Mark 4:4 (BSB)
And as he was sowing, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.
Commentary on Mark 4:4
- Matthew Henry (Presbyterian), Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Mark 4:1-20: The foregoing chapter began with Christ's entering into the synagogue (Mar 4:1); this chapter begins with Christ's teaching again by the sea side. Thus he changed his method, that if possible all might be reached and wrought upon. To gratify the nice and more genteel sort of people that had seats, chief seats, in the synagogue, and did not care for hearing a sermon any...
- John Gill (Reformed Baptist), Exposition of the Old and New Testaments on Mark 4:4: And some fell on stony ground,.... The word was preached to some persons who had hearts of stone, and which remained so: where it had not much earth; and so could be received only in a notional and superficial way, but could take no place, so as to produce any good effect: and immediately it sprung up; a sudden and hasty profession of the word...
- Adam Clarke (Methodist), Clarke's Commentary on the Bible on Mark 4:4: The fowls - Του ουρανου, of the air, is the common reading; but it should be omitted, on the authority of nine uncial MSS., upwards of one hundred others, and almost all the versions. Bengel and Griesbach have left it out of the text. It seems to have been inserted in Mark, from Luk 8:5.
- John Lightfoot (Puritan), Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae on Mark 4:4: [And some fell.] According to what falls. The Gloss there, "According to the measure which one sows." And there the Gemarists speak of seed falling out of the hand: that is, that is cast out of the hand of the sower: and of seed falling from the oxen: that is, "that which is scattered and sown" by the sowing oxen.