Mark 4:1-9

2. THE PARABLES OF JESUS 4:1-34

a. The parable of the sower 4:1-9

TEXT 4:1-9

And again he began to teach by the sea side. And there is gathered unto him a very great multitude, so that he entered into a boat, and sat in the sea; and all the multitude were by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things in parables, and said unto them in his teaching, Hearken: Behold, the sower went forth to sow: and it came to pass, as he sowed, some seed fell by the way side, and the birds came and devoured it. And other fell on the rocky ground, where it had not much earth; and straightway it sprang up, because it had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was risen, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And other fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And others fell into the good ground, and yielded fruit, growing up and increasing; and brought forth, thirty-fold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. And he said, Who hath ears, let him hear.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 4:1-9

157.

At what other time in Mark's account had Jesus taught by the seaside?

158.

When did this teaching take place? Cf. Matthew 13:1.

159.

How far out do you imagine the boat was from the shore?

160.

How many in a great multitude? 10,000? 20,000? 36,000?

161.

Why teach in parables?

162.

What was the method of sowing to which Jesus referred? Why was the sower sowing?

163.

Why was there a path in the midst of the field?

164.

Why spring up soon in the rocky ground? What does this indicate about the fields of Palestine?

165.

Why were there thorns in a field plowed for sowing?

166.

Notice the plural word others in Mark 4:8 as contrasted with other in Mark 4:5 and Mark 4:7.why?

167.

What is meant by thirty-foldsixty-foldhundred-fold?

COMMENT

TIMEOn the same day of the visit of the relatives of Jesus. Autumn A.D. 28.
PLACEAt the Sea of Galilee near Capernaum.

PARALLEL ACCOUNTSMatthew 12:1-9; Luke 8:4-8.

OUTLINE1. The place and the people for teaching, Mark 4:1. Mark 4:2. The type of teaching, Mark 4:2. Mark 4:3. The parable of the sower, Mark 4:3-9.

I.

THE PLACE AND PEOPLE FOR TEACHING, Mark 4:1.

1.

By the seaside.

2.

A very great multitude.

II.

THE TYPE OF TEACHING, Mark 4:2.

1.

In parables.

2.

They must give close attention to understand.

III.

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER, Mark 4:3-9.

1.

Some seed by the wayside, its fate.

2.

Some seed on rocky ground, its fate.

3.

Others in good soil, its fate.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

I.

THE PLACE AND PEOPLE FOR TEACHING, Mark 4:1.

1. Like Luke (Luke 8:4) and Matthew (Matthew 13:1), Mark records, as a sort of epoch or important juncture in his history, the beginning of our Saviour's parabolical instructions, as a part of the preparatory process by which he contributed to the reorganization of the Church, although he did not actually make the change during his personal presence upon earth, because, as we have seen, it was to rest upon his death and resurrection as its corner-stone. The other part of his preparatory work consisted in the choice and education of the men by whom the change was to be afterwards effected. Began, as in Mark 1:45; Mark 2:23, is not superfluous, but indicates the opening of some new series or process, which was to be afterwards continued. Again, on the other hand, suggests that this was not the commencement of his teaching ministry, but only of one form of it. He had already taught the people publicly with great effect, but now began to teach them in a peculiar manner, with a special purpose to elucidate the nature of his kingdom, for the benefit of those who were to be his subjects, but without a too explicit and precipitate disclosure of his claim to the Messiahship. By the sea-side, or along the sea, i.e. the lake of Tiberias or Galilee, not only near it, but upon the very shore. Was gathered, or, according to the oldest text, is gathered (or assembled), a more graphic form, exhibiting the scene as actually passing. Another emendation by the latest critics is the change of the positive (great) to the superlative (greatest), either in reference to all former gatherings, or absolutely in the sense of the very great. Multitude, or crowd, the Greek word indicating not mere numbers, but promiscuous assemblage. The situation is like that described in Mark 3:9, where we read that he directed a small vessel to be ready, if the crowd should be so great as to prevent his standing on the shore with safety or convenience. Here we find him actually entering into (or embarking in) the boat, no doubt the one already mentioned as in readiness, and sitting in the sea, i.e. upon the surface of the lake, while his vast audience was on the land (but) at (or close to) the sea, a stronger expression of proximity than that in the first clause. The scene thus presented must have been highly impressive to the eye, and still affords a striking subject for the pencil.

II.

THE TYPEOF TEACHING, Mark 4:2.

