What Does Mark 4:26 Mean in the King James?
And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
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
God’s governance moves like a seed: a person places it in the ground, but does not manufacture the life it carries.
THE MEANING
God’s governance is present in what you place into the ground, even when it looks small and unfinished. You take part by casting the seed; its life is already carried within it, and its unfolding exceeds your making.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that what comes from God must be built and controlled by human effort; here the human part is casting the seed, while the seed carries the life.
THE ROOT
σπόρον
spóron
GROWS FROM
σπειρ-/σπορ- (speir-/spor-)
σπόρος (spóros) means “seed”; its word family reaches σπείρω (speírō), meaning “to sow” or “scatter seed.”
English can make “seed” sound like a static object, while its Greek word-family keeps it tied to sowing and scattering. What the person casts is already oriented toward dispersal and growth: the sower begins the process but does not manufacture what unfolds.
ALSO GROWS
speírō: to sow, scatter seed
σπείρω
The verb shows that the seed belongs to an act of sowing: it is placed into the ground to begin a process.
diasporá: scattering, dispersion
διασπορά
This related word preserves the scattering sense of the family, illuminating the seed’s movement outward from the hand into the ground.
THE PATTERN
What is sown enters a process of increase that the sower does not create by effort alone.
For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.THE THREAD
And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.The same Greek word σπόρος (spóros, “seed”) appears again. The next verse makes explicit what this one introduces: the sower places the seed, but does not know how its growth unfolds.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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