Jump to The gist Going deeper In the modern world The tidbit This week
Matthew 13:3–9 · Majority Standard Bible
And He told them many things in parables, saying, “A farmer went out to sow his seed. And as he was sowing, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Some fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun rose, the seedlings were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the seedlings. Still other seed fell on good soil and produced a crop—a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
The gist
Four soils, one seed, one sower. Three of the four fail, and they fail in three entirely different ways — one instantly, one quickly, one slowly. The parable is not about the seed and it is not about the sower. It is about the ground, which is the only variable in it.
Going deeper
Start with the arithmetic, because it is the first uncomfortable thing. The sower gets a seventy-five per cent failure rate. Christ tells this parable to crowds so large He has to teach them from a boat, and He opens by describing most of them not taking.
Chrysostom notices that the arrangement looks absurd as farming and says so on the reader’s behalf: “And how can it be reasonable, says one, to sow among the thorns, on the rock, on the wayside? With regard to the seeds and the earth it cannot be reasonable; but in the case of men’s souls and their instructions, it has its praise, and that abundantly.”
That is the parable’s first move. In agriculture, broadcasting seed onto a footpath is waste. In this economy it is not, because the ground can change and dirt cannot.
Then the three failures, and each has its own mechanism.
The path fails instantly. Nothing happens at all; the seed does not even get in. The soil is not bad, it is compacted — ground made hard by everything that has walked over it.
The rocky ground fails fast, after a promising start. The MSB says the seed sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow — the speed is a symptom, not a sign of health. Note that both verbs in verse 6 are passive: the seedlings were scorched and were dried up. They do not wither by choice. The sun does what the sun always does; the plant simply has nothing underneath to draw on.
A word of caution here, because this verse attracts a confident gloss. You will often be told that “rocky ground” means a thin skin of earth over limestone bedrock. That may well be right — several commentators say so — but the Greek word itself, petrōdēs, means simply rock-like, and Thayer glosses it “of ground full of rocks.” The bedrock reading comes from the context, not from the word. It is offered here as commentary rather than as the sense of the Greek.
The thorns fail slowly, and this is the failure most readers should worry about. Nothing dramatic occurs. The seed germinates, the plant grows, and other things growing at the same time simply take the light and the water. Christ’s own explanation, later in the chapter, names them: the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth. Neither is a sin exactly. Both are ordinary, and both are also growing.
Then the good soil, and even here there is a surprise: the yield is not uniform. A hundred, sixty, thirty. Chrysostom will not let anybody treat that as a ranking with only one passing grade: “For being full of love to man, He marked out not one only way, nor did He say, ‘unless one bring forth an hundred, he is an outcast;’ but he that brings forth sixty is saved also, and not he only, but also the producer of thirty.”
And where does the difference lie? He is blunt: “Whence then, tell me, was the greater part of the seed lost? Not through the sower, but through the ground that received it; that is, the soul that did not hearken.”
The parable ends without a moral. He who has ears to hear, let him hear — which is, in a parable about hearing, either a joke or a warning, and probably both.
In the modern world
Almost nobody reading this has path-soil. The people whose hearts are so trodden that nothing gets in are not, as a rule, people who read devotional books.
The realistic dangers are the other two, and they look nothing alike. The rocky-ground failure belongs to people with strong immediate responses — the ones who are genuinely moved, every time, and who have never built anything underneath the feeling. The thorn failure belongs to people who are not moved much at all, whose life is simply full, and in whom nothing bad is happening except that a good thing is being slowly outcompeted by legitimate concerns.
The second is far more common in a comfortable life, and it is almost undetectable from inside, because at no point does anything go wrong. The plant is still there. It just never bears anything.
The tidbit
The yields are given as bare numerals in Greek — a hundred, sixty, thirty. You will often be told what a normal ancient harvest was, and therefore how miraculous a hundredfold would have been. No source consulted for this entry could substantiate any of those figures, so none is printed. The parable does not need it: whatever the numbers meant to the crowd, Christ’s own point is that good ground varies, and all of it counts.
This week
The seed is identical in all four cases and the sower is the same man. The only variable in the parable is the ground — and the three failures are not one problem in three degrees but three different problems needing three different remedies. So the week begins with a diagnosis rather than a resolution, and then does the one thing that particular soil needs. The one thing none of them needs is more seed.
On the first day, decide honestly which of the three failures is actually yours. Not the most flattering diagnosis — the true one. Trodden, shallow, or crowded.
Then each day this week, do the one thing that soil needs. For trodden ground: break one small piece of routine that has hardened over you. For shallow ground: do the practice on the day it produces no feeling. For crowded ground: name one legitimate good thing you will not do today, and don’t do it.
It might look like this. The honest diagnosis is crowded — nothing about you has hardened and nothing is shallow, there is simply too much. So Monday’s one thing is naming a legitimate good you will not do: I will not answer the parish email tonight. And then not answering it. A trodden week would look quite different — one hardened routine broken, the drive home taken by another road.
Three soils, three different remedies. The one thing none of them needs is more seed.
Scripture: Matthew 13:3–9, Majority Standard Bible (Byzantine Majority Text). The MSB’s own section heading “The Parable of the Sower” covers verses 1–9; the parable as spoken begins at verse 3 and closes with the formula at verse 9. Christ’s explanation at 13:18–23 carries its own separate heading and is a distinct unit, so it is not printed here. biblehub.com/msb/matthew/13.htm
Greek, as printed in the interlinear. At verse 5 the ground is petrōdē (Strong’s 4075), which Thayer glosses “of ground full of rocks” — the common explanation that this means thin soil over bedrock comes from commentators on the passage rather than from the word itself, and is given above as commentary. At verse 6 both ekaumatisthē (“they were scorched”) and exēranthē (“were dried up”) are Aorist Indicative Passive. biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/13-5.htm biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/13-6.htm biblehub.com/greek/4075.htm
St John Chrysostom, Homily 44 on Matthew, and Homily 45 on Matthew. (NPNF Series 1, Vol. 10). Note: the printed heading of Homily 44 names Matthew 12:46–49 and the homily runs far past it into the parable of the sower; Homily 45’s heading names Matthew 13:10–11. Both are therefore cited here by homily number only. www.newadvent.org/fathers/200144.htm www.newadvent.org/fathers/200145.htm
Two common claims are not printed above because they could not be sourced: that Palestinian farmers sowed before ploughing, and that ancient yields were such-and-such a figure so that a hundredfold would have been extraordinary.
Fifty-one more like it
If one week changed how you read that passage, Come and See has fifty-one others, each given the same treatment.