that ‘seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest perhaps they should turn again, and their sins should be forgiven them.’”
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 12. That seeing they may see, and so forth In punishment of their wilfully shutting their eyes, (Matthew 13:15) God justly withdrew those lights and graces which otherwise he would have given them, for their effectual conversion. Challoner.—These speeches here and elsewhere, we are not to understand as if he spoke in parables to this end that the hearers might not understand, lest they should be converted; but we must learn the true sense from the corresponding texts in Matthew 13, and Acts 28, where our Saviour and Saint Paul render it thus: with their ears they have been dull of hearing, and their eyes they have shut. lest, perhaps, they may see, and understand, and be converted, and I heal them. Whereby it is evident, that the speaking in parables was not the cause, (for many besides the apostles heard and understood) but themselves, who would not hear and understand, and be converted: and thus they were the real cause of their own wilful and obstinate infidelity. And therefore also he spoke in parables, because they were not worthy to understand, as the others were to whom he expounded them. B.