What Does Mark 4:20 Mean?
And those are the ones sown in the good soil, who hear the word and take it in, and bear fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some a hundredfold.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
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 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
“take in” 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
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 becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.Which has come to you, as it is in all the world, bringing forth fruit and growing, as it also does in you, since the day you heard it and perceived the favor of God in truth.I am the vine, and you are the branches. The one who remains in me, and I in him, this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.THE THREAD
These were of nobler birth than those in Thessalonica, who received the word with all eagerness of heart, and sifted the writings daily, whether these things held 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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