Mark 4: 1-9….. The Sower Parable.

Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Comment: This is obviously a small portion of what Jesus said to the crowd as he sat in a boat a little off shore. Soon we come across in Mark’s record what Jesus meant by this parable. The large crowd didn’t get the explanation, so let us try to understand what the majority of people would think. Obviously there were shades of religiosity through out the crowd but they were all Jews and were outwardly pretty religious. Many were farmers and the majority grew some things in their back yards. I think that they would have understood that the seed was ‘a’, message; and possibly ‘His’ message. I’m not sure how they would have understood everything but the four results to the throwing out of the seed they, from personal experience in their own fields, would have been a description of what happened when a sower threw out the seed crop. I wonder how they would have interpreted it?

Prayer: Give me insight as I read Your Word, O God.