Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
33. leaven ] Except in this one parable, leaven is used of the working of evil; cp. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” Gal 5:9; 1Co 5:6; and “purge out therefore the old leaven,” 1Co 5:7. So, too, in the Rabbinical writings. This thought probably arose from the prohibition of leaven during the paschal season. But the secrecy and the all-pervading character of leaven aptly symbolize the growth of Christianity, (1) as a society penetrating everywhere by a subtle and mysterious operation until in this light as a secret brotherhood it appeared dangerous to the Roman empire; (2) as an influence unfelt at first growing up within the human soul.
Compare Sir Bartle Frere on Indian Missions, p. 9; speaking of the gradual change wrought by Christianity in India, he says, in regard to religious innovations in general: “They are always subtle in operation, and generally little noticeable at the outset in comparison with the power of their ultimate operation.”
three measures ] Literally, three seahs. In Gen 18:6, Abraham bids Sarah “make ready three ‘seahs’ of fine meal, knead it and make cakes upon the hearth.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The kingdom of heaven – The meaning here is the same as in the last parable; perhaps, however, intending to denote more properly the secret and hidden nature of piety in the soul. The other parable declared the fact that the gospel would greatly spread, and that piety in the heart would greatly increase. This states the way or mode in which it would be done. It is secret, silent, steady; pervading all the faculties of the soul and all the kingdoms of the world, as leaven, or yeast, though hidden in the flour, and though deposited only in one place, works silently until all the mass is brought under its influence.
Three measures – These were small measures (see the margin); but the particular amount is of no consequence to the story; nor is anything to be inferred from the fact that three are mentioned. That number is mentioned as a circumstance giving interest to the parable, but designed to convey no spiritual instruction. The measure mentioned here probably contained about a peck and a half.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Mat 13:33
The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven.
The parable of the leaven
I. The power which is to raise man must come from without.
Took leaven. It is assumed that man needs raising, and this is possible only through the introduction from without of an energy distinctly Divine. Humanity has no self-leavening power. I would ask those who imagine that we need no celestial leaven to raise us how long our moral elevation as a people would continue if the influences which come from the Bible could be shut off?
II. That the leaven must be lodged and work within. The leaven was hidden in the meal. This denotes that the mysterious element which possesses such penetrative powers is for a time concealed from sight. The chief mischief connected with man lies within. Many systems of reformation proceed on the supposition that the unhappy condition of man is external, not in himself, but in his circumstances. But vice is not confined to slums. The chief elements of mans degradation are ignorance, selfishness, and misery; these are within a man, and can be counteracted only by that which shall work within.
III. The penetrative and diffusive power of this leaven. It spread till the whole was leavened. This it does because it is leaven, and works according to the law of its own essence. It was not leavened in an instant, but by gradual infection; an emblem of the spread of the gospel in the soul. Professors do not become perfect all at once. Religion operates from individual to individual. Where leaven is at work it will be felt. It works amidst seeming improbabilities. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
Leaven a hidden force
It was hidden; so hidden that those who will believe in nothing but what they see might doubt whether it was there at all. ]t was hidden but not lost; hidden that it might not be lost; hidden that its searching and diffusive energy might be tested and revealed. From this feature of the parable we not only do not shrink, but we give to it the utmost possible prominence. It holds strict analogy with the great fact that the mightiest forces in the world are all lodged, if I may so speak, out of sight, and work outwards, and upwards, and downwards from their deep home of mystery. The chief Worker-He without whom no one and nothing could work at all-hideth Himself, so that no eye hath seen Him, or can see Him. From His secret pavilion He sustains all the forces of the universe, whether they be mechanical or vital, and yet His Hand is never seen. The leaven of man himself-that leaven without which there would be no man-his soul, is hidden. How hidden, we know not; where hidden, we know not; but it is hidden, and, amid all the marvels of its working, is never seen. No eye hath seen man at any time, any more than it has seen God. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
Leaven a living force
The yeast used in making bread is by no means the dead, inoperative thing it seems. It is a plant as much alive as the snowdrop that has just burst its way through the soil, and foretold by its graceful bell the coming of the spring. It is a vegetable growth, of enormous energy for its size, multiplying itself at a rate incredible to any but the scientific mind; feeding its active life, as it grows from spot to spot, upon the material into which it has been introduced, until there is nothing left for it to feed upon and assimilate to itself. The change it effects in its progress is described by the chemist as a decomposition of the sugar contained in the dough, and a liberation of carbonic acid; but the principal fact revealed by the microscope is that you have a congregation of living cells, gathered about a living central nucleus, all charged to the full with that subtle and supreme force, which we, in our ignorance, call LIFE. Like that, says Christ, is the kingdom of heaven-the rule of a living presence, of a living God. The gospel is the power of God at work for the salvation of souls. Christianity is itself a living, breathing presence, not a mere dull, dead thing; a life. It is characteristic of leaven to show an almost insatiable greed of activity. It is a type of stupendous increase. With a rapidity that is marvellous, it passes on from particle to particle of the meal in which it is placed, until the last stroke of work is done. Give it an appropriate temperature, and favourable materials, and an express engine will stop sooner than it. In no point is the teachers simile better sustained by facts than in the unspeakable and irrepressible activity of the gospel. It is a living force: and action is essential to its life, as air is to the life of man. Only with tremendous difficulty can it be checked. (J. Clifford, M. A.)
