Other seeds (Good News Translation “some seeds”) is literally “Others” (New Jerusalem Bible). New English Bible renders “some of the seed.” The reference is obviously to another group of seeds, and the wording is purely a stylistic matter.

Good soil or “good ground” (Barclay) is a literal rendering of the Greek text and is followed by most translations. New Jerusalem Bible has “rich soil.” The reference is to soil that is fertile, sufficiently deep, and not plagued by thorn bushes.

And brought forth grain is literally “and they are giving fruit.” In this context “fruit” is used generically of “grain,” and “to give fruit” is a Semitic idiom equivalent in the present context to the meaning given by Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation.

How brought forth grain will be rendered depends to some extent on what the farmer was said to be sowing in verse 3. “Produced a harvest,” “there was a good crop (from the seeds),” or “bore a lot of grain (or seeds, or food)” are possible ways.

The real purpose of the parable is to draw attention to the miracle of harvest: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. God brings about a miracle, and the seed that falls into the good soil bears tremendously. The last phrases, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty, also depend on what was sown in verse 3 for their translation. If crops that have heads of grain are known, then translators can say “some plants had heads of one hundred seeds (or, grains), some had heads of sixty, and some had thirty.” Other translators will say “Some plants produced one hundred seeds (or, fruits)….” For those who have had to use “food” or “crop” for grain, the translation can be “The seeds produced a crop, some of them one hundred times more than had been planted, some sixty times more, and others thirty times more.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .