Mark 4:13

Jesus kept on talking. He said, “Why can’t you understand this picture story? If you can’t understand this easy story, you will not understand the other stories that I’m going to tell you.

Plain English Version

In The King James Version

And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?

In Context

12You know, God got one of his men to write these words, and they are in God’s book. He wrote, ‘People will look with their eyes at what I do, but they will not try to understand what it means. They will hear my words with their ears, but they will not try to understand them properly. If they do understand me properly, then they will turn around and come back to God, and then God will not blame them for the bad things they did. But they don’t want to know about that.’ And those things are happening now.”

14Listen to me again. In my story, a man threw the seeds into his garden, to grow some food. He is a picture of somebody that tells God’s word to people.

Read all of Mark 4

Cross References

Matthew 13:51Then Jesus asked his followers, “Do you understand all these things?” They said, “Yes, we do.”

1 Corinthians 3:1Now listen, my Christian friends, when I was there with you, you started to believe in Jesus, but you didn’t understand a lot about him, and you didn’t let the Holy Spirit control you. You still let your old human spirits control you. You were just like babies that don’t understand things.

Matthew Henry on Mark 4:2-21

The Parable of the Sower. 1 And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. 2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, 3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: 4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. 5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study Mark 4:13