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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Luke 8:5 - 8:5
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5. ὁ σπείρων. ‘The sower;’ as also ‘the’ rock, ‘the’ thorns. No doubt these may be regarded as generic articles, marking the class; but they give a more graphic turn to the story, and in all probability Jesus saw, and pointed to, a sower actually working before their eyes. A comparison of the parable and its interpretation in the Synoptists ought alone to prove both their accuracy and their independence. St Mark (Mar 4:3) preserves for us the graphic detail that Jesus prefaced this new method of teaching by the one emphatic word “Hearken!” as though to prepare them for something unusual and memorable.
ὃ μὲν ἔπεσεν παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν. The nature of the land in the plain of Gennesareth would, as Dean Stanley noticed (Sin. and Palest. p. 496), and as many have subsequently remarked, furnish an immediate illustration of the words. In the fields close to the shore may be seen the hard beaten paths into which no seed can penetrate; the flights of innumerable birds ready to peck it up; the rocks thinly covered with soil, and the stony ground; the dense tangled growth of weeds and thistles in neglected corners; and the rich deep loam on which the harvests grew with unwonted luxuriance. Doubtless too, as Godet suggests, he saw in His hearers—in the defiant look of some, the grave preoccupied aspect of others; on some faces a shallow enthusiasm, on others a holy receptivity—the moral and spiritual analogue to the various kinds of soil.
κατεπατήθη. This touch is found in St Luke only.