Mark 4:21

And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(21) Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel?—See Note on Matthew 5:15. St. Mark, it will be noted, omits all the other parables that follow in St. Matthew, and connects with that of the Sower sayings more or less proverbial, which in St. Matthew appear in a different context. Looking at our Lord’s method of teaching by the repetition of proverbs under different aspects and on different occasions, it is not unlikely that this of the “candle” was actually spoken in the connection in which we find it here. Their knowledge of the meaning of the parable was not given them for themselves alone, but was to shine forth to others. We probably owe to the saying so uttered the record of this parable given in three out of the four Gospels.

MacLaren's Expositions

Mark

LAMPS AND BUSHELS

Mark 4:21.

The furniture of a very humble Eastern home is brought before us in this saying. In the original, each of the nouns has the definite article attached to it, and so suggests that in the house there was but one of each article; one lamp, a flat saucer with a wick swimming in oil; one measure for corn and the like; one bed, raised slightly, but sufficiently to admit of a flat vessel being put under it without danger, if for any reason it were desired to shade the light; and one lampstand.

The saying appeals to common-sense. A man does not light a lamp and then smother it. The act of lighting implies the purpose of illumination, and, with everybody who acts logically, its sequel is to put the lamp on a stand, where it may be visible. All is part of the nightly routine of every Jewish household. Jesus had often watched it; and, commonplace as it is, it had mirrored to Him large truths. If our eyes were opened to the suggestions of common life, we should find in them many parables and reminders of high matters.

Now this saying is a favourite and familiar one of our Lord, occurring four times in the Gospels. It is interesting to notice that He, too, like other teachers, had His favourite maxims, which He turned round in all sorts of ways, and presented as reflecting light at different angles and suggesting different thoughts. The four occurrences of the saying are these. In my text, and in the parallel in Luke’s Gospel, it is appended to the Parable of the Sower, and forms the basis of the exhortation, ‘Take heed how ye hear.’ In another place in Luke’s Gospel it is appended to our Lord’s words about ‘the sign of the prophet Jonah,’ which is explained to be the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it forms the basis of the exhortation to cultivate the single eye which is receptive of the light. In the Sermon on the Mount it is appended to the declaration that the disciples are the lights of the world, and forms the basis of the exhortation, ‘Let your light so shine before men.’ I have thought that it may be interesting and instructive if in this sermon we throw together these three applications of this one saying, and try to study the threefold lessons which it yields, and the weighty duties which it enforces.

I. So, then, I have to ask you, first, to consider that we have a lesson as to the apparent obscurities of revelation and of our duty concerning them.

That is the connection in which the words occur in our text, and in the other place in Luke’s Gospel, to which I have referred. Our Lord has just been speaking the Parable of the Sower. The disciples’ curiosity has been excited as to its significance. They ask Him for an explanation, which He gives minutely point by point. Then he passes to this general lesson of the purpose of the apparent veil which He had cast round the truth, by throwing it into a parabolic form. In effect He says: If I had meant to hide My teaching by the form into which I cast it, I should have been acting as absurdly and as contradictorily as a man would do who should light a lamp and immediately obscure it.’ True, there is the veil of parable, but the purpose of that relative concealment is not hiding, but revelation. ‘There is nothing covered but that it should be made known.’ The veil sharpens attention, stimulates curiosity, quickens effort, and so becomes positively subsidiary to the great purpose of revelation for which the parable is spoken. The existence of this veil of sensuous representation carries with it the obligation, ‘Take heed how ye hear.’

Now all these thoughts have a far wider application than in reference to our Lord’s parables. And I may suggest one or two of the considerations that flow from the wider reference of the words before us.

‘Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed and not upon a candlestick?’ There are no gratuitous and dark places in anything that God says to us. His revelation is absolutely clear. We may be sure of that if we consider the purpose for which He spoke at all. True, there are dark places; true, there are great gaps; true, we sometimes think, ‘Oh! it would have been so easy for Him to have said one word more; and the one word more would have been so infinitely precious to bleeding hearts or wounded consciences or puzzled understandings.’ But ‘is a candle brought to be set under a bushel?’ Do you think that if He took the trouble to light it He would immediately smother it, or arbitrarily conceal anything that the very fact of the revelation declares His intention to make known? His own great word remains true, ‘I have never spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth.’ If there be, as there are, obscurities, there are none there that would have been better away.

