The Isaiah citation ends with verse 15, and some languages have to indicate this. One way is to begin verse 16 with “Jesus continued by saying.”

A parallel to verses 16-17 is found in Luke 10.23-24, where Jesus congratulates his disciples because of their good fortune in living in the promised Messianic Age. The wording in the two passages is slightly different.

Blessed in this context can be “fortunate” or expressed as a sentence such as “God has been very good to you” or “God has blessed you.” These examples show that the one who blessed them was God himself.

Your eyes: in Greek the pronoun your is placed in an emphatic position in the sentence, to show contrast. Good News Translation attempts to transfer this same emphasis by restructuring “As for you.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates the entire verse “But you should rejoice, since your eyes can see and your ears can hear.”

To say that the eyes and ears are blessed is certainly possible, as “Your eyes and ears are indeed fortunate” or “God has blessed your eyes and ears.” However, it is not so much the eyes and ears that are blessed as the disciples themselves. Good News Translation shows this clearly with “how fortunate you are!” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, cited above, makes this clear, too.

Note that in this verse see and hear really mean “can see” and “can hear.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .