C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Isaiah 44:18-19

Isa 44:18-19

So irrational is idolatry; but yet, through self-hardening, they have fallen under the judgment of hardness of heart (Isa 6:9-10; Isa 19:3; Isa 29:10), and have been given up to a reprobate mind (Rom 1:28). “They perceive not, and do not understand: for their eyes are smeared over, so that they do not see; their hearts, so that they do not understand. And men take it not to heart, no perception and no understanding, that men should say, The half of it I have burned in the fire, and also baked bread upon the coals thereof; roasted flesh, and eaten: and ought I to make the rest of it an abomination, to fall down before the produce of a tree?” Instead of טח, Lev 14:42, the third person is written טח (from tâchach, Ges. §72, Anm. 8) in a circumstantial sense: their eyes are, as it were, smeared over with plaster. The expression אל־לב השׁיב or על־לב (Isa 46:8), literally to carry back into the heart, which we find as well as על־לב שׂים, to take to heart (Isa 42:25), answers exactly to the idea of reflection, here with reference to the immense contrast between a piece of wood and the Divine Being. The second and third לא in Isa 44:19 introduce substantive clauses, just as verbal clauses are introduced by ואין. לאמר is used in the same manner as in Isa 9:8 : “perception and insight showing themselves in their saying.” On būl, see Job 40:20; the meaning “block” cannot be established: the talmudic būl, a lump or piece, which Ewald adduces, is the Greek βῶλος.