And the book is delivered - That is, they are just as ignorant of the true nature and meaning of the revelations of God as a man is of the contents of a book who is utterly unable to read.

And the book is delivered to him that is not learned,.... Or that knows not a book or letters, as before, and so consequently cannot read, having never been put to school, or learned to read:
saying, Read this, I pray thee; or "now" (w), at once, immediately:
and he saith, I am not learned; he does not excuse himself on account of its being sealed, but on account of his want of learning; which shows the former was but an excuse. In short, the sum of it is this, that neither the learned nor unlearned, among the Jews, cared to read their Bibles, or to search the Scriptures, and the prophecies in them, concerning the Messiah, and that neither of them understood them; these things were hid from the wise and prudent, as well as from the ignorant and unlearned of the people, in common, and were only made known to a few babes and sucklings. There was great ignorance of the Scriptures in the times of Christ, to which these passages truly belong, Matthew 11:25.
(w) "nunc", Pagninus, Montanus.

The unlearned succeed no better than the learned, not from want of human learning, as they fancy, but from not having the teaching of God (Isaiah 54:13; Jeremiah 31:34; John 6:45; 1-Corinthians 2:7-10; 1-John 2:20).

Of all - Of all, your prophets. As a book - In which no man can read, while it is sealed up, as books then sometimes were, being made in the form of rolls. Delivered - Unsealed and opened.