Isaiah 28:23

Give ye ear... — The words remind us of the style of the “wisdom” books of the Old Testament (Proverbs 2:1; Proverbs 4:1; Proverbs 5:1; Psalms 34:11) in which Isaiah had been trained. Isaiah is about to set before those who have ears to hear a parable which he does not interpret, and which will, therefore, task all their energies. The idea that lies at the root of the parable is like that of Matthew 16:2, that men fail to apply in discerning the signs of the times the wisdom which they practise or recognise in the common phenomena of nature and the tillage of the soil. As that tillage presents widely varied processes, differing with each kind of grain, so the sowing and the threshing of God’s spiritual husbandry presents a like diversity of operations. What that diversity indicates in detail the prophet proceeds to show with what may again be called a Dante-like minuteness.