For the intention of all God’s hiding-which hiding is an integral part of his revealing-is not to conceal, but to reveal. Sometimes the best way of making a thing known to men is to veil it in a measure, in order that the very obscurity, like the morning mists which prophesy a blazing sun in a clear sky by noonday, may demand search and quicken curiosity and spur to effort. He is not a wise teacher who makes things too easy. It is good that there should be difficulties; for difficulties are like the veins of quartz in the soil, which may turn the edge of the ploughshare or the spade, but prophesy that there is gold there for the man who comes with fitting tools. Wherever, in the broad land of God’s word to us, there lie dark places, there are assurances of future illumination. God’s hiding is in order to revelation, even as the prophet of old, when he was describing the great Theophany which flashed in light from the one side of the heaven to the other, exclaimed, ‘There was the hiding of His power.’

‘He hides the purpose of His grace

To make it better known.’

And the end of all the concealments, and apparent and real obscurities, that hang about His word, is that for many of them patient and diligent attention and docile obedience should unfold them here, and for the rest, ‘the day shall declare them.’ The lamp is the light for the night-time, and it leaves many a corner in dark shadow; but, when ‘night’s candles are burnt out, and day sits jocund on the misty mountain-tops,’ much will be plain that cannot be made plain now.

Therefore, for us the lesson from this assurance that God will not stultify Himself by giving to us a revelation that does not reveal, is, ‘Take heed how ye hear.’ The effort will not be in vain. Patient attention will ever be rewarded. The desire to learn will not be frustrated. In this school truth lightly won is truth loosely held; and only the attentive scholar is the receptive and retaining disciple. A great man once said, and said, too, presumptuously and proudly, that he had rather have the search after truth than truth. But yet there is a sense in which the saying may be modifiedly accepted; for, precious as is all the revelation of God, not the least precious effect that it is meant to produce upon us is the consciousness that in it there are unscaled heights above, and unplumbed depths beneath, and untraversed spaces all around it; and that for us that Word is like the pillar of cloud and fire that moved before Israel, blends light and darkness with the single office of guidance, and gleams ever before us to draw desires and feet after it. The lamp is set upon a stand. ‘Take heed how ye hear.’

II. Secondly, the saying, in another application on our Lord’s lips, gives us a lesson as to Himself and our attitude to Him.

I have already pointed out the other instance in Luke’s Gospel in which this saying occurs, in the 11th chapter, where it is brought into immediate connection with our Lord’s declaration that the sign to be given to His generation was ‘the sign of the prophet Jonah,’ which sign He explains as being reproduced in His own case in His Resurrection. And then he adds the word of our text, and immediately passes on to speak about the light in us which perceives the lamp, and the need of cultivating the single eye.

So, then, we have, in the figure thus applied, the thought that the earthly life of Jesus Christ necessarily implies a subsequent elevation from which He shines down upon all the world. God lit that lamp, and it is not going to be quenched in the darkness of the grave. He is not going to stultify Himself by sending the Light of the World, and then letting the endless shades of death muffle and obscure it. But, just as the conclusion of the process which is begun in the kindling of the light is setting it on high on the stand, that it may beam over all the chamber, so the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, His exaltation to the supremacy from which He shall draw all men unto Him, are the necessary and, if I may so say, the logical result of the facts of His incarnation and death.

Then from this there follows what our Lord dwells upon at greater length. Having declared that the beginning of His course involved the completion of it in His exaltation to glory, He then goes on to say to us, ‘You have an organ that corresponds to Me. I am the kindled lamp; you have the seeing eye.’ ‘If the eye were not sunlike,’ says the great German thinker, ‘how could it see the sun?’ If there were not in me that which corresponds to Jesus Christ, He would be no Light of the World, and no light to me. My reason, my affection, my conscience, my will, the whole of my spiritual being, answer to Him, as the eye does to the light, and for everything that is in Christ there is in humanity something that is receptive of, and that needs, Him.

