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31 He taught them another parable, saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed that a man plants in his field. 32 It is the smallest of seeds, but when it grows it is the biggest of plants, and becomes a tree to which the birds of the sky come to build nests in its branches.

33 He spoke another parable to them: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman takes and mixes into three measures of flour, until the whole amount is leavened.”

34 Jesus said all these things to the crowd in parables, and said nothing without parables. 35 Thus was fulfilled what the prophet had said when he wrote:

I will open my mouth in parables,

and I will declare things hidden since the beginning of the world.

Comments

Jesus commonly uses images in his parables that would be familiar to his audience from agricultural and domestic life in first century Galilee: sowing and harvesting, gardening, sewing, baking, etc. He compares the Kingdom of Heaven to mustard, which begins as a tiny seed but grows into a shrub large enough for birds to nest in. Mustard in ancient Palestine was similar to mint or zucchini in modern American gardens: it grew so abundantly and rapidly that gardeners had to be careful not to let it take over their plots. This theme of abundance is repeated in the next parable, in which a woman mixes yeast into three “measures” of flour. The word measure translates the Greek saton, a unit of volume roughly equal to a third of a bushel. No woman would ever prepare this much dough unless she were making enough bread for a large banquet.

It should be noted that Jesus uses these images to capture people’s imaginations, but they are not perfect allegories or comparisons. People in Jesus’ parables often do not act as they would in real life. No farmer would ever let weeds and wheat grow up together until the harvest, as the farmer in 24-30 does. No shepherd would ever leave ninety-nine sheep for the sake of one single lost sheep, as will happen in chapter 18.

The quotation in 35 is Ps 78.2. For the authors of the NT, the Book of Psalms was a prophetic text (cf. Lk 24.44).