2. Taught is in the imperfect tense, and according to Greek usage properly denotes continued or habitual action, he was teaching or he used to teach. This yields a good sense, as the writer is undoubtedly describing one of our Lord's favorite and constant modes of teaching. But the use of the aorist by Matthew (Matthew 13:3) and Luke (Luke 8:4), and the specific reference by Mark himself (in Mark 4:1) to a particular occasion, seem to forbid the wider meaning, unless it be supposed that he made use of the imperfect (as of the verb began) to intimate that, although this was the first instance of such teaching, it was not the last. Many things, of which only samples are preserved, even by Matthew, and still fewer in the book before us, showing that the writer's aim was not to furnish an exhaustive history, but to illustrate by examples the ministry of Christ. In parables, i.e. in the form and in the use of them, Parable is a slight modification of a Greek noun, the verbal root of which has two principal meanings, to propound (throw out or put forth), and to compare (throw together or lay side by side.) The sense of the noun derived from the former usage, that of any thing propounded, is too vague to be distinctive, comprehending as it does all kinds of instruction, which, from its very nature, must be put forth or imparted from one mind to another. The more specific sense of comparison, resemblance, is not only sanctioned by the usage of the best Greek writers (such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates), but recommended, not to say required, by the employment of a corresponding Hebrew word in precisely the same way. In its widest sense, a parable is any illustration from analogy, including the simile and metaphor as rhetorical figures, the allegory, apologue, fable, and some forms of proverbial expression. In a more restricted sense, the word denotes an illustration of moral or religious truth derived from the analogy of human experience. In this respect it differs from the fable, which accomplishes the same end by employing the supposed acts of inferior animals, or even those ascribed to inanimate objects, to illustrate human character and conduct. The only fables found in Scripture, those of Jotham (Judges 9:8-15) and Joash (2 Kings 14:9), are given on human, not divine authority. The parable, in its more restricted sense, as just explained, is not necessarily narrative in form, much less fictitious, although this is commonly assumed in modern definitions of the term. There is good reason to believe that all the parables of Christ are founded in fact, if not entirely composed of real incidents. They are all drawn from familiar forms of human experience, and with one exception from the present life. This creates a strong presumption that the facts are true, unless there be some positive reason for supposing them fictitious. Now the necessity of fiction to illustrate moral truth arises, not from the deficiency of real facts adapted to the purpose, but from the writer's limited acquaintance with them, and his consequent incapacity to frame the necessary combination, without calling in the aid of his imagination. But no such necessity can exist in the case of an inspired, much less of an omniscient teacher. To resort to fiction, therefore, even admitting its lawfulness on moral grounds, when real life affords in such abundance the required analogies, would be a gratuitous preference, if not of the false to the true, at least of the imaginary to the real, which seems unworthy of our Lord, or which, to say the least, we have no right to assume without necessity. In expounding the parables, interpreters have gone to very opposite extremes, but most to that of making everything significant, or giving a specific sense to every minute point of the analogy presented. This error is happily exposed by Augustine, when he says, that the whole plough is needed in the act of ploughing, though the ploughshare alone makes the furrow, and the whole frame of an instrument is useful, though the strings alone produce the music. The other extreme, that of overlooking or denying the significance of some things really significant, is much less common than the first, and for the most part found in writers of severer taste and judgment. The true mean is difficult but not impossible to find, upon the principle now commonly assumed as true, at least in theory, that the main analogy intended, like the center of a circle, must determine the position of all points in the circumference. It may also be observed, that as the same illustration may legitimately mean more to one man than to another, in proportion to the strength of their imaginative faculties, it is highly important that, in attempting to determine the essential meaning of our Saviour's parables, we should not confound what they may possibly be made to mean, with what they must mean to attain their purpose. In addition to these principles, arising from the nature of the parable itself, we have the unspeakable advantage of our Saviour's own example as a self-interpreter. In his doctrine, i.e. in the act of teaching, or perhaps the meaning here may be, in this peculiar mode of teaching.

III.

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER, Mark 4:3-9.

Mark 4:3. Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow.

