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 heart, and convert, and be healed.
Make the heart of this people fat (Psalms 119:70) - 'render them the more hardened by thy warning, that they may he hurried along to destruction, to which they willfully hasten' (Maurer). This effect is the fruit, not of the truth in itself, hut of the corrupt state of their hearts, to which God here judicially gives them over (Isaiah 63:17). Gesenius takes the imperatives as futures. 'Proclaim truths, the result of which proclamation will be their becoming the more hardened' (Romans 1:28; Ephesians 4:18); but this does not so well as the former set forth God as designedly giving up sinners to judicial hardening (Romans 11:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:11). In the first member of the sentence the order is, the heart, ears, eyes, in the latter the reverse order, the eyes, ears, heart. It is from the heart that corruption flows into the ears and eyes (Mark 7:21-22); but through the eye and ears healing reaches the heart (Romans 10:17) (Bengel). Jeremiah 5:21; Ezekiel 12:2; Zechariah 7:11; Acts 7:57; 2 Timothy 4:4 "They shall turn away their ears from the truth, and (as the judicial and righteous retribution) shall be turned unto fables." In Matthew 13:15 the words are quoted in the indicative, is waxed gross, (so the Septuagint), not the imperative, make fat: God's word as to the future is as certain as if it were already fulfilled. To see with one's eyes will not convince a will that is opposed to the truth. Compare John 11:45-46; John 12:10-11. So far from being persuaded when one rose from the dead (Luke 16:31) "the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death." 'One must love divine things in order to understand them' (Pascal).
And convert, and be healed - of their spiritual malady, sin (Isaiah 1:6; Psalms 103:3; Jeremiah 17:14).