Matthew Chapter 13 verse 11 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 11. - He answered and said unto them, Because. Omit because, with the Revised Version. The ὅτι is merely recitative. In this verse our Lord does not directly reply to their question, but only states God's ways of dealing with the two different classes of people (cf. Matthew 11:25, note). It is given unto you (unto you it is given, Revised Version); which better represents the sharpness of the antithesis in the Greek. It is given; already (δέδοται), i.e. in the counsel of God, though now given in possession, so far as regards this parable, by the explanation that I will add. To know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The secrets about the establishment and development of God's realm, which cannot be discovered by human reason, but which are made known to the initiated. Under the term "mystery," St. Paul refers to such revealed secrets as the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:3, 4, 9; Colossians 1:26), the conversion of the Jews (Romans 11:25), the relation of Christ to the Church being like that of husband and wife (Ephesians 5:32), and the general resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:51). (Cf. Matthew 11:25, note, "revealed;" and infra, ver. 35, note, and especially Bishop Lightfoot on the passage in Colossians.) But to them it is not given. Professor Marshall suggests that the variation "the rest" (Luke), points to a slight difference in one word of the original Aramaic text, the phrase in Mark ("them that are without") combining both readings (see Expositor IV. 4:446). The suggestion is ingenious, but seems hardly necessary.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(11) It is given.--Better, it has been given, as by the special act of God.To know the mysteries.--The Greek word, like "parable," has passed into modern languages, and has suffered some change of meaning in the process. Strictly speaking, it does not mean, as we sometimes use it--when we speak, e.g., of the mystery of the Trinity, a truth which none can understand--something "awfully obscure" (the definition given in Johnson's Dictionary), but one which, kept a secret from others, has been revealed to the initiated. Interpreted by our Lord's teaching up to this time, the mysteries of the kingdom may be referred to the new birth of water and the Spirit (John 3:5), the judgment to be exercised hereafter by the Son of Man (John 5:25), the power of the Son of Man to forgive sins (John 9:6), the new ideas (no other word will express the fact so well) which He had proclaimed as to the Sabbath (John 12:8), and fasting, and prayer, and alms (John 6:1-18). Those ideas had been proved occasions of offence, and therefore, for the present, the Teacher falls back upon a method of more exoteric instruction. . . .