Who is referred to in Isaiah 29 verse 12?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:

This refers to an unnamed false prophet. Another view Let us look to the verses 29:11-12:

The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give it to the one who is literate, saying, "Please read this," he will say, "I cannot, for it is sealed."

Then the book will be given to the one who is illeterate, saying, "Please read this." And he will say, "I cannot read."

I believe it is a reference to Mohammad, when he received the first verses of the quran, as the angel gabriel say to "Iquraa" (which means "read (this)"), he replied "maa ana bi-quaarii") which means "I cannot read", because (or meaning) he is illeterate. This is the story of the true prophet of Islam.

Answer 2

When we read Isaiah we must really look at the context and go beyond preconceived ideas. The obscurity of this passage does not have to mean that it refers to a prophet. Nor does the mention of a person who can not read have to point to a specific person who could not read, out of the many millions who could not. We have to simply look at what Isaiah was trying to say.

Isaiah 1:1 tells us that Isaiah was writing about the things he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in his own lifetime, so those parts of the book that are original to him should be read in that context only, unless some other meaning can be proven.

Chapter 29 is about the politics of Isaiah's time. Verse 1 refers to Ariel ("Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt ..."), a symbolic name for Jerusalem. Jumping forward to verse 15, we see a reference to the secret pact between Jerusalem and Egypt, which Isaiah knew did not have sufficient military power to defeat Assyria and would simply bring catastrophe upon Judah.

Verses 11-12 may have been later insertions, but they can be read in context without any change in meaning. Verse 11 tells of clever fools who choose not to see, then verse 12 says that others are unable to see. It seems that only Isaiah can see the disaster about to unfold - Assyria removed alll of Judah from the control of Jerusalem, apart from the city itself and its immediate surroundings.