What Does Mark 4:20 Mean in the King James?
And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse makes good ground a place of reception whose fruit varies in measure without varying in kind.
THE MEANING
You hear the word and welcome it, and what is welcomed becomes visible in fruit. The verse names thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold as distinct measures within the same good ground. Its living claim is that fruitfulness is real without being uniform.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that only the greatest yield counts as fruit. The verse names all three measures as harvest from good ground.
THE ROOT
παραδέχονται
paradechontai
GROWS FROM
δέχομαι
dechomai
to receive, welcome, or accept
“receive” in this verse is paradechontai. The verb family carries welcome inside reception: what is heard is taken in, not merely heard passively. In the verse, receiving is distinct from hearing and comes before fruit-bearing.
ALSO GROWS
apodechomai: to welcome or receive gladly
ἀποδέχομαι
This compound shows the root can describe an open welcome, illuminating the act of receiving the word.
dektos: welcome or acceptable
δεκτός
This related form describes what is received as welcome, revealing the openness contained in the verse’s act of reception.
καρποφοροῦσιν
karpophorousin
GROWS FROM
καρπός
karpos
fruit, produce, or harvest
“bring forth fruit” in this verse is karpophorousin. The Greek uses one verb for ‘bear fruit,’ built around the word for fruit. Fruit-bearing is presented as one unfolding process, and the verse allows that process to yield thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold.
ALSO GROWS
karpos: fruit or produce
καρπός
This is the seed word inside the verb, keeping the focus on what the ground bears.
karpophoreō: to bear fruit
καρποφορέω
This is the verb family used here: fruit and bearing are joined in one word.
akarpos: fruitless or unfruitful
ἄκαρπος
The same fruit root also names its absence, sharpening the contrast between ground that bears and ground that does not.
THE PATTERN
What receives life and remains rooted bears visible fruit in its own measure and season.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth:I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.THE THREAD
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.The same receive-and-welcome word family appears here for the word heard in Mark. Acts shows reception alongside searching, opening the possibility that welcome is an active taking-in that bears discernment.
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