Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
The Sower Explained
Matthew 13:18-23
18 “Hear, then, the parable of the farmer. · WEB
He interprets his own parable, and the four soils are four ways of hearing the same word.
"Hear, then, the parable of the farmer" Matthew 13:18.
The explanation is given in full in the earlier account Mark 4:1–25, and it is one of the few parables the Lord interprets item by item — which is itself instruction on how to read the rest. He does not allegorize every detail. The birds, the sun, the thorns and the soils are given meanings; the field, the footpath and the hand that scatters are left alone.
What the explanation settles is that the variable is not the seed. The same word goes to all four, sown by the same hand, and every difference in outcome belongs to the ground.
Matthew's wording adds one thing worth noticing. In the first soil the failure is named before the birds arrive: "When anyone hears the word of the Kingdom and doesn't understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away that which has been sown" Matthew 13:19. Something was not understood, and only then was it taken. The same verb returns at the other end — "this is he who hears the word and understands it, who most certainly bears fruit" Matthew 13:23. Understanding brackets the list, and in a Gospel this concerned with doing, it is worth saying that understanding here is not comprehension held privately. The good ground is identified by a crop.
The two middle soils are the ones that make the parable uncomfortable, because both of them start well. The rocky ground receives the word immediately with joy, and joy is not the problem; the absence of root is Matthew 13:20–21. The thorny ground has depth and grows, and is choked by the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches — an odd pair until you notice that anxiety and wealth are the same crop, one worrying about what it lacks and the other trusting what it has.
Neither of those two is destroyed by an enemy or a persecutor. They are crowded out by ordinary life, which is how most of it happens.
settled What this mark means