Parable of the sower: A bumper crop

The parable of the sower, whilst cautioning that the responses to the word will vary, is overall designed to encourage us to expect a good response.

I've noted before that the word for "seed" in Mark 4 is singular in verses 4, 5 and 7, but plural in verse 8. This is all the more striking when you consider that "seed" is a collective noun in Greek as much as in English, "seeds" is bad grammar. Seed may fall on the path. Seed may wither in shallow soil. Seed may be choked by weeds. But seeds will flourish.

To this, though, add this wonderful quotation which I've just discovered in Larry Hurtado's commentary on Mark.

The figures thirty, sixty, one hundred, refer to three examples of productive soil, and indicate the increase in grain harvested over grain sown in a field. Studies of the yield in Palestinian grainfields where the ancient agricultural methods were allowed show that a tenfold harvest was a good yield and that the average was about seven and a half. This means that all three of the numbers in the harvest in this parable are intended to depict not a normal harvest, but a miraculously abundant one. … Also, these figures hint that the harvest is a symbol for divine activity. That is, the abnormally high harvest figures cry out, 'Look closer. This harvest story describes God's work. (Page 72)