Parable of the Sower

The Parable of the Sower (sometimes called the Parable of the Soils) is a parable of Jesus found in the three Synoptic Gospels in Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20, and Luke 8:1-15. In the story, a sower sows seed; some seed falls on the path (way side), on rocky ground and among thorns, and it is lost, but when it falls on good earth it grows, yielding thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.

The explanation given by Jesus:

The following images were drawn by artists from New York hired by Pacific Press Publishing Association expressly to illustrate the book Christ's Object Lessons by the Seventh-day Adventist Church leader Ellen Gould Harmon White:

Sower

Birds

Stony ground

Thorns

Good ground

In Mark's Gospel and Matthew's Gospel, this parable, the explanation of the purpose of parables and the explanation of the parable itself form part of Jesus' "Parabolic Discourse" delivered from a boat on the Sea of Galilee. In each narrative, Jesus used the boat as a means of being able to address the huge crowd gathered on the lake shore. Luke's Gospel does not use a boat for the delivery of the sermon, but still has Jesus presenting the parable to a large crowd gathered from 'every city' and follows the parable with a question on the purpose of parables and an explanation of the parable of the sower itself.

Whilst the parable was told to the multitude, the explanations were only given to the disciples.

Thomas, as usual, provides no narrative context whatsoever, nor any explanation, but the synoptics frame this parable as one of a group that were told by Jesus while he was standing on a boat in a lake. The parable tells of seeds that were scattered to blanket the area, some falling on the road and consequently eaten by birds and walked over by travelers, some falling on rock and consequently unable to take root due to the shallow soil, and some falling among thorns which choked the plants produced by the seed. It was, according to the parable, only the seeds that fell on good soil that were able to germinate, producing a crop thirty, sixty, or even a hundredfold, of what had been sown.

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Wikipedia