So, then, that being so, He being our light, just because He fits our needs, answers our desires, satisfies our cravings, fills the clefts of our hearts, and brings the response to all the questions of our understandings-that being the case, if the lamp is lit and blazing on the lampstand, and you and I have eyes to behold it, let us take heed that we cultivate the single eye which apprehends Christ. Concentration of purpose, simplicity and sincerity of aim, a heart centred upon Him, a mind drawn to contemplate unfalteringly and without distraction of crosslights His beauty, His supremacy, His completeness, and a soul utterly devoted to Him-these are the conditions to which that light will ever manifest itself, and illumine the whole man. But if we come with divided hearts, with distracted aims, giving Him fragments of ourselves, and seeking Him by spasms and at intervals, and having a dozen other deities in our Pantheon, beside the calm form of the Christ of Nazareth, what wonder is there that we see in Him ‘no beauty that we should desire Him’? ‘Unite my heart to fear Thy name.’ Oh I if that were our prayer, and if the effort to secure its answer were honestly the effort of our lives, all His loveliness, His sweetness, His adaptation to our whole being, would manifest themselves to us. The eye must be ‘single,’ directed to Him, if the heart is to rejoice in His light.

I need not do more than remind you of the blessed consequence which our Lord represents as flowing from this union of the seeing heart and the revealing light-viz., ‘Thy whole body shall be full of light.’ In every eye that beholds the flame of the lamp there is a little lamp-flame mirrored and manifested. And just as what we see makes its image on the seeing organ of the body, so the Christ beheld is a Christ embodied in us; and we, gazing upon Him, are ‘changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.’ Light that remains without us does not illuminate; light that passes into us is the light by which we see, and the Christ beheld is the Christ ensphered in our hearts.

III. So, lastly, this great saying gives us a lesson as to the duties of Christian men as lights in the world.

I pointed out that another instance of the occurrence of the saying is in the Sermon on the Mount, where it is transferred from the revelation of God in His written word, and in His Incarnate Word, to the relation of Christian men to the world in which they dwell. I need not remind you how frequently that same metaphor occurs in Scripture; how in the early Jewish ritual the great seven-branched lampstand which stood at first in the Tabernacle was the emblem of Israel’s office in the whole world, as it rayed out its light through the curtains of the Tabernacle into the darkness of the desert. Nor need I remind you how our Lord bare witness to His forerunner by the praise that ‘He was a burning and a shining light,’ nor how He commanded His disciples to have their ‘loins girt and their lamps burning,’ nor how He spoke the Parable of the Ten Virgins with their lamps.

From all these there follows the same general thought that Christian men, not so much by specific effort, nor by words, nor by definite proclamation, as by the raying out from them in life and conduct of a Christlike spirit, are set for the illumination of the world. The bearing of our text in reference to that subject is just this-our obligation as Christians to show forth the glories of Him who hath ‘called us out of darkness into His marvellous light’ is rested upon His very purpose in drawing us to Himself, and receiving us into the number of his people. If God in Christ, by communicating to us ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ,’ has made us lights of the world, it is not done in order that the light may be smothered incontinently, but His act of lighting indicates His purpose of illumination. What are you a Christian for? That you may go to Heaven? Certainly. That your sins may be forgiven? No doubt. But is that the only end? Are you such a very great being as that your happiness and well-being can legitimately be the ultimate purpose of God’s dealings with you? Are you so isolated from all mankind as that any gift which He bestows on you is to be treated by you as a morsel that you can take into your corner and devour, like a grudging dog, by yourselves? By no means. ‘God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts in order that’ we might impart the light to others. Or, as Shakespeare has it, in words perhaps suggested by the Scripture metaphor,

‘Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves.’

He gave you His Son that you may give the gospel to others, and you stultify His purpose in your salvation unless you become ministers of His grace and manifesters of His light.

Then take from this emblem, too, a homely suggestion as to the hindrances that stand in the way of our fulfilling the Divine intention in our salvation. It is, perhaps, a piece of fancy, but still it may point a lesson. The lamp is not hid ‘under a bushel,’ which is the emblem of commerce or business, and is meant for the measurement of material wealth and sustenance, or ‘under a bed’-the place where people take their ease and repose. These two loves-the undue love of the bushel and the corn that is in it, and the undue love of the bed and the leisurely ease that you may enjoy there-are large factors in preventing Christian men from fulfilling God’s purpose in their salvation.

