This is one of the passages that offsets any good one might imagine that reading the Bible might be doing for you. Here, Jesus states clearly that the reason he’s teaching in parables is because if people understood what he was talking about, they might not rebel and be destroyed, and it is God’s will that these people be destroyed. Friends of Rome understand and get inside the Kingdom, but the spectators and skeptics, the scoffers and especially the Zealots will not.

This is not hippie socialist Jesus. This is not open hands to the whole world. It’s a curse on a specific people being placed by the most powerful man in the world.

If there was any question that the parable is supposed to reference Isaiah, verse 12 is a deliberate reframing of a prophecy in Isaiah 6, in which God promises to blind the people to their misfortune until the land is desolated.

καὶ εἶπεν πορεύθητι καὶ εἰπὸν τῷ λαῷ τούτῳ ἀκοῇ ἀκούσετε καὶ οὐ μὴ συνῆτε καὶ βλέποντες βλέψετε καὶ οὐ μὴ ἴδητε ἐπαχύνθη γὰρ ἡ καρδία τοῦ λαοῦ τούτου καὶ τοῖς ὠσὶν αὐτῶν βαρέως ἤκουσαν καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν ἐκάμμυσαν μήποτε ἴδωσιν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς καὶ τοῖς ὠσὶν ἀκούσωσιν καὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ συνῶσιν καὶ ἐπιστρέψωσιν καὶ ἰάσομαι αὐτούς καὶ εἶπα ἕως πότε κύριε καὶ εἶπεν ἕως ἂν ἐρημωθῶσιν πόλεις παρὰ τὸ μὴ κατοικεῖσθαι καὶ οἶκοι παρὰ τὸ μὴ εἶναι ἀνθρώπους καὶ ἡ γῆ καταλειφθήσεται ἔρημος

He said, “Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive;

Keep on looking, but do not understand.’

“Render the hearts of this people insensitive,

Their ears dull, and their eyes dim,

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

Hear with their ears,

Understand with their hearts,

And return and be healed.”

Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered,

“Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant,

Houses are without people

And the land is utterly desolate…”

Isaiah 6:9-11

The older prophecy paints an image of desolation, one driven by the continued obliviousness of the people. But it’s also a situation God doesn’t desire to change, so he tells his prophet to hide the truth from the people. God wants the people to be insensitive and blinded to their doom until doom has occurred. The story continues in Isaiah – God’s got Reasons – but the point here can be made.

Jesus says the quiet part out loud here. We don’t want them to know. That’s why we’re essentially lying to them. That’s why we fill their ears with nonsense and their brains with confusion: to numb their hearts, dull their ears, and dim their eyes.

When you see a phrase like “He who has ears to hear” or “He who has eyes to see”, remember this passage. God doesn’t want them to know the truth, or to see the error of their ways because he needs to demonstrate that these people were inherently flawed. The Judeans are going to be destroyed, and instead of saying it outright, he says it in metaphors so abstract that no one could possibly understand him. In the story, these metaphors are used to further confuse and distract the Judeans.

Before anyone gets too upset about the Judeans getting a bad deal from God, remember that this is Not History, it’s just a story. It’s Imperial Roman propaganda designed to prop up the power of a specific Roman family. Historically, the Judeans were wiped out because they humiliated the Romans militarily on a couple of occasions and regularly threatened the stability of the region, not because YHWH was cranky about them. This is a story that explains how Caesar tried to be helpful, but God the Father wanted something different, thus diverting blame from Caesar for the calamity.

As the remainder of this chapter (of Mark) makes clear, we are being given a kind of codebook to translate the other stories that will follow. Jesus carefully explains how each passage of the parable is being used as representative of other things. At this point in the text, we have been exposed to several phrases which become stand-ins for something else. It may be helpful to list and discuss some of them here.

The Imperial Trinity was:

• Christ and Son of God both referenced the living Caesar. Imperial Caesars frequently referenced themselves as the Son of God.
• God the Father was the father of the living Caesar, the Caesar in the heavens, who was the most high god of the Roman Imperial faith.
• Holy Spirit was the Holy Spirit of Rome, the Genius of Empire.

One frequently used phrase is Son of Man, which was the sobriquet used by Egyptian Pharaohs and later adopted by the Roman Emperor. Oh, hey! It’s Caesar again!

Kingdom of God was the Roman empire. This verse shows the second time “kingdom of God” has been mentioned in Mark, with the first at 1:16, right after another mangled OT prophecy. Only in Matthew is this rendered Kingdom of Heaven, referencing the Roman Empires indicated primacy on land, sea, and in the heavens.

Unclean spirits or evil spirits are references to the Zealot rebels who aggressively fought against Roman domination. References to sickness can be seen in a similar way.

Satan or the adversary is representative of the rebellion, or the leadership of the rebellion, in the manner that if Caesar is Rome, then Satan is the rebellion.

Ears to hear or eyes to see – indicates that text is being presented in a deliberately confusing manner, or has been specifically obfuscated