Ears to Hear
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EARS TO HEAR Frequently coupled with “Eyes that see not,” this phrase and its biblical variants (e.g., Deut. 29:4; Ps. 115:6; Isa. 48:8; Jer. 5:21; Ezek. 11:15; 12:2; Mark 4:9–12; Luke 14:35) derives its power from the typical Semitic reference to the organ as metonym for all its functions understood in their widest sense. Accordingly, the ear is regularly used as a synonym for “heart” or “mind” (Prov. 2:2; 18:15); in idiomatic use “to incline” the ear means to be favorably disposed to a speaker (Ps. 31:2; Isa. 1:10), whereas obtuseness may be expressed as having “uncircumcised,” “heavy,” or “deaf” ears (Jer. 6:10; cf. Isa. 6:10; 43:8; Acts 7:51). In the writings of the prophets the ear is given privilege over the eye (Isa. 22:14; 50:4ff.), and the most important invocation of the Jewish faith is shēma Ysrael, “Hear, O Israel” (Deut. 5:1; 6:3; Jer. 2:4).
The Glossa Ordinaria notes that “uncircumcision” of the ears (Jer. 6:10), like circumcision, is spoken of in reference not only to the praeputium but to the heart and the ear in a wider spiritual sense (PL 114.19). God himself is spoken of as having ears that hear (Isa. 59:1; James 5:4); he may, however, “close” his ears to sinful and arrogant petitioners (Ezek. 8:18). In Ps. 135:16–17, divine obtuseness is attributed in a mocking sense to gold and silver idols, leading St. Augustine to say that “having ears to hear and hearing not” is a symptom of idolatry, worship of the material at the expense of meaning (Enarr. in Ps. 135:13). This connection leads in the later Middle Ages to an iconography of the senses in which literary deafness is taken, as by Berchorius in his dictionary (Reportorium Moralii), as a figure for “obtuseness to the spirit” of a text; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, who is “somdel deef” according to her physiognomic General Prologue description (1.446), may perhaps be perverse, accordingly, as an exegete of scriptural texts in her own Prologue. Such an association prevails in Theodore Beza (Novum Testamentum, 39) and is reflected in John Donne’s “Litany,” in which the speaker prays “That our eares sicknesse we may cure,” then, in typical fashion, still consistent with biblical precedent, “That we may locke our eares, Lord, open thine.”
In his “Ode to a Nightingale” Keats describes his frustrated “darkling” inability to attune himself to the nightingale’s inspiring melody: “Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—/ To thy high requiem become a sod.” Emily Brontë speaks of the challenge unavoidably entailed in profound understanding: “Oh! dreadful is the check—intense the agony—/ When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see” (“The Prisoner”), a problem eschewed, according to Coleridge, by numbers of Wordsworth’s readers who, obtuse to his call to natural-supernatural awakening because of the “lethargy of custom,” have “eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand” (Biographia Literaria, chap. 4). In Samuel Butler’s narrative attacking the stiffness, exaggerated piety, and hypocrisy of Victorian life, he describes distraught Ernest as one who “had learnt nothing by experience: he was an Esau—one of those wretches whose hearts the Lord had hardened, who, having ears, heard not, having eyes, saw not, and who should find no place for repentance though they sought it even with their tears” (The Way of All Flesh, chap. 75). Also speaking of a “hardening” of the heart, Melech Davidson, in A. M. Klein’s The Second Scroll, alludes to Isa. 6:9 to describe the alienation from faith of his fellow Jews.
Jeffrey, D. L. (1992). A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.
