<p>13:2 <em>And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood on the beach- </em>The Gospel records give more information about the day on which Christ told the sower parable than concerning almost any other in his ministry, with the exception of the crucifixion (compare Mt.12:22-13:23; Lk.11:27; Mk.4:10). Various types of people heard his words; the immediate context in Mt.13:2 is that &quot;great multitudes were gathered together unto him&quot;. The parable of the differing types of ground which were for the most part unresponsive to the seed therefore refer to the various reception given to Christ's sowing when he first &quot;went forth to sow&quot; in his ministry.</p>
<p>&quot;Gathered together&quot; is the Greek&nbsp;<em>sunago&nbsp;</em>from whence 'synagogue'. The idea is that there in the open air, on the sea shore, and&nbsp;<em>not</em>&nbsp;in a building, was the synagogue- with the Lord as rabbi, sitting in a fishing boat to teach whilst the audience&nbsp;<em>stood</em>&nbsp;instead of sitting (as they did in a Jewish synagogue, James 2:2,3). The whole scene is a radical inversion of orthodox Jewish values and culture. The true synagogue was now in the open air, and beyond the imagination, frames and culture of orthodox religion.</p>
<p>In Mark we read that Jesus &ldquo;entered in to a ship, and sat in the sea&rdquo; (Mk. 4:1). All else was irrelevant- even the boat He was in. The focus is so zoomed in on the person of Jesus. And Paul in his more 'academic' approach sees Jesus as the very core of the whole cosmos, the reason for everything in the whole of existence. Of course He didn&rsquo;t literally sit in the sea. But this is how it would have appeared to a spectator sitting on the grassy hillside, hearing Jesus&rsquo; voice clearly from a great distance because of the natural amphitheatre provided by the topography. In this case, the Spirit adopts this perspective in order to invite us to take our place on that same hillside, as it were, beholding the Lord Jesus in the middle distance, looking as if He were sitting in the sea. Perhaps the record is implying that listeners were so transfixed by the words and person of Jesus that they stopped seeing the boat and only saw Jesus, giving the picture of a magnetic man with gripping words sitting in the sea teaching a spellbound audience. There&rsquo;s another example of this kind of thing in Jud. 4:5: &ldquo;The mountains melted [&lsquo;flowed&rsquo;, AV mg.]&rdquo; &ndash; to a distant onlooker, the water flowing down the mountains gave the impression that they themselves were melting; not, of course, that they actually were.</p>