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Essay on Parable of the Soils
Jesus often presents his teaching about the Kingdom in the form of parables. A parable is a rhetorical device that teaches indirectly, through a story about ordinary life. Jesus uses familiar things to bring ideas to life in the minds of his listeners. At 13:3-8, he compares the preaching of the Kingdom to the sowing of seed by a farmer. Just as some of the seed is wasted by being eaten by birds or falling on bad ground, so some to whom the Kingdom is preached will fail to respond. But, as some seed falls on good ground and grows into a plentiful harvest, so some will take the preaching to heart and be transformed by it.
The parable of the soils (MARK 4:3-9) has frequently been interpreted as an encouragement and assurance to the disciples that the kingdom of God had indeed come and, "in spite of every failure and opposition, from hopeless beginnings, God brings forth the triumphant end which he had promised." There are several reasons, however, for questioning this interpretation which rejects the canonical interpretation of the parable found in MARK 4:14-20. For one, it would appear that the amount of space devoted in this parable to the other three soils (vs. 3-7) cannot be ignored. In contrast to a single verse devoted to the good soil, we have five verses devoted to the other soils. This seems to be an inordinate amount of space to devote simply to the stage setting or "local coloring" of the parable's main point.......