Christianity, like leaven, works in a congenial and much assisting sphere
It is hid, according to Christs parable, in MEAL, not amongst stones on which it could have no effect, not amongst iron-filings where a magnet would be better placed, not in the earth where seeds would get better nourishment; but in meal; in that material which has an affinity for it, and upon which it is specially fitted to act. The leaven is placed where it is wanted, where it can work, and where it can work with success. Leaven is not better suited to work in meal than Christ in mens hearts for their salvation. (J. Clifford, M. A.)
Leaven an assimilating force
The portion of dough taken as a ferment, and inserted within the three measures of meal, makes that meal like itself, subjugates it, and impresses its own character upon it, penetrating it totally, and assimilates its nature to its own. It is not simply that it touches particle after particle of the flour, as water might do-that would only make a paste; or comes into contact with the whole meal, as a hand might do-that would simply move it without altering it; but it really puts its own life into the meal and penetrates it with its living nature from centre to circumference. It is in the nature of leaven to make all the meal like itself; so it is in the nature of the gospel to Christianize those who receive it; i.e., Christ subjugates, penetrates, and assimilates the believer to Himself. He puts His life into each part of him;
(1) the life of His thoughts into his thinking, so that every thought is brought into captivity to Christ;
(2) the life of His love into his heart, so that he is unselfish and beneficent;
(3) the life of His righteousness into his conscience, so that the law of right is his rule;
(4) the life of His obedience into his will, so that it is his meat to do the will of the Father. (J. Clifford, M. A.)
The parable of the leaven
We learn-
I. God employs human agency for the conversion of the soul.
II. To outward appearance, the means are very unlikely and insignificant.
III. The change produced is radical, gradual, final, and manifest.
IV. Favourable circumstances are necessary for the leaven to work successfully. (A. Griffin.)
The law of leaven has signally characterized the entire history of the kingdom of heaven in the world
The leaven illustrates-
I. The history of Gods revelation to man.
II. The history of the christian church.
III. The history of opinions or doctrines.
IV. The history of individual conversions.
1. Donor despise the day of small things.
2. Infer hope for the world. (J. M. Sherwood.)
A symbol of Christianity
I. Christianity is really alive.
II. Christianity is at work as well as alive.
III. Christianity, like leaven, works in a congenial and much assisting sphere.
IV. The most distinguished feature is that it leavens the meal in the midst of which it is placed. So the most characteristic effect of Christianity is that it Christianizes men; it assimilates them to Christ by filling them with the life of Christ.
V. The leaven is hidden in the meal, and all the work it does, it does secretly. Christs best, most real, and most powerful work, is always unseen.
VI. But it advances victoriously and totally. (J. Cliffbrd, M. A. , LL. B. , B. Sc.)
This parable represents
I. The penetrating power of Divine grace. The grace of God is a vital and holy force.
II. The mysterious power of Divine grace. The grace of God is imparted to the soul. But is imperceptible in the soul.
III. The transforming power of Divine grace. The grace of God works slowly, successfully. (J. T. Woodhouse.)
Children to be educated, not only in the truth, but for its diffusion
This parable describes the progressive influence of the truth of God within the heart, and also without in the world. Leaven works strongly, so does the Word on the thoughts and feelings. It works silently; so does the gospel secretly diffuse its influence through the soul. Leaven works permanently, imparting qualities which remain fixed in the substance which it penetrates.
