John Lightfoot on Matthew 13:3

[In parables.] I. No figure of Jewish rhetoric was more familiarly used than that of parables: which perhaps, creeping in from thence, among the heathen ended in fables. It is said, in the place of the Talmud just now cited, From the time that R. Meir died, those that spake in parables ceased: not that that figure of rhetoric perished in the nation from that time, but because he surpassed all others in these flowers; as the Gloss there from the tract Sanhedrim speaks; A third part [of his discourses or sermons] was tradition, a third part allegory, and a third part parable. The Jewish books abound everywhere with these figures, the nation inclining by a kind of natural genius to this kind of rhetoric. One might not amiss call their religion Parabolical, folded up within the coverings of ceremonies; and their oratory in their sermons was like to it. But it is a wonder indeed, that they who were so given to and delighted in parables, and so dextrous in unfolding them, should stick in the outward shell of ceremonies, and should not have fetched out the parabolical and spiritual sense of them; neither should he be able to fetch them out.

II. Our Saviour (who always and everywhere spake with the vulgar) useth the same kind of speech, and very often the same preface, as they did in their parables. To what is it likened, &c. But in him, thus speaking, one may both acknowledge the Divine justice, who speaks darkly to them that despise the light; and his Divine wisdom likewise, who so speaks to them that see, and yet see not, that they may see the shell and not see the kernel.