Then take a hint as to the means by which such a purpose can be fulfilled by Christian souls. They are suggested in the two of the other uses of this emblem by our Lord Himself. The first is when He said, ‘Let your loins be girded’-they are not so, when you are in bed-’and your lamps burning.’ Your light will not shine in a naughty world without your strenuous effort, and ungirt loins will very shortly lead to extinguished lamps. The other means to this manifestation of visible Christlikeness lies in that tragical story of the foolish virgins who took no oil in their vessels. If light expresses the outward Christian life, oil, in accordance with the whole tenor of Scripture symbolism, expresses the inward gift of the Divine Spirit. And where that gift is neglected, where it is not earnestly sought and carefully treasured, there may be a kind of smoky illuminations, which, in the dark, may pass for bright lights, but, when the Lord comes, shudder into extinction, and, to the astonishment of the witless five who carried them, are found to be ‘going out.’ Brethren, only He who does not quench the smoking flax but tends it to a flame, will help us to keep our lamps bright.

First of all, then, let us gaze upon the light in Him, until we become ‘light in the Lord.’ And then let us see to it that, by girt loins and continual reception of the illuminating principle of the Divine Spirit’s oil, we fill our lamps with ‘deeds of odorous light, and hopes that breed not shame.’ Then,

‘When the Bridegroom, with his feastful friends,

Passes to bliss on the mid-hour of night,’

we shall have ‘gained our entrance’ among the ‘virgins wise and pure.’

Benson Commentary

Mark 4:21-25. And he said, Is a candle, &c. — As if he had said, I explain these things to you, I give you this light, not to conceal, but to impart it to others. And if I conceal any thing from you now, it is only that it may be more effectually manifested hereafter. Take heed what ye hear — That is, attend to what you hear, that it may have its due influence upon you. With what measure ye mete — That is, according to the improvement you make of what you have heard, still further assistances shall be given. And to you that hear — That is, with improvement, shall more be given. For he that hath — That improves whatever he has received, to the good of others, as well as of his own soul.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

4:21-34 These declarations were intended to call the attention of the disciples to the word of Christ. By his thus instructing them, they were made able to instruct others; as candles are lighted, not to be covered, but to be placed on a candlestick, that they may give light to a room. This parable of the good seed, shows the manner in which the kingdom of God makes progress in the world. Let but the word of Christ have the place it ought to have in a soul, and it will show itself in a good conversation. It grows gradually: first the blade; then the ear; after that the full corn in the ear. When it is sprung up, it will go forward. The work of grace in the soul is, at first, but the day of small things; yet it has mighty products even now, while it is in its growth; but what will there be when it is perfected in heaven!

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Is a candle brought ... - A candle is not lit up to be put immediately under a measure or a bed, where it can give no light. Its design is to give light. So my preaching by parables is not designed to obscure the truth, but to throw light on it. You should understand those parables, and, understanding them, should impart the truth to others also, as a candle throws its beams upon a dark world.

Bushel - The word here used in the original means a measure for grain containing about 12 quarts.

Bed - A couch, either to sleep on at night or to recline on at their meals. Probably the latter is here meant, and is equivalent to our saying a candle is not brought to be put "under" the table, but "on" it. See the notes at Matthew 23:6.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

21. And he said unto them, Is a candle—or "lamp"

brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?—"that they which enter in may see the light" (Lu 8:16). See on [1427]Mt 5:15, of which this is nearly a repetition.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The import of this verse may be learned from Matthew 5:15,16, where the words are, and applied by an exhortation to holiness, being an argument drawn from the end for which men receive gifts and grace from God, which is not only for their own advantage, though (like the husbandman) those that have it reap first of their own fruit, but for the good and advantage of others also. Some think that Christ here speaketh of himself, who is the Light of the world, and therefore opened this parable unto them. But the context in Matthew guiding us to the true sense of the words, I see no reason for us to busy ourselves in searching out another, especially when the connexion is so fair with the foregoing words, where he had been describing the good ground by bringing forth fruit, some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred fold. What therefore the sowing the seed in the good ground, mentioned in the parable, is, that is the lighting up of a candle in this verse; and the light showed by the lighted candle, not put under a vessel, or a bed, but in a candlestick, is the same thing with the fruit before mentioned.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he said unto them,.... At the same time, after he had explained the parable of the sower; for though the following parabolical and proverbial expressions were delivered by Christ at other, and different times, and some of them twice, as related by other evangelists; yet they might be all of them expressed or repeated at this time, by our Lord, showing why he explained the above parable to his disciples; and that though he delivered the mysteries of the Gospel in parables to them that were without, yet it was not his design that these things should be always kept a secret, and that from all men: for as the Gospel might be compared to seed, so likewise to a candle, the design and use of which is to give light to men: wherefore he asks,

