4And again he began to teach beside the sea,^a and a very large crowd was gathered to him, so that he got into a boat and^* sat on the sea, and the whole crowd was at the sea on the land. ²And he began to teach^b them many things in parables, and was saying to them in his teaching, ³“Listen! Behold, the sower went out to sow. ⁴And it happened that while he was sowing, some seed^c fell on the side of the path, and the birds came and devoured it. ⁵And other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up at once, because it did not have any depth of soil. ⁶And when the sun rose it was scorched, and because it did not have enough root, it withered. ⁷And other seed fell among the thorn plants, and the thorn plants came up and choked it, and it did not produce grain.^d ⁸And other seed fell on the good soil, and produced grain,^e coming up and increasing, and it bore a crop^*—one thirty and one sixty and one a hundred times as much.^f ⁹And he said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear!”

The Reason for the Parables

¹⁰And when he was alone, those around him together with the twelve began asking^g him about the parables. ¹¹And he said to them, “To you has been granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything is in parables, ¹²so that

‘they may look closely^h and not perceive,

and they may listen carefullyⁱ and not understand,

lest they turn and it be forgiven them.’ ”^j

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Footnotes

aThat is, the Sea of Galilee
*Here “and” is supplied because the previous participle (“got”) has been translated as a finite verb
bThe imperfect tense has been translated as ingressive here (“began to teach”)
cLiterally “some of which”
dLiterally “fruit,” describing here the grain harvested from the healthy plants; in contemporary English this would more naturally be expressed by terms like “grain” or “crop”
eLiterally “fruit,” describing here the grain harvested from the healthy plants; in contemporary English this would more naturally be expressed by terms like “grain” or “crop”
*Here the direct object is supplied from context in the English translation
fThe phrase “times as much” is not in the Greek text but is implied
gThe imperfect tense has been translated as ingressive here (“began asking”)
hLiterally “seeing they may see”
iLiterally “hearing they may hear”
jA quotation from Isa 6:9–10