the crowd]." In Isaiah 52:14, Isaiah sees that the Suffering Servant's "glory" will be hidden from humans. The verb "hidden" itself needs to be supplied, but grammatically the construction is the same: a passive verb (explicit in John, implied in Isaiah) with some kind of separation "from" other humans.
The third, and to my mind strongest, argument comes from the logic of John 12:41. John says that Isaiah said "these things" (plural, referring to both of the above quotations), "because" he saw Jesus' glory. But why would the above quotations be caused by Isaiah's vision of the Lord in the temple? Certainly that vision was the occasion of one of the prophecies. But it makes more sense to think that it was the vision of the Suffering Servant's glory being hidden in Isaiah 52–53 that would cause Isaiah to prophesy.
John, I believe, is primarily thinking about Isaiah's vision of the Suffering Servant.
Why does this matter? This surfaces a theme that we will come back to in future weeks. Isaiah sees the Suffering Servant's glory hidden from onlookers. Jesus fulfills this by hiding from the crowds after his public ministry concludes. But Isaiah's prophecy doesn't end there. "Just as" the Servant's glory will be hidden, "so shall many nations be astonished ... those not informed about him shall see and those who did not hear shall understand."
The hiding and the unbelief are not the end of the story. John writes his gospel as an invitation to those who didn't hear or see Jesus at first – including us! – so that we might believe.
And by believing, we fulfill the second part of Isaiah's prophecy.
This is the first post in a four-week series on the end of Jesus' public ministry in John. Subscribe with your email, or follow on Bluesky to get the next post in a convenient place!