is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not to be set on a candlestick? when a candle is brought into a room, in the night, where company are together, to converse, or read, or work; is it proper that it should be covered with a bushel, or any other hollow vessel? or when brought into a bedchamber, is it right to put it under the bed? is it not most fitting and convenient, that it should be set in a candlestick, and then it will be of use to all in the room? so the Gospel, which is the candle of the Lord, he had lighted up in the evening of the Jewish world, in the land of Judea; it was not his will that it should be always, and altogether, and from all men, covered with parables, and dark sayings, without any explanation of them; but that the light of it should be communicated, especially to them his; disciples, who were to be the lights of the world, and which were to shine openly before men, for their good, and the glory of his heavenly Father; see Matthew 5:14.

Geneva Study Bible

{2} And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?

(2) Although the light of the gospel is rejected by the world, yet it ought to be lit, if for no other reason than this, that the wickedness of the world might be revealed.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Mark 4:21-23. Comp. Luke 8:16 f. Meaning (comp. Matthew 5:15; Matthew 10:26): “the light, i.e. the knowledge of the μυστήριον τῆς βασιλείας, which ye receive from me, ye are not to withhold from others, but to bring about its diffusion; for, as what is concealed is not destined for concealment, but rather for becoming manifest, so also is the mystery of the Messiah’s kingdom.”[83] These sayings, however, as far as Mark 4:25, have not their original place here, but belong to what (according to Papias) Mark wrote οὐ τάξει. Holtzmann judges otherwise, p. 81, in connection with his assumption of a primitive-Mark. The collection of Logia is sufficient as a source. Comp. Weiss in the Jahrb. f. D. Theol. 1864, p. 88.

ἔρχεται] Doth the lamp then possibly come, etc.? ἔρχεσθαι is used of inanimate things which are brought; very frequently also in classical writers.

ὑπὸ τὸν μόδιον] See on Matthew 5:15.

ΚΛΊΝΗΝ] a table-couch. Comp. Mark 7:4. After κλίνην there is only a comma to be placed: the question is one as far as τεθῇ.

According to the reading ἘᾺΝ ΜῊ ΦΑΝΕΡ. (see the critical remarks), the rendering is: nothing is hidden, if it shall not (in future) be made manifest.[84] So surely and certainly does the ΦΑΝΈΡΩΣΙς set in!

ἈΛΛʼ ἽΝΑ ΕἸς ΦΑΝ. ἜΛΘῌ] The logical reference of ἈΛΛʼ is found in a pregnant significance of ἈΠΌΚΡΥΦΟΝ: nor has there anything (after ΟὐΔΈ, ΤΙ is again to be mentally supplied) taken place as secret, i.e. what is meant to be secret, but what in such a case has come to pass, has the destination, etc.

[83] According to others, Jesus gives an allegorical exhortation to virtue: “ut lucerna candelabro imponenda est, sic vos oportet, discipuli, non quidem vitam umbratilem sine virtutis splendore agere; sed,” etc., Fritzsche, comp. Theophylact, Grotius, and others. But the kindled light would, in fact, be already the symbol of virtue, and Jesus would forbid the exercise of it in secret! Moreover, this view is not required by ver. 20, since with ver. 21 a new portion of the discourse commences; and our view is not forbidden by ver. 11 (comp. ver. 34), since in ver. 11 Jesus is only speaking of the then unsusceptible multitude, and, if pushed to consistent general application, these words spoken at ver. 11 would quite annul the apostolic calling. History has refuted this general application. Erasmus, Paraphr., aptly says: “Nolite putare me, quod nunc secreto vobis committo, perpetuo celatum esse velle; … lux est per me in vobis accensa, ut vestro ministerio discutiat tenebras totius mundi.”

[84] “Id fit successive in hoc saeculo, et fiet plene, quum lux omnia illustrabit, 1 Corinthians 4:5,” Bengel.

