God blinded the Jews

[praestat_fides]

In Romans 11:8 Paul says: “***God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear unto this day.” ***

What is the Catholic interpretation of this verse? If God is loving, why did he blind the Jews from recognizing Jesus as the Mashiach?

 

[Petaro]

I am certainly no expert in exegesis, however my common sense tells me that our Loving God would not blind His chosen people, to whom He specifically promises a Messiah, would blind them, against their free will, to His coming.
This just goes against all we know about Christ who told His apostles to tech all nations. It goes against a God, ever loyal to His covenants.
No, I believe the Jews were expecting someone completely different to Jesus, someone who would rid them of the Romans.

 

[meltzerboy]

In Romans 11:8 Paul says: “***God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear unto this day.” ***

What is the Catholic interpretation of this verse? If God is loving, why did he blind the Jews from recognizing Jesus as the Mashiach?

I’m interested in what Catholics’ interpretation of this verse is, and I’m also willing to take a shot at it. Perhaps the blindness of many Jews meant that Gentiles would now be evangelized and come to know G-d, whereas if most of the Jews had accepted Jesus as the Messiah, other nations might remain pagan or polytheistic for a longer time.

From the Jewish perspective, G-d is using the Christians to transmit the moral teachings of the Law to all the nations albeit in imperfect form.

 

[Ad_Orientem]

From Haydock’s Bible Commentary:

Ver. 8. God hath given them, &c. Not by his working, or acting in them; but by his permission, and by withdrawing his grace in punishment of their obstinacy. (Challoner)

Permitted them (says St. Chrysostom) to fall into the spirit of insensibility. …] We cannot have a better judge of the sense of the word than St. Chrysostom, who tells us, that it signifies a habit of the soul, firmly fixed in evil, and an insensible disposition: as, saith he, persons under a pious compunction are not to be removed from their good resolutions; so the wicked, under a hardened compunction, are nailed, as it were, to vice. And that here this is the true sense, appears by the following words out of Isaias: he hath given them eyes that they should not see, &c. And also out of David, (Psalm lxviii. 23.) let their table be made a snare, &c. We may understand the spiritual food of the word of God, and of the Scriptures; which by the blindness of this people, have served to their great condemnation. …]

Note that our Lord says something similar in Matt 13:

Therefore do I speak to them in parables: because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And the prophecy of Isaias is fulfilled in them, who saith: By hearing you shall hear, and shall not understand: and seeing you shall see, and shall not perceive. For the heart of this people is grown gross, and with their ears they have been dull of hearing, and their eyes they have shut: lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

 

[praestat_fides]

Permitted them (says St. Chrysostom) to fall into the spirit of insensibility. …] We cannot have a better judge of the sense of the word than St. Chrysostom

Oh, you mean the same St. Chrysostom who said this: “The Jews are more savage than any highwaymen and do greater harm to those who have fallen among them. They do not simply strip off their victim’s clothes nor inflict wounds on his body as did those robbers on the road to Jericho. Rather, the Jews mortally hurt their victim’s soul, inflicting ten thousand wounds, and leave it lying in a pit of ungodliness…

He kind of sounds like an anti-Semite if you ask me! How reliable then is he???

 

[meltzerboy]

Oh, you mean the same St. Chrysostom who said this: “The Jews are more savage than any highwaymen and do greater harm to those who have fallen among them. They do not simply strip off their victim’s clothes nor inflict wounds on his body as did those robbers on the road to Jericho. Rather, the Jews mortally hurt their victim’s soul, inflicting ten thousand wounds, and leave it lying in a pit of ungodliness…

He kind of sounds like an anti-Semite if you ask me! How reliable then is he???

From what I gather about St. Chrysostom, his forceful and blunt rhetorical style was directed primarily against the Judaizing Christians of his day, who, he perhaps feared, might revert to Judaism, rather than against Jews per se. However, this distinction may have been lost on many of his listeners and inadvertently encouraged antisemitism. His feelings about Judaism were most likely not generous because, as a Church Father, he was a leader in the formation of Christianity.

 

[Ad_Orientem]

He kind of sounds like an anti-Semite if you ask me! How reliable then is he???

That line of reasoning is called ad hominem, and it is a logical fallacy.

In the passage I quoted, the holy Doctor says essentially what Christ before him had said already, namely, that those who were steeped in the revealed religion but rejected their Messiah were hard-hearted and spiritually blind. Not because of their race or ethnicity (which in fact was favored by God), but rather through their own fault. In such passages, “the Jews” doesn’t mean every Jew even in Christ’s lifetime, because Christ Himself was Jewish, as were the Apostles.