When any one heareth the word. — The explanation has become so familiar to us that it is hard to place ourselves in the position of those to whom it was the unveiling of new truths — the holding up a mirror in which they might see, it might be, their own likeness. Our interest in it may, perhaps, be quickened if we think of it as reflecting what had actually been our Lord’s experience. The classes of hearers who had gathered round Him were represented, roughly and generally, by the four issues of the seed scattered by the sower, and all preachers of the truth, from that day to this, have felt that their own experience has presented analogous phenomena.
The ethical sequence described runs thus: The man hears “the word of the kingdom,” a discourse, say, like the Sermon on the Mount, or that at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21). He does not “understand” it (the fault being moral rather than intellectual), does not attend to it or “take it in.” The “wicked one” (note the connection with the clause in the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil,” or the evil one) snatches it away even from his memory. At first it seems strange that “the birds of the air” in their multitude should represent the Tempter in his unity; and yet there is a terrible truth in the fact that everything which leads men to forget the truth is, in very deed, doing the work of the great enemy. On the other hand, the birds, in their rapid flight and their gathering flocks, may well represent the light and foolish thoughts that are as the Tempter’s instruments. The “way-side” thus answers to the character, which is hardened by the wear and tear of daily life, what we well call its routine, so that the words of Truth make hardly even the most transient impression on it.
This is he which received seed. — Our translators try, unsuccessfully, to combine the parable with its interpretation. Literally, and far better, here and in the following verses, this man it is that is (the seed) sown by the way side.