I. The bible states that the whole world is to be leavened by the truth of God (Psa 22:27-28).
II. The bible which contains this heavenly truth is admirably fitted for universal diffusion.
1. It is a Divine authority.
2. It speaks to the heart of man.
3. It prescribes to man his duty in every possible station and relation in which he can be placed.
4. It is a bond of union.
5. It inspires and fills the heart with hope.
III. Little has yet been done for leavening the world with truth.
IV. Why has not more been done for the leavening of the world with truth.
V. How shall we prepare to do more than has yet been done for leavening the world with truth.
VI. Never will the church make successful effort for the leavening of the world with truth until every child under her care be educated with a view to this noble object. (W. B. Kirkpatrick.)
I. The elements which are here brought together.
1. The first of these may be considered as representing human nature. The parable represents the possibility of mans restoration.
2. The second element used in this parable may be regarded as an emblem of the gospel. The gospel, when compared to the world, exhibits an amazing disproportion
(1) as to quantity. The leaven is small in proportion to the meal. The small origin of the gospel in contrast with the mighty change effected by it;
(2) the contrast as to quality. There is a natural adaptation in the one element to the other, the one is moist, the other dry; this is favourable to the process. So in the gospel there is moral adaptation.
(3) A contrast as to their influence. We might despise the hiding of the leaven as trivial; but the result is seen. The progress of the gospel irresistible.
II. The mode of operation by which this result ensues.
1. These elements must be brought into actual contact.
2. The operation is gradual.
3. It is invisible.
4. It is irresistible.
III. The final progress and triumph of the gospel.
1. That all analogy leads us to expect its universal progress.
2. This is the purpose of God.
3. This is the burden of prophecy.
4. The musings of holy men on the future glory of the Church point in this direction.
5. The prayers of the pious refer to this event.
6. This result is highly desirable.
7. The Spirit of God is fettered by no analogy, His influence may be signally exerted. (T. Smith.)
Christianity an impartation, not an evolution
The kingdom, then, is not an off-shoot from the world, but some sort of an importation into it: not an outgo, but an income. It is a new ingredient put into society. The woman put the yeast into the dough; the dough did not develop the yeast. Scripture is everywhere consistent with this representation. History did not produce Christ: He came into the world from beyond and above. The Law, too, came into the world; it was not a Mosaic transplant from Egypt, but entered the world at the point where Sinai and the sky meet. The whole series of communications from Eden to Patmos is consistently exhibited as so much importation. Our own experience, Zoo, has something to say in the same line. We are succumbing every day to influences that are not set down in the books, k world of unseen facts and forces lies against us as the sea lies against the shore. What we call conscience is no barren discernment between what is bad and what is good; it is the organ through which the unseen comes near to us and becomes within us both as a consciousness and a power. We are not left alone, or let alone. O God, Thy Kingdom comes! It does come, keep coming. An eye peeps in at the skylight. Impalpable fingers tap at the window and knock at the door. The sky mixes itself with the ground, the sea shimmers under the light of the stars, and the meal stirs and is made quick at the touch of the entering leaven. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
The work of Christianity will be complete
I do not know that anything exact is denoted by the three measures. It may refer to the totality of the race as represented by the three sons of Noah by whom the earth was peopled; or perhaps to the totality of the individual man as composed of body, mind, and spirit. At any rate, this threefoldness points, as usual, to entireness and completeness. The kingdom of heaven has come on earth to stay and to work a whole work. This irresistibleness is a ground of vast encouragement. To be sure this force is one that works stealthily. We do not see the processes. God constructs the machinery of event as we make clocks, with all the pinions and axles packed in behind the dial-plate. We see the pendulum swing, but we do not think of it as result, because we do not see the weight that, with cunning indirection, is all the time pulling at the pendulum We must be careful not to underrate the influences that work without show or noise. The unseen and the unheard really make out a good deal more than half the universe Christianity is not a matter of places and days, rites and observances; it is a matter of having the leaven of God to work in us that we shall be gentle and pure, unselfish and sympathetic as God is. And men have made at least a commencement towards becoming so. It is not natural for men to devote their time to others interests. But more and more time is being devoted in this way, and money too, which means that the kingdom of heaven is gaining a closer and closer grip upon us: the kingdom of heaven is coming. Men are sorry for the distressed, and try to relieve them. Why, that is Christianity. We know that we love God, because we love the brethren Not as though we were already perfect. There is knavery, selfishness, uncleanness of all sorts and degrees. Yet the leaven is certainly working, and such a review of the centuries as has been suggested makes it clear, to the point of demonstration, that the will of God is being increasingly done, and especially that the ideals of gentleness, mutual interest, reciprocal sympathy, with which the gospel is so thickly strewn, are being growingly realized. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
The religion which will save a mans soul is a religion that goes into his whole being, and changes him into something quite different from what he was before, when in the service of the world. A great deal less than this will enable a man to live respected by his neighbours; a great deal less will, after a time, satisfy even his own conscience, and enable him to live contentedly in his present measure of strictness. For conscience soon lowers its demands when they have been made and rejected; and an evil heart of unbelief rests content at last, on a conscience seared as with a hot iron. (W. J. Irons, D. D.)
