Knox Bible

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That day, leaving the house, Jesus had sat down by the sea-shore,

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and great multitudes gathered about him, so that he went on board a ship and sat there instead, while the whole multitude remained standing on the beach.

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And he spoke to them long, in parables; Here, he began, is the sower gone out to sow.

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And as he sowed, there were grains that fell beside the path, so that all the birds came and ate them up.

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And others fell on rocky land, where the soil was shallow; they sprang up all at once, because they had not sunk deep in the ground;

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but as soon as the sun rose they were parched; they had taken no root, and so they withered away.

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Some fell among briers, so that the briers grew up, and smothered them.

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But others fell where the soil was good, and these yielded a harvest, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

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Listen, you that have ears to hear with.

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And his disciples came to him, and said, Why dost thou speak to them in parables?

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Because, he answered, it is granted to you to understand the secrets of God’s kingdom, but not to these others.

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If a man is rich, gifts will be made to him, and his riches will abound; if he is poor, even the little he has will be taken from him.

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And if I talk to them in parables, it is because, though they have eyes, they cannot see, and though they have ears, they cannot hear or understand.

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Indeed, in them the prophecy of Isaias is fulfilled, You will listen and listen, but for you there is no understanding; you will watch and watch, but for you there is no perceiving.

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The heart of this people has become dull, their ears are slow to listen, and they keep their eyes shut, so that they may never see with those eyes, or hear with those ears, or understand with that heart, and turn back to me, and win healing from me.✻

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But blessed are your eyes, for they have sight; blessed are your ears, for they have hearing.

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And, believe me, there have been many prophets and just men who have longed to see what you see, and never saw it, to hear what you hear, and never heard it.

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The parable of the sower, then, is for your hearing.

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Wherever a man hears the word by which the kingdom is preached, but does not grasp it, the evil one comes and carries off what was sown in his heart; his was the wayside sowing.

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The man who took in the seed in rocky ground is the man who hears the word and at once entertains it gladly;

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but there is no root in him, and he does not last long; no sooner does tribulation or persecution arise over the word, than his faith is shaken.

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And the man who took in the seed in the midst of briers is the man who hears the word, but allows the cares of this world and the false charms of riches to stifle it, so that it remains fruitless.

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Whereas the man who took in the seed in good soil is the man who both hears and grasps it; such men are fruitful, one grain yielding a hundredfold, one sixtyfold, one thirtyfold.✻

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And he put before them another parable; Here is an image, he said, of the kingdom of heaven. There was a man who sowed his field with clean seed;

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but while all the world was asleep, an enemy of his came and scattered tares among the wheat, and was gone.

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So, when the blade had sprung up and come into ear, the tares, too, came to light;

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and the farmer’s men went to him and said, Sir, was it not clean seed thou didst sow in thy field? How comes it, then, that there are tares in it?

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He said, An enemy has done it. And his men asked him, Wouldst thou then have us go and gather them up?

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But he said, No; or perhaps while you are gathering the tares you will root up the wheat with them.

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Leave them to grow side by side till harvest, and when harvest-time comes I will give the word to the reapers, Gather up the tares first, and tie them in bundles to be burned, and store the wheat in my barn.

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Then he put before them another parable. The kingdom of heaven, he said, is like a grain of mustard seed, that a man has taken and sowed in his ground;

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of all seeds, none is so little, but when it grows up it is greater than any garden herb; it grows into a tree, so that all the birds come and settle in its branches.✻

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And he told them still another parable, The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, that a woman has taken and buried away in three measures of meal, enough to leaven the whole batch.

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All this Jesus said to the multitude in parables, and would say it in parables only,

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so fulfilling the words which were spoken by the prophet, I will speak my mind in parables, I will give utterance to things which have been kept secret from the beginning of the world.✻

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Then he sent the multitude away, and went back into the house. There his disciples came to him, and said, Explain to us the parable of the tares in the field.

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He answered, It is the Son of Man that sows the good seed.

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The field is the world, and the sons of the kingdom are the good seed; the sons of the wicked one are the tares.

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The enemy that sowed them is the devil, and the end of the world is the harvest; it is reaped by the angels.

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The tares were gathered together and burned in the fire, and so it will be when the world is brought to an end;

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the Son of Man will give charge to his angels, and they will gather up all that gives offence in his kingdom, all those who do wickedly in it,

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and will cast them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping, and gnashing of teeth.

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Then, at last, the just will shine out, clear as the sun, in their Father’s kingdom.✻ Listen, you that have ears to hear with.

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The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field; a man has found it and hidden it again, and now, for the joy it gives him, is going home to sell all that he has and buy that field.

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Again, the kingdom of heaven is as if a trader were looking for rare pearls:

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and now he has found one pearl of great cost, and has sold all that he had and bought it.

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Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea, and enclosed fish of every kind at once;

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when it was full, the fishermen drew it up, and sat down on the beach, where they stored all that was worth keeping in their buckets, and threw the useless kind away.

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So it will be when the world is brought to an end; the angels will go out and separate the wicked from the just,

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and will cast them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping, and gnashing of teeth.

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Have you grasped all this? Yes, Lord, they said to him.

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And he said to them, Every scholar, then, whose learning is of the kingdom of heaven must be like a rich man, who knows how to bring both new and old things out of his treasure-house.✻

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Afterwards, when he had finished these parables, Jesus journeyed on,

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and came to his own country-side, where he taught them in their synagogue; so that they said in astonishment, How did he come by this wisdom, and these strange powers?

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Is not this the carpenter’s son, whose mother is called Mary, and his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?

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And do not his sisters, all of them, live near us? How is it that all this has come to him?

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And they had no confidence in him. But Jesus told them, It is only in his own country, in his own home, that a prophet goes unhonoured.

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Nor did he do many miracles there, because of their unbelief.✻