Matthew 13:1

1. The same day The day of the transaction of the last chapter. He delivered the parables of this discourse, at evening took the boat and left; and exhausted by the overwhelming labours of the day, he sunk to slumbers, which were disturbed by the storm, which he stilled by miracle. Went Jesus out of the house He had been invited to the house of a Pharisee, where he had much discourse. But very probably he went to his own house, from which he departed to the seashore, as here described, sat by the sea side first, probably, with his disciples; but the multitudes soon gathered around him and them. As appears by Mark 4:1, with the notes, he was obliged to enter into the prepared boat and sit in the boat in the sea.

Jesus… sat While he sat, we find by the next verse that the multitude stood. It was customary in our Saviour’s day for the teacher to sit and the disciple to stand. Rabbi Gamaliel was probably the first who by arrangement took an elevated seat, and allowed his pupils to sit upon seats lower than his own platform. So Saul of Tarsus was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. By the sea side Of Lake Gennesaret. In regard to the beach of Lake Gennesaret consult our note on Matthew 4:13. Stanley says: “The lake is almost completely surrounded by mountains; but those mountains never come down into the water, but always have a beach of greater or less extent along the water’s edge. It is on this smooth margin ‘beside the Lake Gennesaret’ that we must imagine Jesus ‘standing,’ then stepping into one of the two boats, and bidding Peter launch out into the deep. Luke 5:1-2; Luke 5:4. From the boat, that lay close by for the purpose, he addressed them his teaching in parables, and they stood on the beach.”