This statement from Isaiah 6:9-10 and Jesus' reasoning for giving his teaching in parables are meant to explain his actions. The reality is that the reader is all the more in the dark because of Jesus' apparent intention of preventing his hearers from understanding and consequently their turning and receiving healing.
"And He said, Go, and tell this people,
You hear indeed, but do not understand;
and seeing you see, but do not know.
Make the heart of this people fat,
and make their ears heavy,
and shut their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn back, and be healed.""In hearing you will hear and not understand;
and seeing you will see yet not perceive.
For the heart of this people has grown fat
and they heard sluggishly with the ears,
and they have closed their eyes,
that they not see with the eyes,
or hear with the ears,
and understand with the heart,
and be converted, and I heal them."(Isaiah 6:9-10 Hebrew Masoretic text MKJV) (Isaiah 6:9,10 Greek Septuagint LXX and
Matthew 13:14-5 Green's literal version
There are a number of possible explanations:
The first two were both suggested in the early church of the second century. One was the opinion of the Gnostics who believed that Jesus wanted to separate his hearers into those with elite knowledge and those without. The other theory, that of hardening, sought to explain the apparent rejection of the Jews as a deliberate act of God's judgement making way for a gentile church. There may be an element of truth in these opinions but they were taken to extremes.
Even in Isaiah's day when these words were spoken Isaiah seems to have understood them as a judgement when he cried, "for how long, Lord?" (Isaiah 6:11). The same hardness prophecy-judgement cannot be considered to have run from Isaiah's day to Jesus without interruption since there were revivals and reforms under Josiah and Ezra-Nehemiah, indeed Nehemiah 8:1-3,7-8,12 records the people's hearing "and understanding" of the Law.
If we consider the language itself in the light of the parallel gospel accounts in Matthew, Mark and Luke and the original Hebrew of Isaiah 6:9-10, some interesting facts come to light.
In Mark 4:11, the "mystery" or "secret" of the kingdom is singular (musterion), not plural (musteria, as in Matthew and Luke), and perhaps refers to the mystery of the invisible presence and rule of the kingdom or the "upside-down"' way of entering it.
The Greek words in the Mark passage, μυστηριον musterion "mystery/secret" (Strong's #3466) and παραβολη parabole "parable" (Strong's #3850), are in parallel and should therefore be related to each other. The original Hebrew word for parable would be מָשָׁל mâshâl (Strong's #4912) which can mean "riddle", "proverb" or "parable" which is also related by parallelism to the Hebrew חִידָה chiydah, "riddle" or "enigma", Strong's #2420). Thus, Mark 4:11b could be read as "to those outside all things are obscure/in riddles".
Mark 4:12a // Luke 8:10 (and John 12:40) seem to suggest that the "purpose" (Greek: ἵνα hina, Strong's #2443) of Jesus' teaching in parables was "that they should not see/hear/understand". In John's quotation of Isaiah 6:9-10 there is prefixed an introductory phrase "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart lest they should see...", which might tend to confirm the idea of "purpose" and "intention" on God's part. Contemporary Rabbinic teaching in parables was used to clarify Scripture not to obscure it.
Matthew, therefore, may be closer to the original Hebrew statement of Jesus when he uses the Greek ὅτι hoti (Strong's #3754), which may be translated as "because". This, perhaps, gives the truer sense that the parables were spoken because the people "could not see/hear/understand", which is in accord with a quirk of Hebrew thought and expression that we encounter again and again. Hebrew, particularly in prophecy and poetry, has a tendency to express outcome as intention. This is reflected in the mistaken attributing to God of evil' intent (Amos 3:6b) and of causing hardness (Pharaoh and the Exodus) or error (David's numbering of Israel). The outcomes are clearly "allowed" and "known about/foreseen" by God but this does not mean they are His intention or desire. If we return to John 12:39-40 and the early church fathers' comments on it we can see that some of them understood this when they said:
"...God, foreseeing the future, predicted by the prophet the unbelief of the Jews, but did not cause it. God does not compel men to sin, because He knows they will sin." (Augustine, Tr., 53.2)
"...that' here is expressive not of the cause, but of the event. They did not disbelieve because Isaiah said they would; but because they would disbelieve, Isaiah said they would." (Chrysostom, Hom., 68.2)
Curiously, Mark 4:12's use of Isaiah 6:9 is not consistent with the Hebrew text or the Greek Septuagint (LXX, Matthew follows the LXX), but closest to the Aramaic Targum.F1 Hence Mark follows the common synagogue paraphrase of Isaiah found in the Syriac Peshitta and Targum. Both Mark and the Targum read "be forgiven" rather than "be healed", although the two may be seen as identical in Jesus' mind, especially as recorded in Mark's gospel. For example, Mark 2:5,9 records the "healing" of the paralysed man, whom Jesus first "forgives".
The "lest they..." (Greek: μηποτε mepote) clause could translate as "in order that not", "lest perhaps" or "unless", the latter gives the meaning: "unless they turn and God will forgive them". The Hebrew of Isaiah has פֶן pen- (Strong's #6435) from פָנָה pânâh (Strong's #6437) meaning "to remove, take away, turn, lest" but also "until" which gives an alternative sense here that their healing is prevented "until" they "hear, see and understand".
An additional possibility is prophetic irony (see Randall Buth and David Bivin of the Jerusalem School). Randall Buth's interpretation of Isaiah 6 suggests that it is stating the opposite, but the Septuagint translates the ironical imperatives and agony as actual intended results. So to the two solutions: descriptive or prescriptive prophecy can be added a third, prophetic irony.
The parables then serve to illuminate, perhaps even determine, the division between those understanding and those not. They announce one secret: the Messianic but hidden presence of the kingdom. They provoke self-judgement. JeremiasF2 describes them as "concerned with a situation of conflict, . . . the parables are weapons of warfare". Nevertheless, it is not God's deliberate intention to confuse or cut off but instead to highlight through parables the hidden "thoughts and intents" of man's heart, determining whether he will press on to understanding and healing or instead stumble at the "hard teaching" because of his own "hard heart". Matthew's language particularly emphasises the human responsibility of "not seeing" whereas Mark almost suggests it is God's intent that they "not see".
This worked example of a hard saying of Jesus contains the complications of comparative language study and version differences but serves to show that people can be put off at the first hurdle of hard work and remain ignorant as to the true purpose of Jesus' teaching. The problems of language were not of course those of Jesus' hearers who already knew Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and their bibles very well. We have some catch-up to do on the language side.
FOOTNOTES:
F1: cf. J.Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, p.12f; Manson, Teaching of Jesus, p.77
F2: op.cit., p.19
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