For this people's heart has become 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.
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Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
To say “lest at any time they should turn and I should heal them” points to a hardened intractability. … For he speaks in this way in order to save them, since [otherwise] he ought rather to have said nothing but have been silent, except that it is not for his own glory’s sake but for their salvation that Jesus does everything.
And should be converted. In this the prophet shows the atrocity of the Jewish wickedness, and the malice of their hearts, but that he may attach them to God, their Father, he immediately subjoins, lest being converted, I should heal them; and this he says, in order to manifest to them the goodness of God, if they would repent. (St. Chrysostom in St. Thomas Aquinas)
There is some difference between the text of Isaias, given by St. Matthew, and the original. But we have elsewhere observed, that the evangelists attend more to the sense than the words. The Septuagint have translated this text in the same manner. The prophecy here mentioned regarded the Jews in the time of Isaias, according to the strict letter, but still more particularly the Jews in the time of Christ. (Bible de Vence)
They were authors of their own blindness, sin, damnation, and not Jesus Christ, as Calvin teaches. See also Acts xxviii. and Romans i. and ix. 18. God is not the author of evil. (Bristow)
Faith perceives the mysteries of the kingdom. A person will make progress in those things he has been immersed in and will abound with an increase in that progress. But in those things he has not been immersed in, even that which he has shall be taken away from him. In other words, he suffers the loss of the law from the loss of his faith. Lacking faith, the people of the law lost even the efficacy of the law. Therefore, gospel faith receives a perfect gift, because it enriches with new fruit those things that have been undertaken. But once it is rejected, even the help of one’s former means of support is taken away.
He gives reasons why seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear. He says, “The heart of this people has been hardened … and with their ears they have been hard of hearing.” And lest we think that their hardness of heart and hearing are natural and not voluntary, Jesus alludes to the fault of the will and says, “They have closed their eyes, lest at any time they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their mind, and be converted, and I heal them.” Therefore with closed eyes they who are unwilling to perceive the truth hear in parables and in riddles.
Lest at any time they should be converted, and I should heal them; describing their aggravated wickedness, and their determined defection from Him. And this He says to draw them unto Him, and to provoke them, and to signify that if they would convert He would heal them: much as if one should say, He would not look at me, and I thank him; for if he had vouchsafed me this, I should straightway have given in: and this he says, to signify how he would have been reconciled. Even so then here too it is said, Lest at any time they should convert, and I should heal them; implying that both their conversion was possible, and that upon their repentance they might be saved, and that not for His own glory, but for their salvation, He was doing all things.
For if it had not been His will that they should hear and be saved, He ought to have been silent, not to have spoken in parables; but now by this very thing He stirs them up, even by speaking under a veil. For God wills not the death of the si...
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Do you see what the prophecy (Is. 6:9-10) is saying? You do not understand, not because I created your heart fat and dull, but because it has grown fat, although it is obvious that before it was fine and subtle. For something which grows fat was first thin. And when their heart had grown fat, then they closed their eyes. He did not say that God closed their eyes, but they did, of their own choice. They did this, He says, so that they would not turn back and be healed by Me. For they chose evil and went to great lengths to remain unhealed and unrepentant.
