Deuteronomy 29:4

Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive,.... They had some of them seen the above miracles with their bodily eyes, but had not discerned with the eyes of their understanding the power of

The great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles: No JFB commentary on these verses.

This verse comes in by way of correction or exception to the foregoing clause in this manner, I said indeed, Ye have seen, &c., , and thine eyes have seen, &c., but I must recall my words, for in truth you have not seen them; in seeing you have not seen, and perceiving you have not perceived them: you have perceived and seen them with the eyes of your body, but not with your minds and hearts; you have not seen them to any purpose; you have not yet learned rightly to understand the word and works of God, so as to know them for your good, and to make a right use of them, and to comply with them; which he expresseth thus, the Lord hath not given you, & c., not to excuse their wickedness, but partly to direct them what course to take, and to whom they must have recourse for the amending of their former errors, and for a good understanding and improvement of God’ s works; and partly to aggravate their sin, and to intimate that although the hearing ear, and the seeing eye, and the understanding heart, be the workmanship of God, , and the effects of his special grace, 32:39, &c., yet their want of this grace was their own fault, and the just punishment of their former sins; their present case being like theirs in Isaiah’ s time, who first shut their eyes and ears that they might not see and hear, and would not understand, and then by the tremendous, but righteous judgment of God, had their hearts made fat, and their eyes and ears closed, that they should not be able to see, and hear, and understand, as is manifest from the history of their carriage in the wilderness.

Deuteronomy 29:4 Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.Ver. 4. Yet the Lord hath not given you.] Nor is he bound to do, "but on whom he will he showeth mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth," i.e., he softeneth not. Till when, a man stands in the midst of means, as a stake in the midst of streams, unmoveable: yea, the more God forbids a sin, the more he bids for it.

(4) Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive.—“To mark the mercies of the Holy One, blessed be He! and to cleave unto Him” (Rashi). And so in Psalms 106:7, “Our fathers understood not Thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of Thy mercies.” (See also on Deuteronomy 31:16, &c.)

Verse 4. The Lord hath not given you a heart, c.] Some critics read this verse interrogatively: And hath not God given you a heart, c.? because they suppose that God could not reprehend them for the non-performance of a duty, when he had neither given them a mind to perceive the obligation of it, nor strength to perform it, had that obligation been known. Though this is strictly just, yet there is no need for the interrogation, as the words only imply that they had not such a heart, &c., not because God had not given them all the means of knowledge, and helps of his grace and Spirit, which were necessary but they had not made a faithful use of their advantages, and therefore they had not that wise, loving, and obedient heart which they otherwise might have had. If they had had such a heart, it would have been God's gift, for he is the author of all good and that they had not such a heart was a proof that they had grieved his Spirit, and abused the grace which he had afforded them to produce that gracious change, the want of which is here deplored. Hence God himself is represented as grieved because they were unchanged and disobedient: "O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children for ever!" See Deuteronomy 5:29, and the note there.

4. an heart to know] The heart the seat of the practical understanding; ‘not the seat of the affections, but the mind itself, the intellectual faculty of the soul’ (Calvin), yet always in a moral aspect; see on Deuteronomy 4:39, Deuteronomy 6:6. Eyes and ears, figures here of the spiritual senses, cp. Jeremiah 5:21. In form the connection with the preceding v. is difficult to trace, but the substance is clear. The deeds in which the Divine revelation consists are of no avail without the inward power to recognise and appreciate them, which is also, equally with them, of the gift of God; ‘Men are ever blind even in the brightest light, until they have been enlightened of God’ (Calvin). The speaker is made to express the truth in this negative way in order to emphasise to the people the urgent need of their at last, after so much neglect, awakening to the meaning of Jehovah’s Providence. The awkwardness of the construction is due to the effort to express both the grace of God and the responsibility of man.

Ability to understand the things of God is the gift of God (compare 1 Corinthians 2:13-14); yet man is not guiltless if he lacks that ability. The people had it not because they had not felt their want of it, nor asked for it.

4. A heart to perceive — Their disobedience had rendered them incapable of perceiving their true relations to Jehovah their God. Comp. Isaiah 6:9; Matthew 13:15, and John 12:37-40.