Passage

Matthew 13.16

Book: Matthew · NASB95

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

14. And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; And seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive: 15. For this people's heart is waxed gross, And their ears are dull of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And should turn again, And I should heal them.

16. But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.

For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not. 18. Hear then ye the parable of the sower. (Matthew 13:14-18, ASV)

WEB

14. In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, ‘By hearing you will hear, and will in no way understand; Seeing you will see, and will in no way perceive: 15. for this people’s heart has grown callous, their ears are dull of hearing, they have closed their eyes; or else perhaps they might perceive with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and would turn again; and I would heal them.’

16. “But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.

For most certainly I tell you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which you see, and didn’t see them; and to hear the things which you hear, and didn’t hear them. 18. “Hear, then, the parable of the farmer. (Matthew 13:14-18, WEB)

KJV

14. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15. For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

16. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. 18. Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. (Matthew 13:14-18, KJV)

YLT

14. and fulfilled on them is the prophecy of Isaiah, that saith, With hearing ye shall hear, and ye shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see, and ye shall not perceive, 15. for made gross was the heart of this people, and with the ears they heard heavily, and their eyes they did close, lest they might see with the eyes, and with the ears might hear, and with the heart understand, and turn back, and I might heal them.

16. 'And happy are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear,

for verily I say to you, that many prophets and righteous men did desire to see that which ye look on, and they did not see, and to hear that which ye hear, and they did not hear. 18. 'Ye, therefore, hear ye the simile of the sower: (Matthew 13:14-18, YLT)

See this page's graph and discover linked topics

Setting

Speaker: Jesus, explaining to the disciples why He teaches in parables
Audience: the Twelve, apart from the crowds
Location: by the Sea of Galilee, after the parable of the sower
Time period: the Galilean ministry, c. AD 29

Theological reading

A blessing pronounced on the faculties themselves. "But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear."

The context is the hardest saying in the parable discourse. Verses 13 to 15 quote Isaiah 6:9 to 10: they see but do not perceive, hear but do not understand. Then this. The disciples are congratulated not for cleverness but for a working reception, and the congratulation implies that reception is not automatic and not universally distributed.

The two-level structure of perceiving. The passage draws a distinction the codex treats philosophically at Phenomenology of Perception: there is seeing, and there is seeing-as. The crowds and the disciples heard the same words, in the same field, with the same ears. What differed was not the sensory input but what the input was taken as. That the Bible marks this distinction in the middle of a discourse about why teaching does not automatically produce understanding is worth noticing.

Verse 17 sharpens it further: prophets and righteous men desired to see what the disciples see and did not see it. The blessing is on a moment in redemptive history, not on the disciples' merit.

The difficulty, stated honestly. Verse 13 in Matthew reads the Isaiah quotation with hoti ("because"), so that parables are used because the crowds do not perceive. Mark 4:12 uses hina ("so that"), which reads as purpose: parables are used so that they will not perceive. The two are not obviously the same claim, and the harmonizations offered (that hina can be consecutive rather than final in Koine, that Mark reproduces the Semitic idiom of the Isaiah text, that judgment is being pronounced on a settled prior refusal) are contested. The codex does not pretend the difficulty is small; see Divine Hiddenness Objection Defeater and God Created Me Knowing I Would Reject Him Objection Defeater.

What the passage does establish, and what survives every reading of the difficulty, is that on the New Testament's own account evidence does not compel. That is a significant concession for an apologetic to make and it is better made openly.

Key words

makarios (G3107), blessed, fortunate; the same term that opens each beatitude.
blepō (G0991), to see, look at, the ordinary verb of visual attention.
akouō (G0191), to hear, and by extension to heed; the same verb underlies the "ears to hear" formula. See G0191 - akouo.
syniēmi (G4920), to understand, put together; the faculty the crowds are said to lack.

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

Quoted in

Concepts:

Jesus Said, via Matthew 13

Lexicon:

G0191 - akouo

Passages:

Notes

Your annotations.

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.