For as the rain comes down and the snow from the sky, and doesn’t return there, but waters the earth, and makes it grow and bud, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goes out of my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing I sent it to do.
⛓ Read Isaiah 55 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion7
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The 'word of the truth of the gospel' that 'has come to you' and is fruitful in all the world echoes Isaiah's word that goes out from God's mouth and does not return empty but accomplishes and prospers, like rain making the earth bring forth and sprout. Coherence is strong: a divine word personified as agriculturally fruitful and unfailingly effective.
Medium confidenceThe sower's seed that yields fruit aligns with Isaiah's rain/word that does not return empty but accomplishes God's purpose; Luke's own interpretation (8:11, 'the seed is the word of God') makes the identification of seed with the efficacious divine word, satisfying Coherence and Availability. Volume rests on conceptual rather than verbal correspondence.
Medium confidenceLuke's interpretive key, 'the seed is the word of God' that bears fruit with patience, draws on Isaiah's image of the word that goes forth and accomplishes its purpose like rain on the soil. The explicit identification of seed and word grounds the Coherence.
Medium confidenceIsaiah's image of rain and seed that gives bread and accomplishes God's purpose underwrites the sower parable's logic that the sown word inevitably bears fruit. Thematic coherence is strong (word = seed that does not return empty), and the harvest-yield climax in 4:8 mirrors Isaiah's effective word. Volume is moderate since Mark does not cite, but the recurrence of the word-as-seed motif across early Christian tradition supports availability.
Medium confidenceThe interpretation that 'the farmer sows the word' (4:14) makes explicit the Isaianic identification of God's effective word with seed that produces fruit. The allegory's insistence that the word bears thirty/sixty/hundredfold (4:20) coheres tightly with Isaiah's word that accomplishes its purpose and does not return empty.
Medium confidenceThe word/seed that goes out from God's mouth and does not return empty but accomplishes its purpose, yielding seed and bread; the sower-and-word matrix governs the parable, made explicit in the later interpretation (v.19, 'the word of the Kingdom').
Medium confidenceThe interpretation names the seed 'the word of the Kingdom' (v.19), confirming the Isaiah 55 word-as-seed substrate that bears or fails to bear fruit.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
God's word that goes forth and does not return empty but accomplishes and prospers undergirds the notion of the 'word of God' itself growing and multiplying as an active force; thematic rather than verbal.
Low confidence