What is exceptional about the parable is the image used, however common and ordinary it may be. This image is particularly foreign to the subject to which it is applied. In the Dutch Bible translations 4:3 reads, “The sower went out,” whereas the English translations read “a sower.” Nonetheless, it is difficult to read this in a general sense (“Sowers went out to sow”: Gould1). For Jesus himself addresses the crowd and begins with a summons (“Listen!”). Thus the reference to “a” or “the” sower must refer to Jesus himself. He presents himself in this image. In contrast, the crowd think of Jesus as “the harvester” or “the restorer.” Since they come mainly to see miracles and signs, they want to gather fruit from Jesus. But he turns their conceptual universe round. He is not the harvest that they gather; rather, they have to produce the harvest that he comes to seek and to work on. He went out to sow. They are the soil on which he sows. The image is at cross purposes with the attitude of the crowd. It calls them to the Master’s order and serves to awaken them out of their profiteering dream.2
3 “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.