The Leaven
We may reduce the parable to three general heads.
I. What is compared? The matter compared is the kingdom of heaven.
II. To what is it compared? Leaven.
III. In what is it compared. Now the concurrence of these lies in the sequel-which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. Wherein are remarkable
(1) the agent-a woman;
(2) the action-which is double, taking and hiding, or putting in the leaven;
(3) the subject-is meal, or flour;
(4) the continuance-until the whole mass be leavened. (T. Adagios.)
Need of leavening
No flesh that is putrefied, except it be first purified, shall be glorified. No man goes to heaven as by a leap, but by climbing. Now this sanctity is called the kingdom of heaven, (T. Adagios.)
Leaven sour but sweetening
Leaven hath a quality somewhat contrary to the meal, yet serves to make it fit for bread. The gospel is sour and harsh to the natural soul, yet works it to newness of life. It runs against the grain of our affections, and we think it troubles the peace of our Israel within us. It is leaven to Herod to part with his Herodias; to Naaman to be bound from bowing before Rimmon. Christ gives the young man a sour morsel when he bids him give his goods to the poor. You choke the usurer with leaven when you tell him that his sins shall not be forgiven till his unjust gains be restored. You may as well prescribe the epicure leaven instead of bread, as set him the voider of abstinence instead of his table of surfeits. This is leaven indeed, to tell the encloser that he enters commons with the devil, while he hinders the poor to enter common with him; or to tell the sacrilegious that Satan hath just possession of his soul, while he keeps unjust possession of the Churchs goods. When his leaven is held to carnal lips it will not go down, no, the very smell of it offends. The combat of faith, the task of repentance, the mercifulness of charity, this same rule of three is very hard to learn. To deny a mans self, to cashier his family lusts, to lay down whole bags of crosses, and to take up one, the cross of Christ. Oh sour, sour leaven! (T. Adagios.)
Signs of leavening
He hath an unleavened hand, that is not charitable; an unleavened knee, that is not humble; an unleavened tongue, that blasphemes; an unleavened eye, that maliceth; an unleavened heart, that securely offendeth. The outward working shows the inward leavening, and the diffusion is an argument of the being. (T. Adagios.)
What leaven can do
The world begins with great promises; but could it give as much as ever the prince of it proffered to Christ, it cannot keep thy bones from the ague, thy flesh from worms, nor thy soul from hell. Behold, a little leaven shall sanctify thee throughout, the folly of preaching shall save thy soul, and raise thy body to eternal glory. (T. Adagios.)
The nature of leaven
It consists of myriads of the cells of the common green mould in an undeveloped state. If a fragment of the dough with the leaven in it be put aside in a shady place, the cells of the fungus in the leaven will vegetate, and cover the dough with a slight downy substance, which is just the plant in its complete form. The swelling of the dough, and the commotion which goes on in the leavened mass, are owing to the multiplication of the plant-cells, which takes place with astonishing rapidity. By this process of vegetation, the starch and sugar of the dough are converted into other chemical products. But it is only allowed to go a certain length, and then the principle of growth is checked by placing the dough in the oven, and baking it into bread. Leaven is thus a principle of destruction and construction-of decay and of growth-of death and of life. (Hugh Macmillan.)
The parable of the leaven hid in three measures of meal
The Word of God may be compared to leaven.
1. Leaven is of a diffusive quality. So the Word of God, through the Spirit, is of a diffusive nature, but in respect to every soul that receiveth it, and also in respect of people to whom it comes; for though at first but a few at Jerusalem and thereabouts received the gospel, yet how did it spread.
2. Leaven diffuses itself gradually. So the gospel spread and operated by degrees; as it diffuseth itself into every faculty of the soul at first, so it never ceaseth until the life and whole man is leavened therewith.
3. Leaven is of assimilating nature; makes all the meal that is leavened to be of one and the same lump. So the Word of God and the grace of God makes the whole soul like itself, or a whole family or nation where it is once in truth received, the very same people, both in doctrine and conversation.
