And the disciples came, &c.— See the note on Mark 4:10. The answer which our Lord here returns to his disciples is remarkable: "You, my disciples, says he, who are of a humble, docile, temper, and are content to use means, and to resort to me for the understanding of such things as I deliver, to you it shall be no disadvantage that they are clothed in parables; for, besides that I am ready to interpret every thing to you, my discourses are so ordered, as to become plain and intelligible to such unprejudiced minds: the truth will shine through the veil, and the shadow shall guide you to the body and substance. But as for those proud and self-conceited Pharisees, who are elated with their own prejudices, and will neither understand nor practise things plainly delivered, for the judicial hardening of them, I deliver myself in a manner which will not readily be apprehended by men of their temper. They shall choke themselves with the husks, while you feed upon the kernel. They have brought this wilful blindness upon themselves, that in seeing they see not; and this wilful deafness, that in hearing they hear not, neither understand." This is elegantly paraphrased in the version of 1727. They overlook what they see, and are inattentive to what they hear: the Hebraism, however, is peculiarly emphatical. The accountwhichJamblichusgivesoftheobscurityof Pythagoras is something similar to what our Saviour says here: "Pythagoras studied some obscurity in his dictates, that those only who were virtuously disposed, and so prepare for his notions, might be benefited by his discourses; but as for others, they (as Homer says ofTantalus) should be surrounded with such things as were in themselves desirable, but not be able to touch them." The word mystery, Matthew 13:11 signifies in general whatever is hidden and unknown. The heathens were accustomed to give that name to their secret religious ceremonies; but our Lord uses it here to denote some particulars which were to happen relative to the gospel, the preaching of it, and the success it was to meet with in the world; which were at that time unknown, and consequently mysteries, till they were revealed. See Mintert on the word μυστηριον. We have an expression in Juvenal, parallel to the latter clause of the 12th verse:
Nil habuit Codrus;—et tamen illud Perdidit infelix totum nil.
Sat, iii. 208, 9.
'Tis true, poor Codrus nothing had to boast; And yet, poor Codrus all that nothing lost.
Dryden.
This sentence of our Lord, which has the appearance of a paradox, is often made use of by him. He that hath, is he that improveth those advantages which God hath given him, and continuallyreceives more, till he has attained a full measure of them:He that hath not, is he that does not improve the like advantages, but makes so ill a use of them, that they stand him in no more stead than if he had them not. Shall be taken away even that he hath, means the talents or advantages wherewith he has been intrusted. This sentence is explained by the parable of the talents, ch. Matthew 25:14, &c. See also Luke 8:18. In the passage before us we have the grand rule of God's dealings with the children of men,—a rule fixed as the pillars of heaven; this is the key to all his providential dispensations, as will appear to men and angels on the great day; and therefore in pursuance of this general rule, I speak to them in parables, says our Saviour, Matthew 13:13. "I do not give more knowledge to this people, because they use not that which they have already: having all the means of seeing, hearing, understanding, they use none of them; they do not effectually see, or hear, or understand any thing."