What Does Matthew 13:3 Mean?
And he spoke many things to them in parables, saying, Look, a sower went out to sow.
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 he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;THE KEY
A parable places truth beside your life, where it arrives as seed and can take root.
THE MEANING
Truth comes to you beside the familiar scenes of life, carried outward like seed. What is spoken is already moving toward the ground of a life where it can grow.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that truth must arrive as a finished explanation to be real; here it comes as an image and a seed.
THE ROOT
σπείρων
speirōn
GROWS FROM
σπειρ-
speir-
To sow or scatter seed.
The word for “sower” comes from the same verb as “to sow”: the person is named by the act of scattering seed. A related form gives “dispersion,” showing the same seed-root at work as something is spread beyond the one who releases it.
ALSO GROWS
sporá: Seed; sowing.
σπορά
The seed is what the sower scatters, carrying the act of sowing into what may grow.
diasporá: Dispersion; scattering abroad.
διασπορά
This related form uses the same seed-root for scattering, echoing how the sower sends seed outward.
παραβολαῖς
parabolaís
GROWS FROM
βάλλω (bállō), joined with παρά (pará)
βάλλω means to throw or cast; παρά means beside.
“parables” in this verse is parabolaís. The noun παραβολή (parabolē) joins “beside” with “throw”: a parable is something cast alongside. Here the image of a sower is set beside the hearer’s life, letting meaning meet the familiar.
ALSO GROWS
bállō: To throw; to cast.
βάλλω
This is the action within parabolē: an image is cast alongside life.
parabállō: To set beside; to compare.
παραβάλλω
This compound makes the “alongside” movement explicit, revealing how a parable works.
ekbállō: To cast out.
ἐκβάλλω
It carries the same throwing root, showing how the added prefix shapes where something is cast.
THE PATTERN
What is released as seed enters another’s life and can bear fruit beyond the sower’s control.
For as the rain comes down, and the snow from the heavens, and does not return there, but drenches the earth, and makes it bear and sprout, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.I planted, Apollos gave to drink, but God made it grow.THE THREAD
For as the rain comes down, and the snow from the heavens, and does not return there, but drenches the earth, and makes it bear and sprout, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.In the Greek wording, Isaiah’s “sower” shares the speirō root with Matthew’s “sower.” Isaiah shows what the scattered seed can become: both more seed to sow and bread to eat.
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