Hearing Is More Than Receiving the Sound

A teacher in Jesus’ day sat to teach, and here the seat is a boat. The crowd stands on the slope of the shore, which works like the tiers of a theatre and carries a voice over water. The boat itself was readied back in 3:9 against the crush of the crowd.

“Doctrine” in 1611 meant teaching, not a formal creed; the Greek is simply didache, instruction. “Parables” translates a word that also covered the Hebrew mashal: proverb, riddle, taunt, comparison, any saying that makes a hearer work.

Jesus opens with two commands, hear and look. “Hearken” echoes the Shema, the daily prayer beginning “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The pair of hearing and seeing will return in verse 12, turned against those who do both and grasp nothing.

The “way side” is the hard footpath trodden along or through the field, where seed cannot sink in. The birds do not have to search; the seed lies on top of packed earth in plain view.

“Stony ground” is not a field full of loose stones but a thin skin of soil over limestone bedrock, common in Galilee. The shallow soil warms quickly, which is exactly why the seed shoots up first.

“Withered” is the verb Mark uses for the man’s withered hand (3:1) and for the cursed fig tree (11:21). A green shoot with no root cannot draw water when the sun climbs, and it dies in the same heat that should have ripened it.

The thorns were in the ground before the sower arrived, their roots hidden when the seed fell. They grow up alongside the crop and win the contest for light and water. This is the only soil of the three failures where the parable says outright “it yielded no fruit”.

A hundredfold harvest is the kind Isaac reaped in the year the LORD blessed him (Genesis 26:12). The Greek verbs for this seed are continuous: it keeps springing up and keeps increasing, the only seed in the parable described as growing over time.

The formula recalls Ezekiel 3:27, “He that heareth, let him hear”. It turns the parable into a test: the listener has to supply something the words alone do not give.

In the Greek they ask about “the parables”, plural, though the King James says “the parable”. The circle is wider than the twelve: “they that were about him” is a phrase Mark used in 3:34 of those sitting around him, whom Jesus called his mother and brothers.

“Mystery” in the Bible is not a puzzle that cannot be solved but a secret that God has chosen to reveal. The word is used that way of the king’s dream in Daniel 2, where the secret is made known to Daniel in a night vision.

Isaiah’s Hebrew ends with the people being “healed”. Mark’s wording, “their sins should be forgiven them”, matches the Aramaic paraphrase of Isaiah read in synagogues, the Targum. Jesus seems to quote the prophet in the form his hearers knew from worship.

Only Mark keeps this rebuke. Matthew, at the same point, has Jesus call the disciples’ eyes and ears blessed (Matthew 13:16). The sower is presented as the parable about parables: grasp how the word is received and the others open up.

“The word” is used on its own, with no qualifier, the way the early church spoke of the gospel message. Mark has already said Jesus “preached the word unto them” in the crowded house at Capernaum (2:2).

The birds of verse 4 become Satan. The book of Jubilees, a Jewish writing older than the gospels, tells how the prince of evil spirits sent ravens to eat the seed farmers had sown, so the image of evil as a seed-stealing bird was already familiar.

Gladness is not the fault here. Mark will show a case of it in 6:20, where Herod hears John the Baptist gladly and still ends by giving the order that has John beheaded.

“Offended” is skandalizo, to be tripped by a snare or trap. The same verb comes back on the night of the arrest, when Jesus tells the twelve, “All ye shall be offended because of me this night” (14:27).

This ground does hear. The explanation piles up the phrase “such as hear the word” across these verses, so that in every case the word has reached the ear and the difference lies in what happens next.

Mark will give a face to “the deceitfulness of riches” in 10:22, the man who went away grieved, “for he had great possessions”. The thorns are also said to be “entering in”: the competing desires come from outside and crowd in.

The Greek verbs are in the present tense: they go on hearing, go on receiving, go on bearing fruit. “Receive” is a word for welcoming something and accepting it as your own, not just letting it arrive.

“Candle” is a small clay oil lamp; the “bushel” is a grain measure holding about two gallons. The Greek literally asks “Does the lamp come?”, an odd way to speak of an object, and many readers hear in it the one who has come.

The Greek construction says that nothing is hidden except in order to be revealed. Concealment is given a purpose, and the purpose is disclosure.

The call from verse 9 returns word for word, now attached to the lamp. It brackets the two sayings about light and measure as another test of hearing.

“Mete” is an old verb for measuring out. Matthew 7:2 uses this proverb about judging others; Mark attaches it to hearing, so the measure of attention you give determines what comes back to you.

The saying sounds like a harsh rule of the market, and it appears again in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:29). In Mark it follows directly on “unto you that hear”, which makes the thing possessed or lost the word itself.

The parable of the seed growing by itself is found only in Mark. It begins without a question or introduction: “So is the kingdom of God”, as though the listener has already been told what it is like.

“Night and day” is the Jewish order, in which the day begins at sunset. The Greek puts emphasis on the man: he himself does not know how. The farmer’s whole contribution in this verse is sleeping and getting up.

“Of herself” is automate, the source of the English word automatic. Acts 12:10 uses it of the iron gate that opens for Peter of its own accord. “Corn” in 1611 meant any grain, here wheat or barley, from blade to ear to the full head.

“Putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come” is close to the wording of Joel 3:13, “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe”, a harvest of judgment at the end of days. The verb for putting in is literally “sends”, the verb from which apostle comes.

Two questions before the comparison, a style used by the rabbis to introduce a parable and heard already in Isaiah 40:18, “To whom then will ye liken God?” Jesus says “we”, drawing the hearers into the search for an image.

The black mustard seed is about a millimetre across. “Less than all the seeds” was proverbial, not a botanist’s ranking; the rabbis also used “as a mustard seed” for the smallest quantity worth speaking of.

Birds lodging in the shade of a great tree is Old Testament language for a kingdom that shelters the nations (Ezekiel 17:23, 31:6, Daniel 4:12). Mustard is a garden shrub that can reach head height or more, a modest tree for such a grand image.

Mark has recorded only four parables in this chapter, but “many such parables” shows he is selecting from far more. The measure of the teaching was the hearers’ capacity, not the teacher’s supply.

“Expounded” is a verb for untying or loosing, the word used for solving a riddle. The disciples receive the answers privately, and the next scene will show how far they still are from understanding them.

“The other side” is the eastern shore, Gentile country, where the man of the tombs will meet them in chapter 5. It is evening, so the crossing is made in the dark.

“Even as he was” means straight from the teaching seat, without going ashore first. Only Mark mentions “other little ships”, which appear in this verse and are never heard of again.

The Sea of Galilee lies about seven hundred feet below sea level in a basin ringed by hills, and cold air can pour down the valleys and whip it up within minutes. The Greek for “storm of wind” is the word for a squall or whirlwind.

“A pillow” is “the cushion” in Greek, perhaps the one kept for the helmsman at the stern or a sandbag carried as ballast. “Master” is teacher, didaskale, the title of the man who has just spent the day teaching them. They accuse him of not caring.

“Be still” is literally “be muzzled”, the word Jesus used to silence the unclean spirit in the synagogue (1:25). He rebukes the wind in the same terms, as though it were a hostile power rather than weather.

“Fearful” means timid or cowardly. Many early manuscripts read “Have ye not yet faith?”, which puts the stress on a faith still to come rather than one absent altogether.

“They feared exceedingly” is literally “they feared a great fear”, the phrase the Greek Old Testament uses of the sailors in Jonah 1:10 and 1:16. A sleeper in a boat, a storm stilled, a crew more afraid after the calm than before it: the parallel is hard to miss.