Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
Why I Speak in Parables
Matthew 13:10-17
10 The disciples came, and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” · WEB
The disciples ask why the teaching has gone obscure, and the answer quotes Isaiah at length: parables both conceal and offer.
The disciples came, and said to him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" Matthew 13:10.
The question is the disciples' own, and it means the change was noticeable from the inside. Something about the day's teaching was new enough to interrupt.
"To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it is not given to them" Matthew 13:11. A mystery in Scripture is not a puzzle but something disclosed that could not have been worked out — hidden until told, and then plain Daniel 2:28. The disciples are not brighter than the crowd. They are being told.
"For whoever has, to him will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever doesn't have, from him will be taken away even that which he has" Matthew 13:12. Stated flatly it sounds unjust, and it is a description of how understanding behaves. Truth acted on grows; truth admired and shelved does not stay where it was left, as the swept house had just said Matthew 12:45.
"Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they don't see, and hearing, they don't hear, neither do they understand" Matthew 13:13.
The word to hold is because. The parables are not the cause of the blindness; they are the response to it. This is teaching adjusted to a hearing that has already gone bad.
Then the whole of Isaiah's commission is set out rather than alluded to Matthew 13:14–15 Isaiah 6:9–10, and the full quotation is where Matthew's telling does its distinctive work — because the last clause of it changes the shape of the whole.
"for this people's heart has grown callous, their ears are dull of hearing, and they have closed their eyes" Matthew 13:15. Three verbs, and every one of them is something the people did. The heart grew callous, the ears went dull, and the eyes were closed by their owners. Isaiah is not describing a blindness imposed from outside.
And the purpose clause runs the other way from what a reader braced for judgment expects: "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." The sentence ends in healing. It is what the closed eyes were closed against. The last word on that generation, in the passage used to explain why they are not being told plainly, is that God would have healed them.
So the parables do both things at once. To a hearer who has stopped listening, a story is a door left unlocked — it does not force entry, it can be enjoyed and dismissed, and it stays available to be reopened later. To a hearer who wants to know, it is an invitation to come and ask, which is exactly what the disciples have just done.
"But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear" Matthew 13:16. The blessing is not on their achievement but on their position — and the next verse measures that position against the whole line of the faithful. "Many prophets and righteous men desired to see the things which you see, and didn't see them" Matthew 13:17. Men who spoke by the Spirit and searched their own words for the time 1 Peter 1:10–11 wanted this and did not get it. A handful of Galileans in a boat have it, and are being told not to take it lightly.
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