This scripture is of paramount importance. So many have wondered why the writings of Isaiah are so obscure and difficult to understand. The prophecies of Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, or Zechariah can also be difficult. Why couldn’t these prophets give their message in language that is easy to understand? The answer is given by Jacob. Such was the manner of prophecy among the Jews. They actually sought for things that they could not understand. As always, the Lord granted their request, because they desired it.
Jacob also gives a classic description of how it is that the Jews could have misunderstood the meaning of their own law to the point that they could reject the Holy One of Israel. He says that their blindness came by looking beyond the mark. The “mark” that they should have been looking to was Jesus Christ. The Jews were great at keeping some of the most minute statutes associated with the Law of Moses, but having looked beyond the mark, they did not understand to what purpose the Law was given. Hence the importance of Jacob’s previous statement, we keep the law of Moses, it pointing our souls to him (v. 5).
Joseph Fielding McConkie explains the phenomenon of looking beyond the mark which was prevalent among the Jewish intellectuals:
"So rigid did the literal and ceremonial become that righteousness was overshadowed by legalism and salvation became the reward for outward conformity. Pharisaism and scholasticism ruled supreme. God himself was said to spend three hours a day in the study of law.
’All liberty of thought was abrogated; all Gentile learning was forbidden; no communion was allowed with the human intellect outside the Pharisaic pale. Within the circle of Rabbinism the Jew was ’the galley-slave of the most rigid orthodoxy.’ The yoke of the Romans was not so exacting as that of the Rabbis, which dominated over a man’s whole existence and intruded itself into the most trivial actions of life. The weak were tortured by the knowledge that they could not so much as wash their hands or eat a meal without running the risk of deadly offences. The ‘ordination’ of the Rabbis made them oracles for every subject and every action, from the cleaning of the teeth to the last prayer in which the dying commended their souls to God.’ (Farrar, Frederic W. History of Interpretation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Co., 1961., pp. 60-61.)
’The hedge was made; its construction was regarded as the main function of Rabbinism; it excluded all light from without and all egress from within; but it was so carefully cultivated that the shrine itself was totally disregarded. The Oral Law was first exalted as a necessary supplement to the Written Law; then substituted in the place of it; and finally identified with the inferences of the Rabbis.’ (Farrar, Frederic W. History of Interpretation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Co., 1961., p. 62.)" (Joseph Fielding McConkie, Gospel Symbolism, pp. 217-8)
Neal A. Maxwell
“Jacob speaks of ancient Judah as having rejected the words of its prophets…Intellectual embroidery seems to have been preferred to the whole clothing of the gospel—the frills to the fabric. In fact, one can even surmise that complexity was preferred over plainness by some because in conceptual complexity there might somehow be escape, or excuse, for noncompliance and for failure. In any event, this incredible blindness which led to the rejection of those truths spoken by prophets and which prevented the recognition of Jesus for who he was, according to Jacob, came ’by looking beyond the mark.’ Those who look beyond plainness, beyond the prophets, beyond Christ, and beyond his simple teachings waited in vain then, as they will wait in vain now. For only the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us of things as they really are and as they really will be. There is more realism in the revelations than in reams of secular research, for secularism is congenitally shortsighted. Without revelation and its absolute anchors, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would also follow the fads of the day, as some churches have done; but as Samuel Callan warned, the church that weds itself to the culture of the day will ’be a widow within each succeeding age.‘ This is but one of the marks of the ’true and living’ Church: it is spared the fruits of faddism” (“On Being a Light,” address delivered at the Salt Lake institute of Religion, 2 Jan. 1974, p. 1 as taken from the 1981 Book of Mormon Institute Manual, p. 131)
Hugh Nibley contrasts the Jews interest in difficult scripture with the lack of interest prevalent among the Latter-day Saints. This scathing commentary is too insightful to be left out of this discussion.
Hugh Nibley
“Yet Joseph Smith commends their (the Jews’) intellectual efforts as a corrective to the Latter-day Saints, who lean too far in the other direction, giving their young people and old awards for zeal alone, zeal without knowledge--for sitting in endless meetings, for dedicated conformity and unlimited capacity for suffering boredom. We think it more commendable to get up at five a.m. to write a bad book than to get up at nine o’clock to write a good one--that is pure zeal that tends to breed a race of insufferable, self-righteous prigs and barren minds. One has only to consider the present outpouring of ‘inspirational’ books in the Church that bring little new in the way of knowledge: truisms and platitudes, kitsch, and clichés have become our everyday diet. The Prophet would never settle for that. ’I advise all to go on to perfection, and search deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Godliness… . It has always been my province to dig up hidden mysteries--new things--for my hearers.’ It actually happens at the BYU, and that not rarely, that students come to a teacher, usually at the beginning of a term, with the sincere request that he refrain from teaching them anything new. They have no desire, they explain, to hear what they do not know already! I cannot imagine that happening at any other school, but maybe it does. Unless we go on to other new things, we are stifling our powers.” (Approaching Zion, p. 75)