4. Leaven is of a quickening and powerful nature; so the Word of God (Heb 4:12).
5. Leaven is hid in the meal which leaveneth; so the Word of God must be hid in the heart, both in the understanding, will, and affection, if the person he spiritually leavened with it (Psa 119:11). It is not enough to receive it lute our mouths, or to have it in our Bibles, but we must receive it (in the love thereof) into our hearts, or else Satan will steal it away, or it will not, it cannot, work either upon our hearts or lives.
6. Leaven, it is observed, is of a softening nature; though the meal be crushed down hard, yet if the leaven be hid in it, it will make it soft and mellow. So the Word of God makes the hard heart soft and tender.
7. Leaven secretly and invisibly worketh and altereth the meal, and maketh a change of it, turning it into dough. So the workings and operations of the Word of God are secret and invisible.
8. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump; so a small quantity, or but a dram of grace, or one word set home upon the heart of three thousand souls, it will leaven them all (Act 2:4).
9. Leaven answers a great design. It is to prepare the meal to be moulded into a loaf and so become the bread for the family. So this spiritual leaven, the Word, is by Jesus Christ appointed for a great design, viz., even to mould and fashion poor sinners for Himself, and so fit them for His own use, and that they may be meet and fit matter for His Church on earth, and for the Church triumphant in Heaven (1Co 10:17). (W. Keach.)
The leaven
I. Our Lord teaches that the change He meant to effect in the world was a change, not so much of the outward form, as of the spirit and character of all things.
II. The method by which the kingdom of heaven is to grow, or by which the world is to he Christianized. Religion spreads by contagion. There must be a mixing; contact between those that are Christians and those who are not. This mixing is provided for in various ways.
(1) By nature, which sets us in families;
(2) By commerce;
(3) Casual acquaintance. There is a culpable refusal to mix, as well as an inconsiderate eagerness to do so. (M. Dods, D. D.)
Leavened by character rather than by speech
It is rather the all-pervading and subtle extension of Christian principles than their declared and aggressive advocacy that is brought before the mind by the figure of leaven. It reminds us that men are most susceptible to the influence that flows from character. This influence sheds itself off in a thousand ways too subtle to be resisted, and in forms so fine as to insinuate themselves where words would find no entrance. A man is in many circumstances more likely to do good by acting in a Christian manner, than by drawing attention to the faults of others and exposing their iniquity. The less ostentatious, the less conscious the influence exercised upon us is, the more likely are we to admit it. (M. Dods, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 33. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven] On the nature and effects of leaven, see the note on Ex 12:8. As the property of leaven is to change, or assimulate to its own nature, the meal or dough with which it is mixed, so the property of the grace of Christ is to change the whole soul into its own likeness; and God intends that this principle should continue in the soul till all is leavened – till the whole bear the image of the heavenly, as it before bore the image of the earthly. Both these parables are prophetic, and were intended to show, principally, how, from very small beginnings, the Gospel of Christ should pervade all the nations of the world, and fill them with righteousness and true holiness.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
33. Another parable spake he untothem; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman tookand hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavenedThisparable, while it teaches the same general truth as the foregoingone, holds forth, perhaps, rather the inward growth of thekingdom, while “the Mustard Seed” seems to point chiefly tothe outward. It being a woman’s work to knead, it seems arefinement to say that “the woman” here represents theChurch, as the instrument of depositing the leaven. Nor does ityield much satisfaction to understand the “three measures ofmeal” of that threefold division of our nature into “spirit,soul, and body,” alluded to in 1Th5:23, or of the threefold partition of the world among the threesons of Noah (Ge 10:32), assome do. It yields more real satisfaction to see in this briefparable just the all-penetrating and assimilatingquality of the Gospel, by virtue of which it will yet mould allinstitutions and tribes of men, and exhibit over the whole earth one”kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.”
