Matthew 13 Bible study: Treasure hidden in the field

The disciples ask, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" (13:10), and one verb runs through Jesus's answer (tap understand). "Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they don’t see, and hearing, they don’t hear, neither do they understand" (13:13). He gives Isaiah's words, "By hearing you will hear, and will in no way understand" (13:14), which end "understand with their heart, and would turn again, and I would heal them" (13:15). Then he explains the farmer's parable. By the roadside: "When anyone hears the word of the Kingdom and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away that which has been sown in his heart" (13:19). On the good ground: "this is he who hears the word and understands it, who most certainly bears fruit and produces" (13:23). As in Mark's telling, which Favor's Mark 4 teaches, everyone in the explanation hears the word (13:19, 13:20, 13:22, 13:23). Here is what almost everyone misses: in Matthew's telling, the one sown by the roadside "doesn’t understand it" (13:19), and the one sown on the good ground "understands it" (13:23). Mark's telling of the good ground has "those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit" (Mark 4:20). And when the parables are over, Jesus asks, "Have you understood all these things?" (13:51). In Greek understand and understood in this chapter are one verb, six times.

Psalms 78:2→leads toMatthew 13:34-35

Matthew tells that Jesus sat by the sea and "spoke to them many things in parables" (Matthew 13:3). Then he writes, "Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the multitudes; and without a parable, he didn’t speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.”" (Matthew 13:34-35). The psalm says, "I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old" (Psalm 78:2). The WEB words the two differently: a parable in the psalm, parables in Matthew; dark sayings of old in the psalm, things hidden from the foundation of the world in Matthew. Matthew says "the prophet" and gives no name; the psalm's title says "A contemplation by Asaph" (Psalm 78:1).

συνίημιsyniemisay soon-EE-ay-mee

Strong's: "to put together, i.e. (mentally) to comprehend". Thayer: "to set or join together in the mind, i. e. to understand". The verb comes six times in this chapter: in Jesus's answer (13:13), in Isaiah's words as he gives them (13:14, 13:15), in his explanation of the farmer's parable, "doesn’t understand it" (13:19) and "understands it" (13:23), and in his question, "Have you understood all these things?" (13:51). Matthew's Greek has it nine times (counted in RP2018, the Byzantine text the WEB translates). Favor's Mark 8 studies it where Jesus asks, "Don’t you understand yet?" (Mark 8:21).