18 They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.

Why speakest thou to them in parables?

The apostles were greatly astonished at the Lord Jesus that he did not speak plainly to the people, and without enigma. As if they had said,

"If thou desirest that they should understand, and be converted, and receive forgiveness of sins in recognizing thee as the king of Israel, why dost thou not teach them so as that a child might understand thy speech?"

Such a result as this, however, he was desirous to avoid. The generation of Judah and Benjamin, the forty-second generation from Abraham, was then in its youth. It was like the generations that had preceded it, both crooked and perverse; and as the narratives of the evangelists and apostles, and the history of Josephus, prove, more obdurately wicked than all that had gone before.

It was determined therefore to judge the nation by the calamities to be visited upon the generation contemporary with Jesus and his apostles. Yahweh consequently did not purpose to give them light enough to lead them to a repentance by which his indignation and wrath against the guilty nation might be turned aside. The leaders of the people had caused them to err.

They had made the word of God of none effect by their tradition. They had taken away "the key of knowledge," and had substituted the mythology of the Greeks, which had made the people's heart gross, their ears dull, and their eyes blind. The people were blind, and their leaders were blind, nevertheless they said "We see;" therefore their sin remained.

This was the moral condition of the nation in the days of Jesus. The minority acknowledged his claims to the throne of David, and recognized in him the Son and prophet of Yahweh; but the nation, the great and overwhelming majority of the nation, rejected him, and constituted itself the fit and proper instrument blindly to carry into effect the predetermination of God concerning his son. In answer therefore to the inquiry, "Why speakest thou to them in parables?" the Lord Jesus replied,

"Because it is given unto you to understand the mysteries (secrets) of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath to him shall be given, and he shall have greater abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing (saying they see) see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: for this people's heart is waxed 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.

But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see what ye see, and have not seen; and to hear what ye hear, and have not heard."

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, June 1851

27 That saith to the deep [The Seventy (Septuagint) render the Hebrew word, tzulah, deep, by abussos, abyss - Apoc 20: 1], Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:

The deep

... what in the Septuagint is abussos, or abyss, is in the Hebrew tzulah "deep;" and is explained in Jer. I. 38 and li. 36, of Babylon's power, which is also likened to a dragon therein. Hence, in Daniel's time, the eagle-winged lion of Babylon was the dragon of the great sea, or abyss, so long as its dominion extended to the Mediterranean; but when it lost that jurisdiction, then its "sea," or abyss, was said to be "dried up."

Eureka 9.1.3.