Mark 4:12

That seeing they may see.... — St. Mark characteristically gives the words of Isaiah 6:9, but not as a quotation, and perhaps in a less accurate form, and omits the addition in Matthew, “Blessed are your ears...” The form in this instance, at first sight, suggests the thought that our Lord’s purpose was to produce the blindness and deafness of which He speaks. The real meaning of the words is, however, plain. This was to be the result of the wilful blindness of those who rejected Him; and the acceptance of a foreseen result was, in Hebrew forms of thought, expressed as the working out of an intention. (See Notes on Matthew 13:14.)