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.
Ver. 15. For this people's heart, &c.] A fat heart is a fearful plague. "Their heart is as fat as grease, but I delight in thy law," Psalms 119:70. None can delight in God's law that are fat-hearted. Feeding cattle, we know, are most brutish and blockish. And physiognomers observe, that a full and fat heart betokens a dull and doltish disposition. Eglon's fat paunch would not part with the poniard: and Pliny tells of bears so fat that they felt not the sharpest prickles.
Their ears are dull of hearing] So were the disbelieving Hebrews, for the which they are much taxed and tutored by the apostle. a Surdaster erat M. Crassus; sed illud peius, quod male audiebat, saith Cicero. These here hear very ill, for their no better hearing.
Their eyes they have closed] Or they wink hard with their eyes: they shut the windows, lest the light should come in: ut liberius peccent libenter ignorant, they do not what they might, toward the work. (Bern.)
Lest at any time they should see] See we may here (in that which they should have seen and done) the right order of repentance to salvation never to be repented of. The blind eye is opened, the deaf ear unstopped, the dull heart affected, &c. God first puts his laws into men's minds, that they may know them, and then writes the same in their hearts, that they may have the comfort, feeling, and fruition of them. And then it is, "I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people,"Hebrews 8:10 .
a Νωθροι ταις ακοαις, Hebrews 5:11 .