Mark has preserved one introductory ejaculation, not in Luke, and one neither in Luke nor Matthew. Hear! implying the power and intention to communicate something particularly worthy of attention. This word, perhaps a part of Peter's vivid recollection, may be said to introduce the whole succession of our Saviour's parables. Behold! (Matthew 13:3), lo, see, in one or two specific cases, but intended, no doubt, as a model and a guide in others, both in Hebrew and Hellenistic usage introduces something unexpected and surprising. Some take it even in its primary and strict sense, look! see there! implying that the object indicated was in sight or actually visible; in other words, that Christ was led to use this illustration by the casual appearance of a sower in a neighboring field; and this is often represented as the usual occasion of his parabolic teachings. It seems, however, to regard them as too purely accidental, and too little the result of a deliberate predetermination, such as we cannot but assume in the practice of a divine teacher. A safer form of the same proposition is the one already stated in a different connection (see above, on Mark 4:1), namely, that our Saviour's parables, though not invariably suggested by immediate sights or passing scenes, are all derived from the analogy of human experience, and in most instances of common life. Thus the three here given by Mark are designed not only to exhibit different aspects of the same great subject, the Messiah's kingdom, but to exhibit them by means of images derived from one mode of life or occupation, that of husbandry, with which his auditors were all familiar, and in which, most probably, the greater part of them were constantly engaged. But besides these objections to the general supposition that our Saviour's parables were all suggested casually, such an assumption is forbidden in the case before us by the form of expression used by all these evangelists with striking uniformity. It is not as it naturally would be on the supposition now in question, See, a sower goes (or going) out, but with the article, and in the aorist or past tense, lo, the sower went out. The sower, like the Fox and the Lion in a fable, is generic, meaning the whole class, or an ideal individual who represents it. Went out, as we say in colloquial narrative, once upon a time, the precise date being an ideal one because the act is one of constant occurrence. As if he had said, -a sower went out to sow, as you have often done and seen your neighbor do.-' To sow, distinguishes his going out for this specific purpose from his going out on other errands. The sower went out as such, as a sower, to perform the function which the name denotes.

Mark 4:4. And it came to pass as he sowed, some fell by the way-side, and the jowls of the air came and devoured it up.

It came to pass, or something happened, implying something not indeed uncommon, but yet not belonging as of course to the process of sow-in seed. As he sowed, literally, in the (act of) sowing, and therefore in the field, not merely on the way to it. By the way must therefore mean along the path trodden by the sower himself and hardened by his footsteps, not along the highway leading to his place of labor. This idea is distinctly expressed by Luke (Luke 8:5), and it was trodden down, i.e. it fell upon the path where he was walking. Some is understood by every reader to mean some of the seed which he was sowing, the noun, although not previously mentioned as it is in Luke (Luke 8:4), being necessarily suggested by the kindred verb, to sow, in sowing. The principal circumstance in this part of the parable is not the treading of the seed, which Luke only adds to specify the place, but its lying exposed upon the trodden path, and there devoured by the birds. Fowl, now confined to certain species of domesticated birds, is co-extensive in Old English with bird itself. Of the air, literally of heaven, a Hebrew idiom, according to which heaven (or heavens, see above on Genesis 1:10), is applied, not only to the whole material universe, except the earth (Genesis 1:1) and especially to that part of it regarded as the more immediate residence of God (Genesis 19:24), but also to the visible expanse or firmament (Genesis 1:14), and to our atmosphere, or rather to the whole space between us and the heavenly bodies (Genesis 1:20). The version, therefore, is substantially correct, supposing these words to be genuine; but the latest critics have expunged them as a probable assimilation to the text of Luke (Luke 8:5): Nothing more is here intended by the phrase than birds in general, or the birds which his hearers well know were accustomed to commit such depredations. The familiarity of this occurrence and of those which follow, must have brought the illustration home to the business and bosoms of the humblest hearers, and, at the same time, necessarily precludes the idea of a fiction, when real facts were so abundant and accessible. It is idle to object that this particular sower never did go forth, when the opposite assertion can as easily be made, and when the terms employed, as we have seen, may designate the whole class of sowers, including multitudes of individuals, or any of these whom any one of the hearers might select as particularly meant, perhaps himself, perhaps some neighboring husbandman. Such a use of language, when applied to incidents of every-day occurrence, is as far as possible remote from fiction.

Mark 4:5. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth;

Another (seed, or portion of the seed sown) fell upon the stony (or rocky soil), collective singulars equivalent to Matthew's plurals (Matthew 13:5.) The reference is not to loose or scattered stones (see below, on Mark 5:5), but to a thin soil overspreading a stratum or layer of concealed rock. Immediately, here used by Matthew also, is emphatic, the rapid germination being a material circumstance, and seemingly ascribed to the shallowness of the soil, allowing the seed no room to strike deep root, but only to spring upwards. The same idea is suggested by the verb itself, a double compound meaning to spring up and forth. The cause assigned by Luke (Luke 8:6), is not that of the speedy germination, but of the premature decay that followed it, as Mark describes more fully in the next verse.

