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1. The different word the apostle useth. For the good earth, he says, it is τίκτουσα βοτάνην, bringing forth herbs. For the evil it is ἐκφέρουσα, bearing, not bringing forth. Our proverb says, An evil weed grows apace. Herbs grow not without preparing the ground, planting, and watering them by seasonable dews and diligence. Weeds are common; it is hard to set the foot besides them. The basest things are ever most plentiful. Man, by a proclivity of his own natural inclination, is apt to produce thorns and briers; but ere he can bring forth herbs, graces, God must take pains with him. No husbandman so labours his ground as God doth our hearts. Happy earth, that yields Him an expected harvest I But that which beareth thorns is near to be cursed and burned.

2. Observe that a wicked man is compared to bad earth, and that fitly, in five respects:(1) For baseness. The earth is the heaviest of all elements, and doth naturally sink downwards, as if it had no rest but in the centre, which itself is. A wicked man is base-minded, and sinks with a dull and ponderous declination, not regarding the things above, but those below. All his affections have a low object, not of humility, but base dejection. His hope, desire, love, joy, are set on these inferior things.

(2) For coldness. Experience teacheth that the earth is cold, and coldness is a natural quality pertaining to it, though accidentally there be bred in it fiery vapours. The wicked man hath a cold heart, frozen up in the dregs of iniquity, though there be an unnatural heat sometimes flaming in him, the fire of lust and malice tormenting his bowels; but this is no kindly heat to warm his conscience. That is derived from the fire of the temple, that never goes out, and only given by Jesus Christ, that " baptizeth with the Holy Ghost and with fire."(3) For foulness.

(4) For obscurity and darkness. The earth is called a "place of black darkness, the land of forgetfulness."(5) The main resemblance between an evil ground and worse man consists in the ill fruits that they both produce — briers and thorns, and such not only unhelpful, but hurtful vices. This is the principal analogy which our apostle intends, the pith and marrow of this comparison. But before we come to a particular survey of this wood, some observable doctrines fall profitable to our instruction.

(a) The Word of God will work some way. It falls not upon any ground in vain; but will produce herbs or weeds. It is such physic as will either cure or kill.

(b) That thorns are produced, the fault is not in the good rain, but the ill ground. "What could I," saith God, "have done more to My vineyard?" (Isaiah 5:4). Let not the mercy of God be blamed for this man's misery. God hath done enough to save him.

(c) The ground is very unthankful which answers the kindness of heaven in raining on it, with briers and thorns. Wretched man, that receives so blessed dews from the fountain of mercy, and returns an ungrateful wickedness! Unthankful it is, as failing in both those essential parts of gratitude, acknowledging and requiting a benefit, and so guilty both of falsehood and injustice.

(d) Wicked men prove commonly so much the worse as they might have been better, and divert the means of their conversion to their confusion. The more rain of the gospel they receive, the more abundantly they thrust forth the thorns of iniquities. The roots of these briers are earthed in their hearts, and do boil out at the warm dews of the Word. It fares with them as with a man of a surfeited stomach — the more good meat he eats the more he increaseth his corruption. The former crudities undigested, unegested, having the greater force, turn the good nutriment into themselves. It now remains to examine more narrowly the nature of the sins these ungodly hearts produce. They are called thorns and briers. Now let us consider what resemblances may be found betwixt those natural and these allegorical thorns and briers.

1. Where is abundance of thorns, there is most commonly a barren ground. For they hinder the happy influence of the heavens, the kindly heat of the sun, the dews of the clouds, and all those working causes of fertility. The very company of the wicked is harmful, for they are as thorns to stifle any goodness. "The companion of fools shall be afflicted," saith Solomon.

2. Thorns and briers grow most commonly on heaps, and seldom are found single, or destitute of company of their own kind; and though they be troublesomely harmful to other trees, yet they fold and embrace one another without hurt. It is so usually seen that wicked men hold together, and sins grow in united clusters. There is a combination of the ungodly, even so far as to the very participation of their estates (Proverbs 1:14). They are entangled in mutual amity, like beds of eels, nothing but thunder can break their knots.

3. Thorns and briers, by reason of their thickness and sharpness, are refuges for serpents, snakes, adders, and such other venomous beasts. Where the ungodly have a strong part, oppression, rapine, robbery, murder, and all those fatal serpents, are fostered.

4. Neither do the wicked, only with their thorns and briers, hinder others' passage, but even their own. No marvel if it be so difficult for an ungodly man to get to heaven, for he hedgeth up his own way.

5. Sins are fitly compared to thorns and briers, for their wounding, pricking, and such harmful offences. Therefore they are called tribuli, a tribulando, from their vexing, oppression, and tribulation they give those that touch them. These briers and thorns have such pricking and wounding effects in regard of three objects, whom they strike. For sins are like thorns —

1. To men.

2. To Christ.

3. To the own consciences of the committers.

(1) What say you to the usurer? Is he not a thorn amongst you?

(2) What do you think of adultery? Is it not a thorn? Yes, a sharp thorn, wounding the purse, envenoming the body, condemning the soul. The ground that bears it is lust.

(3) There are furious malecontents among us, a contemptible generation of thorns, that, because their hands are pinioned, prick only with their tongues. They are ever whining, and upon the least cause filling the world with importunate complaints.

(4)There are briers, too, growing near the Church — too near it.

(T. Adams.)

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KJV: For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God:

WEB: For the land which has drunk the rain that comes often on it, and brings forth a crop suitable for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receives blessing from God;