The Parable of the Sowing of the Seed (13:3-9).
This parable compares those who hear the word, and in three ways fail to receive it successfully, with those who do receive the word, and produce fruit at three levels. It is another presentation of the two ways. It will be noted that the emphasis is not on the harvest but on what is, or is not, produced. It is a brilliantly simple analysis of men's hearts. With some there was no interest. With some there was interest but no depth of thought or understanding. With some what interest there was, was choked by other things than the word of truth, by cares, anxieties and a desire for wealth. Notice also the fate of the seed which has failed to yield fruit. Some was devoured, some withered in the sun, and some was choked. The failures thus came for a variety of reasons but the end result was the same, there was no fruitfulness. Each listener was left to think for himself what it was that might be the hindrance in his own life. And then the glorious goal was set before him that he could, if he truly responded to Jesus and His words, produce one hundredfold.
It has sometimes been argued that Jesus original intention in this parable was simply to build up to the idea of the Harvest, but a moments thought will reveal that this really cannot be so unless Jesus was talking to half-wits. And He was not. He was speaking to people steeped in the Old Testament and later Jewish tradition, and inevitably when they heard of the birds swooping down to seize the seed their ears would prick up and they would think in terms of powers of evil and of demons, and even of Satan himself, in the light of Jewish tradition where birds were commonly seen in that way (compare Genesis 15:11; Genesis 40:17; Genesis 40:19; Isaiah 18:5-6; Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 12:9; Ezekiel 39:4; Ezekiel 39:17), especially in the light of what Jesus had taught in Matthew 12:28-29; Matthew 12:43-45. We can compare here Revelation 18:2, which echoes those traditions, where devils, unclean spirits and unclean birds are seen to be operating in parallel (compare Isaiah 13:21; Isaiah 34:11; Isaiah 34:14-15).
But even more so when they heard of sowing among thorns their minds would immediately call to mind the words of Jeremiah, ‘Do not sow among thorns' (Jeremiah 4:3), and ‘they have sown wheat and have reaped thorns' (Jeremiah 12:13). It was inevitable. They could hardly have failed to do so. And thus alert minds would already be looking into the details of the parable and asking themselves what it meant. And it can hardly be doubted in the light of this that Jesus intended them to do so.