Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Mark 4:1-34, Parables by the lake
From a boat Jesus tells the crowd the sower, the lamp, the growing seed and the mustard seed, and explains them in private.
Mark 4:1-34, in every translation this tool compares.
Jesus teaches a large crowd from a boat, in parables about seed and soil. When he is alone with the Twelve and the others, they ask what the parables mean, and he says the secret of God's kingdom has been given to them. Mark adds that he explained everything privately to his own disciples.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/the-twelve\/","n":"The Twelve","s":"Jesus chose twelve men to be with him and to be sent out. The number matched Israel's twelve tribes.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/kingdom-of-god\/","n":"God's kingdom","s":"Kingdom meant God's reign, God becoming king in fact. It was the good news Isaiah promised, and in Jesus' day it was also a slogan.","r":""}
Keener notes that scholars do not agree which plant Jesus meant by the mustard seed; on the majority view it is a tiny seed that grows into a shrub of five to ten feet, where birds could perch. Garland reads the verb as to dwell or nest, echoing the great trees of Daniel 4 and Ezekiel 17 and 31, where the birds are the nations; it takes 725 to 760 black mustard seeds to make a gram. He adds that a voice carries better to a crowd from a little distance, which a boat offshore provides. The cultural backgrounds article on parables notes that the Hebrew mashal covered proverb, riddle and story, that Jesus told his parables mostly in story form, a type peculiar to Jewish teaching, and that Jewish parables often came with interpretations, so the explanation of the sower fits its setting.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Mark 4:1, 4:10, 4:11, 4:14 and 4:31-32
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Mark 4:11
- David E. Garland, Mark, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Mark 4:31-32
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Parables
