Luke 8:4

And when a great multitude came together and they of every city resorted unto him, he spake by a parable: The sower went forth to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden under foot, and the birds of the heaven devoured it. And other fell on the rock; and as soon as it grew, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And other fell amidst the thorns; and the thorns grew with it, and choked it. And other fell into the good ground, and grew, and brought forth fruit a hundred fold. As he said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER

This parable was commented on rather fully in my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 1:1-23, and in my Commentary on Mark, Mark 4:1-20. This is, in fact, The Master Parable, being given and explained by Jesus as a pattern of all the parables, so that men may "know all the parables" (Mark 4:13). It has the distinction of being recorded in the first three Gospels.

It is perfectly safe to reject the opinions of scholars who object to finding more than "one point" in a parable. Jesus found and expounded a dozen points in this one! It is not clear just who started the intellectual fad that would deny any more than one point to the parable; but the knee-jerk acceptance of it by so many has elements of humor in it. For example, Hobbs prefaced his interpretation of this parable with the statement that "a parable usually illustrates one truth";[5] and then presented at least half-dozen "truths" founded on the parable! Evidently, he could not decide which was the one truth. The scholarly prejudice against interpreting the parables allegorically, as Jesus did, and as he plainly indicated his followers should do, is so ingrained that some of them have even denied the allegorical interpretation of this parable by Jesus, making it the "mistake" of the early church, retrospectively interpolated into the Gospels by all three synoptics; and, of course, an error in all three! A plague upon all such unbelievers! It is a source of the greatest encouragement that C. E. B. Cranfield, one of the greatest of the modern scholars, categorically refuted the denials which would make the allegorization of the parables the work of the early church, saying, "Jesus certainly allegorized this one."[6]

The metaphor of this parable is that of a farmer sowing grain in the old-fashioned manner, striding through the plowed field, scattering the seeds by handfuls taken from a bag carried over his shoulder, and spreading them in an arc before him as he walked. The hard beaten path along or through the field, as well as the thorns were common features of such a field. Such a scene as this has been witnessed by millions in all ages; but only Jesus our Lord ever viewed it in the cosmic dimensions set forth here. His explanation is as follows:

[5] Herschel H. Hobbs, An Exposition of the Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1966), p. 137.

[6] C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel according to Saint Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 158.