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Another parable spake he unto them,…. To the disciples and the multitude, and which was of the same kind, to the same purpose, and relating to the same subject as the former; the spread of the Gospel, and the increase of it in the world.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven. The word “leaven” is every where else used in a bad sense; and either designs immorality, as malice and wickedness, or false doctrine, such as that of the Pharisees and Sadducees: but here it seems to be taken in a good sense, and the Gospel to be compared unto it; nor for its disagreeable qualities, but on account of its small quantity; it is a little leaven that leavens the whole lump, and may express, as the grain of mustard seed does, the small beginnings of the Gospel, and its meanness in the eyes of men; and on account of its piercing, penetrating, and spreading nature: so the Gospel reaches the conscience, pierces the heart, enlightens the understanding, informs the judgment, raises and sets the affections on right objects, subdues the will, and brings down all towering thoughts, to the obedience of Christ, in particular persons; and has penetrated and made its way, under divine influence, through towns, cities, kingdoms, and nations: also on account of its heating, swelling, and assimilating nature; so the Gospel, where it takes place, warms the affections, causes the heart to burn within, inspires with zeal for God, and Christ, and the Gospel; it swells and fills churches with such as shall be saved, and assimilates the several persons it operates in, makes them like one another, one bread, one body, having like precious faith, knowledge, and experience, though in a different degree.
Which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal. By the “three measures of meal”, are meant the elect of God; who, because of their nature and quality, are compared to meal, or fine flour; and that because of that of which it is made, wheat, to a corn of which Christ is compared, Joh 12:24 and by whose grace the saints are what they are, justified, regenerated, and sanctified; and on account of the manner it becomes so, as by grinding the wheat, sifting it when ground, and separating it from the bran; all which may express the first convictions in the conscience of awakened sinners, the grace of God in conversion, and the separation of them from the rest of the world, in the effectual calling; as also by reason of its choiceness, purity, and goodness, the saints being chosen of God and precious, and being pure and spotless, through the grace and righteousness of Christ, and being highly valued, and had in great esteem by him; and because of their quantity, are compared to three measures of meal. The measure here designed, is the Hebrew seah, which held a gallon and an half, and three of these made an ephah; and which is often rendered by the a Targumists, , “three seahs”, or “measures”, the very phrase here used; and the reason why three are particularly mentioned is, because such a quantity used to be fermented and kneaded by women at one time; see Ge 18:6 and for the further illustration of this, take the following passage out of the Talmud b.
“The wise men say, that three women may be employed in one lump of dough; one may knead it, another may make it into loaves, and another may bake it–and it is a tradition,
“that in wheat they use three kabs”, or “measures”, and in barley four “kabs”.”
These measures, as here used parabolically, may design the small number of God’s elect; and, as some have thought, may have respect to the three then known parts of the world, where they were, or should be: by the woman that took and hid the leaven in these measures, is meant, either the church, sometimes compared to a woman in Scripture, Re 12:1 or the ministers of the Gospel, wisdom’s maidens; or rather, Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God; see Pr 9:1 and the reason why a woman is mentioned is, because it was, with the Jews, the work of women to ferment the flour, knead the dough, and make the bread: and this action of taking and covering the leaven in the meal, may denote the power of Christ, in opening the heart, and putting in the Gospel, which unless he takes in hand, and uses, is ineffectual; as also the passiveness of men, under the first workings of the Spirit of Christ upon their souls, by the Gospel; and likewise, the secret and invisible power of divine grace, operating by the ministry of the word, upon the heart.
Until the whole was leavened: to be “leavened” by the Gospel, is to be evangelized by it, to be brought into the life and liberty of it, to a Gospel way of living by faith on Christ; to derive all peace, joy, and comfort from him, and not from any works of righteousness; and to have a man’s obedience influenced by the love of God, so as to do it cheerfully, and without dependence on it. Now the Gospel, where it has entrance and takes place, powerfully and effectually, continues to operate more or less, as the leaven in the meal, until the whole man, soul and body, all the faculties of the soul, and members of the body, are influenced by it; and will continue with power and efficacy in the world, and church, until all the elect of God are wrought upon by it, and are brought in. There is a late ingenious interpretation c of this parable, which, since the word “leaven” is elsewhere always used in a bad sense, deserves consideration; according to which, this parable expresses not the spread of truth, but of error; by “the woman” is thought to be meant, the Apocalyptic woman, the woman spoken of in the Revelations, the whore of Rome, the mother of harlots; and the “leaven” which she took, the leaven of false doctrine and discipline; by her “hiding” it, the private, secret, artful methods, false doctrines, and bad discipline were introduced, and the gradual progress thereof; and by the “three measures of meal”, the bishops and doctors of the church, among whom this leaven was spread, and who were fermented with it; particularly those three bishops of Rome at first, Sosymus, John the faster, and Boniface the third; which by degrees spread itself, until the whole Christian world was affected with it; and for a long time lay hid and undiscovered, till the Lord raised up Wyclif, John Huss, Jerom of Prague, Luther, and other reformers. The reader may choose which interpretation he likes best.
