Matthew 13:8
Read Matthew 13:8 Using Other Translations
What does Matthew 13:8 mean?
But others fell into good ground
Not beaten and trodden by the feet of men, nor stony, nor thorny,
but well broke up, manured, and tilled; which designs good,
honest hearted hearers who become so by the Spirit and grace of
God; who with a spiritual understanding, experience, savour, and
relish, what they hear; see ( Matthew
13:23 )
and brought forth fruit, some an hundred fold, some sixty
fold, some
thirty fold:
some seeds produced an hundred, others sixty, and others thirty.
The first of these especially was a large increase, but what was
sometimes had, and which Isaac received in Gerar, in the land of
the Philistines, ( Genesis
26:12 ) and is what Pliny says F7 of Byzacium, a country
of the Lybiphoenicians, that it yielded an hundred fold to its
husbandmen; and of such fruitfulness was the land of Israel, of
which the Jewish doctors say some things incredible: they tell us
a story F8 of
``one that sowed a measure of vetches, or pease, (Nyao twam) (vlv hvew) , "and it produced three hundred measures"; they say unto him, the Lord hath begun to bless thee''Here, in the parable, these various increases intend the different degrees of fruitfulness in gracious souls; for though the fruits of grace, in believers, are of the same quality, yet not of the same quantity. Some believers are grown to a greater maturity than others; some are but little children, some are young men, some are fathers.
F7 Nat. Hist. 1. 5. c. 4.
F8 T. Hieros. Peah, fol. 20. 2.
