Matthew 13:4

II. THE SOWING.

4. And when he sowed.

The seed-time in Palestine is usually in October, about the time when this parable was spoken. Sowing is always done by hand; the ground is first scratched with. plow, which runs about four inches deep; the seed is sometimes covered with. harrow, sometimes trodden in by the feet of animals. Stanley (Sinai and Palestine, chap. 13, p. 418) gives. graphic description of Gennesaret as he saw it, the probable scene of this parable: "There was the undulating corn-field descending to the water's edge. There was the trodden pathway running through the midst of it, with no fence or hedge to prevent the seed from falling here and there on either side of it, or upon it, itself hard with constant tramp of horse, mule, and human feet. There was the 'good,' rich soil, which distinguishes the whole of that plain and its neighborhood from the bare hills, elsewhere descending into the lake, and which, where there is no interruption, produces one vast mass of corn. There was the rocky ground of the hill-side protruding here and there through the corn-fields, as elsewhere through the grassy slopes. There were the large bushes of thorn--the 'nabak,' that kind of which tradition says the Crown of Thorns was woven, springing up, like the fruit trees of the more inland parts, in the very midst of the waving wheat."

Fell by the wayside.

Where the field and the road join,--the edge of the field which the plough had not turned up; or, rather, along the narrow trodden foot-path through the fields, which has no hedge or fence to separate it from the sown fields.

Fowls.

Small birds. Our horses are actually trampling down some seeds which have fallen by this wayside, and larks and sparrows are busy picking them up.-- Land and Book.