a Targum Onketos & Jarchi, in Exod. xvi. 36. & Targum Jon. in Ruth ii. 17. b T. Hieros. Pesachim, fol. 30. 2. c Vid. Teelman. Specimen Explic. Parabolarum, p. 64, 65, 66, 67, 68.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Is like unto leaven ( ). In its pervasive power. Curiously enough some people deny that Jesus here likens the expanding power of the Kingdom of heaven to leaven, because, they say, leaven is the symbol of corruption. But the language of Jesus is not to be explained away by such exegetical jugglery. The devil is called like a lion by Peter (1Pe 5:8) and Jesus in Revelation is called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Re 5:5). The leaven permeates all the “wheaten meal” () till the whole is leavened. There is nothing in the “three measures,” merely a common amount to bake. Dr. T.R. Glover in his Jesus of History suggests that Jesus used to notice his mother using that amount of wheat flour in baking bread. To find the Trinity here is, of course, quite beside the mark. The word for leaven, , is from , to boil, to seethe, and so pervasive fermentation.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Leaven [] . Wyc., sour dough, as German Sauerteig. From zew, to boil or seethe, as in fermentation. The English leaven is from the Latin levare, to raise, and appears in the French levain.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
FOURTH KINGDOM OF HEAVEN PARABLE, THE LEAVEN, V. 33-35
1) “Another parable spake he unto them,” (alien parabolen elalesen autois) “He spoke another parable to them,” another that was similar in nature, to the mixed multitude.
2) “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven,” (homoia estin he basilela ton ouranon zune) “The kingdom of heaven (or the church) is similar to leaven,” to be compared with leaven, not yeast, but sour dough that is putrefied, or decomposed to the point of fermentation. The little mustard seed and little leaven refer to the influence of the church growth in the world.
3) “Which a woman took,” (hen labousa gune) “Which a woman upon taking,” or receiving. The church, as the bride of Christ, is contrary to normal use, here used to signify the hearing and sharing of the bread of life with the whole world.
4) “And hid it three measures of meal,” (enekrupsen eis aleurou sata tria) “Hid or concealed in three measures of meal or hid in about six gallons or more of meal, to prepare it for baking, and use as palatable food.
5) “Till the whole was leavened.” (heos hou ezemothe holon) “Until the whole was leavened,” the entire six or more gallons of meal were leavened, prepared to be cooked for food. Christ was that bread of life who “became sin for us,” leavened for us, and bare our sins in His body on the tree,” that we might be redeemed and eat of the bread of life forever. To bear and share this to and with the whole world, 1Pe 2:24; 2Co 5:21.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(33) The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven.The parable sets forth the working of the Church of Christ on the world, but not in the same way as that of the Mustard Seed. There the growth was outward, measured by the extension of the Church, dependent on its missionary efforts. Here the working is from within. The leavencommonly, as in the Passover ritual, the symbol of malice and wickedness (1Co. 5:8)causing an action in the flour with which it is mingled that is of the nature of decay and tends to actual putrescence, here becomes, in the mode of teaching which does not confine itself within the limits of a traditional and conventional symbolism, the type of influence for good as well as evil. It can turn the flour into human foodthis symbolism is traceable in the leavened loaves that were offered on the day of Pentecost (Lev. 23:17)can permeate the manners, feelings, and opinions of non-Christian societies until they become blessings and not curses to mankind. In the new feelings, gradually diffused, of Christendom as to slavery, prostitution, gladiatorial gamesin the new reverence for childhood and womanhood, for poverty and sicknesswe may trace the working of the leaven.
Descending to the details of the parable, it is at least open to us (as an application of it, if not as an interpretation) to see in the woman, as in the parable of the Lost Piece of Money (Luk. 15:8), the representative of the divine Wisdom as working in the history of the world, or of the Church of Christ as embodying that wisdom. The three measures of meal admit, in like manner, of many references, of which we cannot say with certainty that one is more likely to have been intended than another. The descendants of the three sons of Noah, or the Jew, the Greek, the Barbarian, as representing the whole race of mankind, or body, soul, and spirit, as the three parts of mans nature, which the new truth is to permeate and purify, are all in this sense equally legitimate applications.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
FOURTH PARABLE . The Leaven in the Meal, Mat 13:33.