Mark 4:6. But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

When the sun was up (or risen), is the literal translation of the text adopted by the latest critics, while the common or received text, though the same in meaning, has a different construction, the sun having risen. There is a peculiar beauty in the Greek here, which cannot be retained in a translation, arising from the use of the same verb (but in a less emphatic form) to signify the rising of the plant and of the sun, as both are said in English to be up, when one is above the surface of the earth and the other above the horizon. Scorched (or burnt) and withered (or dried, see above on Mark 3:1) are different effects ascribed to different causes. The first is the evaporation of the vital sap or vegetable juices by the solar heat; the other their spontaneous failure from the want of a tenacious root. Together they describe, in a manner at once accurate and simple, the natural and necessary fate of a plant without sufficient depth of soil, however quick and even premature its vegetation.

Mark 4:7. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

Another, as in Mark 4:5. Into the thorns, or in the midst of them, as it is more fully expressed by Luke (Luke 8:7). The thorns, which happened to be growing there, or which are usually found in such situations. Came up, appeared above the surface, an expression constantly employed in English to denote the same thing. Choked, stifled, or deprived of life by pressure. This word though strictly applicable only to the suffocation of animal or human subjects (Luke 8:42), is here by a natural and lively figure transferred to the fatal influence on vegetable life of too close contact with a different and especially a ranker growth. Matthew (Matthew 13:7) uses a still more emphatic compound of the same verb, corresponding to our own familiar phrase choked off. And fruit did not give, though implied in all, is expressed only in Mark's account, which throughout this parable exhibits no appearance of abridgment.

Mark 4:8. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up, and increased, and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred.

Another, as in Mark 4:5; Mark 4:7.It is a minute but striking proof that the evangelists wrote independently of each other, and that their coincidence of language arose not from mutual imitation, but from sameness of original material, that in these three verses Matthew always says upon, Mark into or among. Good ground, in Greek, the earth, the good, earth or soil

properly so called in distinction from the beaten, rocky, thorny places before mentioned. Gave fruit coming up and growing, the fruit or ripe grain being represented as passing through the changes which are really experienced in the earlier stages of the vegetable process. Bore, the same idea that was before expressed by gave, the latter having more explicit reference to the use and wants of men, the former to production in itself considered. What the seed bore, whether reaped or not, it yielded only on the former supposition. One, i.e. one seed, the proportion stated being that of the seed sown to the ripe grain harvested. As the Greek numeral here rendered one is distinguished from the preposition in by nothing but its accent and its aspiration, which are not given in the oldest copies, one distinguished modern critic substitutes the latter, in thirty, and in sixty, i.e. in this ratio or proportion, and another gives as the most ancient text a different preposition, meaning to (i.e. to the amount of) thirty, sixty, and a hundred. The productiveness ascribed to the nutritious grains in this place is by no means unexampled either in ancient or in modern times. It is indeed a moderate and modest estimate compared with some recorded by Herodotus, in which the rate of increase was double or quadruple even the highest of the three here mentioned, and the recent harvest in our western states affords examples of increase still greater.

Mark 4:9. And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

This idiomatic and proverbial formula, like many others of perpetual occurrence in our Lord's discourses, is never simply pleonastic or unmeaning, as the repetition often tempts us to imagine. On the contrary, such phrases are invariably solemn and emphatic warnings that the things in question are of the most momentous import, and entitled to most serious attention. They appear to have been framed or adopted by the Saviour, to be used on various occasions and in the pauses of his different discourses. There is something eminently simple and expressive in the one before us, which involves rebuke as well as exhortation. -Why should you have the sense of hearing, if you do not use it now? To what advantage can you ever listen, if you turn a deaf ear to these admonitions? Now, now, if ever, he who can hear must hear, or incur the penalty of inattention! But besides the importance of the subject and the juncture, it is here suggested that the very form of the communication calls for close attention, in default of which it can impart no knowledge and confer no benefit. This may be understood as having reference to the parabolic method of instruction which our Saviour now began and afterwards continued to employ so freely. (Alexander)

FACT QUESTIONS 4:1-9

189.

What was the pulpit and the auditorium for Jesus-' teaching in parables?

190.

Did Jesus give these parables in rapid succession? If not, how were they given (Cf. Mark 4:11).

191.

If this is the first parable of Jesus what are we to say of Mark 3:23?

192.

Show how this parable reveals the method of farming in Jesus-' dayThere are several intimationsplease find them.

193.

Does Mark suggest there were three groups of seeds growing by making reference to the 30, 60 and 100 yields? Explain.