Matthew 13:8

But others fell into good ground ,.... Not beaten and trodden by the feet of men, nor stony, nor thorny, but well broke up, manured, and tilled; which designs good, honest hearted hearers who become so by the Spirit and grace of God; who with a spiritual understanding, experience, savour, and relish, what they hear; see Matthew 13:23

and brought forth fruit, some an hundred fold, some sixty fold, some thirty fold : some seeds produced an hundred, others sixty, and others thirty. The first of these especially was a large increase, but what was sometimes had, and which Isaac received in Gerar, in the land of the Philistines, Genesis 26:12 and is what Pliny says F7 Nat. Hist. 1. 5. c. 4. of Byzacium, a country of the Lybiphoenicians, that it yielded an hundred fold to its husbandmen; and of such fruitfulness was the land of Israel, of which the Jewish doctors say some things incredible: they tell us a story F8 T. Hieros. Peah, fol. 20. 2. of

"one that sowed a measure of vetches, or pease, מאות סאין ועשה שלש , "and it produced three hundred measures"; they say unto him, the Lord hath begun to bless thee, &c.;'

Here, in the parable, these various increases intend the different degrees of fruitfulness in gracious souls; for though the fruits of grace, in believers, are of the same quality, yet not of the same quantity. Some believers are grown to a greater maturity than others; some are but little children, some are young men, some are fathers.