_And not closed shall be the eyes of them that see, and the ears of them that hear shall be pricked up._ The context makes it clear that this is spoken, not of intellectual, but of moral, insight and alertness. _And the heart of the hasty shall learn how to know, and the tongue of the stammerer be quick_ (the verb is the same as the _hasty_ of the previous clause) _to speak plain things_. _Startlingly plain things_--for the word literally means _blinding-white_, and is so used of the sun--_startlingly plain_, like that scorching epigram upon Egypt. The morally rash and the morally timid are equal fathers of lies. In illustration Isaiah takes the conventional abuse of certain moral terms, exposes it and declares it shall cease: _The vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful_. _Liberal_ and _bountiful_ were conventional names. The Hebrew word for _liberal_ originally meant exactly that--_open-hearted_, _generous_, _magnanimous_. In the East it is the character which above all they call princely. So like our words "noble" and "nobility," it became a term of rank, _lord_ or _prince_, and was often applied to men who were not at all great-hearted, but the very opposite--even to the _vile person_. _Vile person_ is literally the _faded_ or the _exhausted_, whether mentally or morally--the last kind of character that could be princely. The other conventional term used by Isaiah refers to wealth rather than rank. The Hebrew for _bountiful_ literally means _abundant_, a man blessed with plenty, and is used in the Old Testament both for the rich and the fortunate. Its nearest English equivalent is perhaps _the successful man_. To this Isaiah fitly opposes a name, wrongly rendered in our version _churl_, but corrected in the margin to _crafty_--_the fraudulent_, _the knave_. When moral discrimination comes, says Isaiah, men will not apply the term _princely_ to _worn-out_ characters, nor grant them the social respect implied by the term. They will not call the _fraudulent_ the _fortunate_, nor canonise him as successful, who has gotten his wealth by underhand means. _The worthless character shall no more be called princely, nor the knave hailed as the successful._ But men's characters shall stand out true in their actions, and by their fruits ye shall know them. In those magic days the heart shall come to the lips, and its effects be unmistakeable. _For the worthless person, worthlessness shall he speak_--what else can he?--_and his heart shall do iniquity, to practise profaneness and to utter against the LORD rank error, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail_. _The tools, too, of the knave_ (a play upon words here--"Keli Kelav," _the knave his knives_) _are evil; he! low tricks he deviseth to destroy the poor with words of falsehood, even when the poor speaks justice_ (that is, has justice as well as poverty to plead for him).