(Isa. 6:10)
The “making fat” of the hearts of the people seems to refer to Isaiah’s being called to make the truth so plain that they would have to accept it or harden their hearts against it… .
The last half of Isaiah 6:10 may be misread that the Lord does not want the people to be converted and healed. The real meaning of the last part of the verse, as it is fully quoted in the New Testament [Acts 28:26–27; Matt. 13:14–15], is a declaration that the people did not want to understand, lest they should be converted so that the Lord could heal them.
(Monte S. Nyman, Great Are the Words of Isaiah [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980], 50–51.)
That did not mean, of course, that Isaiah was to make seeing people become blind. The blindness referred to in this book and by Jesus in his ministry refers to people who have eyes to see but who prefer to walk in darkness. When Isaiah provided revelation and light from God for that generation and they chose to walk in darkness, they, not God, inflicted blindness upon themselves (cf. John 9:40–41; see also Alma 29:4–5; D&C 93:31–32, 38–39; John 3:19–20)… .
Isaiah … prepared a fallen people for the judgments at hand. According to the general sense of all scripture, a loving and merciful God encourages sinners to repent and return to him; he encourages rather than discourages repentance and conversion. Thus there must be something wrong with a translation or text that suggests that God wanted the Israelites to fail, so that they would not “see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed” by God (Isa. 6:10).
(Keith A Meservy, Studies in Scripture, Vol. 4, ed. Kent P. Jackson [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1993], 87–88.)
In Hebrew literature the ear was the organ of understanding, the eye was the organ of perception, and the heart was the organ of thought… . Isaiah is told to tell the people that they have the physical capacity to understand and perceive God’s message, but that they do not. If they have the ability to comprehend the message and they do not, it must mean that the people chose not to comprehend.
Isaiah is further told, according to the King James Version, to make the people’s organs of thought dull, to cause their organs of understanding to be clumsy, and to close their organs of perception, so that the people would not use them and be cured by the divine message… .
How can a loving God commission His prophet to prevent the people from being cleansed from their uncleanness by causing their organs of comprehension to be ineffective? …
The best solution to this theological difficulty derives from a knowledge of the Hebrew grammatical forms used in this passage. The King James Version rests on the usual reading of the Hebrew hiph’iI form of the three verbs involved. Normally the hiph’iI conjugation has a causative meaning, and thus the translation “make the heart … fat.” However, one of the modes of the hiph’iI connotes a declarative, and would yield the translation “declare the heart of this people to be fat.” Thus, the New English Bible for this passage reads, “This people’s wits are dulled, their ears are deafened and their eyes blinded, so that they cannot see with their eyes nor listen with their ears nor understand with their wits, so that they may turn and be healed.” This rendering would eliminate the theological difficulties imposed on the passage by reading a causative, because it would no longer be God through his prophet who makes the people incapable of realizing their moral turpitude. Isaiah becomes rather God’s appointed accuser of the people.
(Paul Y. Hoskisson, The Old Testament and the Latter-day Saints: Sperry Symposium 1986 [Randall Book Co., 1986], 199–200.)