Mark 9:32

The disciples did not understand because God withheld understanding from them (Luke 9:45). Initially God may appear to have been working at cross purposes with Himself revealing through Jesus and concealing by hardening the disciples’ hearts. The solution seems to be that God was working with the disciples as He had worked with the multitudes through Jesus’ parables. If so, the disciples’ ignorance was a result of divine blindness that their unbelief produced. Their willingness to remain in ignorance and not ask Jesus to clarify His statement is the evidence of their unbelief. Mark implied that all they gained from this revelation was a sense of sorrow (Matthew 17:23). Similarly we manifest a form of unbelief when we fail to seek clarification of biblical revelation that we find confusing.