37‐40. Before closing this first part of the _narrative_ portion of the Gospel (see Introd. iv.), St. John pauses in the history to note the hard‐ hearted incredulity of the Jews, notwithstanding the fact that Christ had wrought _so many_ miracles; an incredulity, however, which had been foretold by Isaias, which, therefore, came to pass now _in order that_ (ἱνα) the prediction of the Prophet should be fulfilled (verses 37, 38); and which came to pass necessarily (_necessitate consequente_), because, as Isaias declared, they no longer had the abundant graces necessary in order that they might believe (verses 39, 40). Thus the incredulity of the Jews in our Lord’s time was _necessary_ to the end that prophecy might be fulfilled. How then, we may ask, was that incredulity culpable, if those who were incredulous were not free and able to believe? The answer is, that this incredulity was necessary by a necessity consequent upon the prediction of the inspired Prophet, which prediction was itself consequent upon God’s foreknowledge that the Jews would, culpably and of their own free will, remain incredulous. God foresaw this incredulity, predicted it, because He foresaw it was to be; and, of course, it came to pass, as He had foreseen it would. Hence, when God foresees, or His Prophet predicts, the commission of a certain sin, that sin is infallibly, yet freely committed. It is, as if we saw a man walking across a plain; he does so, not because we see him, but we see him because he walks. Similarly, in the boundless plain of His eternal present, God sees all things that are to be, and they happen, not because He sees them, but He sees them because they are to happen. Note, in verse 38, that *our hearing* means what has been heard _from_ us, for the preachers of the Gospel are represented in Isaias as complaining of the small number of those who listened to them. *The arm of the Lord* is Christ, according to several of the fathers; or we may take it to mean the power of the Lord in the work of man’s redemption. Note, in verse 40, where the prophecy is cited freely, after neither the Hebrew nor the Septuagint, that it is not meant that God blinded any man _positively_, but only negatively, by the withdrawal of His more abundant graces. 41. Haec dixit Isaias, quando 41. These things said Isaias vidit gloriam eius, et locutus when he saw his glory, and est de eo. spoke of him. 41. See Isaias vi. 1, 9, 10, where the Prophet says: “I saw the Lord” (אדני = the Supreme God), words which are here referred by St. John to the Prophet’s having seen Christ; therefore, according to St. John, Christ is the Supreme God. It would also seem from this verse that the Son of God Himself, and not merely an angel representing Him, appeared to Isaias on that occasion. It was the common opinion of the fathers, though denied by most of the scholastics, that God sometimes appeared in the O. T. apparitions.