Expositor's Greek Testament

Mark 4:21-25. Responsibilities of disciples (Matthew 5:15; Matthew 10:26; Matthew 7:2; Luke 8:16-18). True to His uniform teaching that privileges are to be used for the benefit of others, Jesus tells His disciples that if they have more insight than the multitude they must employ it for the common benefit. These sentences in Mk. represent the first special instruction of the disciples. Two of them, Mark 4:21; Mark 4:24, are found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:15; Matthew 7:2). The whole of them come in appositely here, and were probably spoken at this time. (Cf. Luke 8:16-18, where they are partially given in the same connection.) In any case, their introduction in connection with the parables is important as showing that Mk. can hardly have seriously believed, what he certainly seems to say, that Jesus spoke parables to blind the people.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

21. Is a candle brought] Rather, The lamp is not brought, is it? The article here points to the simple and indispensable furniture in every Jewish household. The original word means not a candle but a lamp. Wyclif renders it, “Whera lanterne come, that it be put vndir a bushel?”

to be put under a bushel] The original word Modius denotes a dry measure containing 16 sextarii, or about a peck. The English equivalent is greatly in excess of the Latin, as is noted in the margin.

a candlestick] Rather, the lamp-stand. “Do not suppose that what I now commit to you in secret, I would have concealed for ever; the light is kindled by Me in you, that by your ministry it may disperse the darkness of the whole world.” Erasmus.

Bengel's Gnomen

Mark 4:21. Καὶ, and) Mark 4:24 is closely connected with Mark 4:20, and those that go before: therefore also this comes in between parenthetically; comp. Luke 8:16. In this sense, the earth covers for a considerably long time the seed committed to it; whereas you, on the contrary, ought to put forth into action the power of the word, which you have heard, immediately upon hearing it.—ὁλύχνος, a candle [torch-light]) So also Christ comes, together with His Gospel, as the true light. And a man himself ought to be, not the bushel, but the candlestick; comp. Luke 8:16-18.—κλίνην, a couch [not as Engl). Vers., [34] [35][36][37]) where food is taken.

[34] Vercellensis of the old ‘Itala,’ or Latin Version before Jerome’s, probably made in Africa, in the second century: the Gospels.

[35] Veronensis, do.

[36] Laudianus, do.: Acts.

[37] Cantabrigiensis, do.: the Gospels, Acts , , 3 d Ep. John.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 21. - Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, etc.? The Greek is ὁ λύχνος, and is better rendered the lamp. The figure is recorded by St. Matthew (Matthew 5:15) as used by our Lord in his sermon on the mount. It is evident that he repeated his sayings, and used them sometimes in a different connection. The lamp is here the light of Divine truth, shining in the person of Christ. Is the lamp brought to be put under the bushel? It comes to us. The light in our souls is not of our own kindling; it comes to us from God, that we may manifest it for his glory. "The bushel" (μόδιος), from the Latin medias, a measure containing flour, was the flour-bin, a part of the furniture of every house, as was the tall lampstand with its single light. St, Luke (Luke 8:16) calls it "a vessel" (καλύπτει αὐτὸν σκεύει). The light is to be set on "a lamp-stand," and in like manner the light which we have received is to shine before men. As Christians, we are Christ's light-bearers. By this illustration our Lord teaches that he was unwilling that the mysteries of this great parable of the sower and of other parables should be concealed, but that his disciples should unfold these things to others as he had to them, although at present they might not be able to receive them. Mark 4:21

Vincent's Word Studies

A candle (ὁ λύχνος)

Properly, the lamp, as Rev.

Brought (ἔρχεται)

Lit., cometh. Doth the lamp come ? This impersonation or investing the lamp with motion is according to Mark's lively mode of narrative, as is the throwing of the passage into the interrogative form. Compare Luke 8:16. The lamp: the article indicating a familiar household implement. So also "the bed" and "the stand."

Bushel (μόδιον)

The Latin modius. One of Mark's Latin words. See on Matthew 5:15. The modius was nearer a peck than a bushel.

Bed (κλίνην)

A couch for reclining at table.

Candlestick (λυχνίαν)

Rev., correctly, stand; i.e., lampstand. See on Matthew 5:15.