33. The kingdom of heaven The divine dispensation of the Gospel. In this parable the woman is the symbol of the divine agency, the meal is the human heart, the leaven is the Gospel. As leaven diffuses itself through the meal until the whole lump is leavened, so the grace of God and the power of the Gospel are a diffusive power, which impregnates the whole heart and transforms its character. As the parable of the mustard tree describes the external, so this parable describes the internal prevalence of the Gospel power. It describes the internal influence not upon the individual alone, but upon the masses of humanity. Three measures of meal A measure was the third part of an ephah, and these three were the usual quantity for a baking. Gen 18:6; Jdg 6:19 ; 1Sa 1:24. Whole was leavened The grace of God in the heart, when properly received and cultivated, assimilates the whole character to its blessed nature.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘He spoke another parable to them; “The kingly rule of heaven is like a situation where a woman took leaven, and hid it in three measures of meal, until it was all leavened.” ’
In this parable the hidden but powerful process is in mind by which the Kingly Rule of Heaven will be established. Leaven was a piece of old dough which had fermented. Once this was put in new dough it affected the whole, making it more suitable for baking. Leaven can be used as a picture of corruption, and therefore of evil, but it is not always so. In the thanksgiving offering in Lev 7:13 cakes of leavened bread were offered along with the peace offerings, and at the Feast of Sevens (Weeks), which became Pentecost, two wave loaves of leavened bread were offered (Lev 23:17). Thus leaven was associated there with thanksgiving and gratitude for all God’s good provision. We may conclude that leaven itself was thus here seen to be a good and useful contribution to the welfare and wellbeing of man, and thus could be used to picture the powerful influence of the Kingly Rule of Heaven spreading throughout the nations through the activity of the Holy Spirit (Mat 3:11; Mat 12:18; Mat 12:28).
Three measures of meal indicates a large amount of meal sufficient for over one hundred people. So there is again the repetition of the idea of large results from small beginnings, although now the idea of size is secondary. What is primary is the hidden power at work, the power of the Holy Spirit (Mat 3:11; Joh 3:7). The fact that it was ‘hidden’ emphasises the unseen and unexpected (by the world) working that produced the result.
Some consider that because leaven is regularly used in order to depict evil (1Co 5:6-8), the picture here must be of the spreading of evil and heresy throughout the Kingly Rule. But that would be to make the parable only depict what is negative, and if it did so it would be the only parable in the chapter that did so. In all other cases the parables end in a picture of the triumph of the good. Furthermore in Luk 13:18-21 it is found only with the parable of the mustard seed and not in a series. It was therefore clearly intended to be interpreted on its own.
In fact the principle behind the usage in 1Co 5:6-8 is that ‘a little leaven leavens the whole lump’ (compare Gal 5:9). Thus it is what the leaven indicates that determines whether its influence is good or bad. On the whole fermentation was seen as good effect, not a bad one (we must not read modern science into it). In Mat 13:6; Mat 13:11 the leaven represents teaching, with its consequent influence. It is only because it is the teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees that it is there to be seen as bad. The idea of leavening itself was neutral.
The fact that the leaven was ‘hidden’ in the meal stresses the quiet way in which the work would go forward. It would not be with a great outward display but with the quiet moving forwards of God’s purposes through the Holy Spirit. It would not so much be with the earthquake, as with the still small voice (1Ki 19:12). ‘The Kingly Rule does not come with outward observation, nor will the say “lo, here” or “lo, there” for behold the Kingly Rule of God is within you (or among you)’ (Luk 17:20-21). The meal represents the potential Kingly Rule of Heaven, the fulfilment of God’s purpose for His own.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Parable of the leaven:
v. 33. Another parable spake He unto them: The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. A very small piece of leaven, or yeast, if set to flour or meal, under the proper conditions, will quickly impart its properties to the entire mass. Jesus purposely takes a large quantity, three satons or seahs being equal to about sixty pints. The yeast may be hidden by the process of kneading, but it will not be long before its strength will become apparent, and the whole mass be leavened. Thus the Word of God, which builds the Kingdom, also exerts its leavening power in case of individuals as well as in that of whole communities and nations. It has the inherent strength to change and to renew the heart and the life of men and to fit them ever more thoroughly to be true members of the kingdom of God.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Mat 13:33. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven The meaning of this parable is commonly thought to be the same as that of the preceding; but there seems to be this difference between them; the parable of the grain of mustard seed represents the smallness of the Gospel in its beginnings, together with its subsequent greatness; whereas the parable of the leaven, which, being hid in a quantity of meal, fermented the whole, expresses in a very lively manner both the nature and strength of the operation of truth upon the mind; for though the doctrines of the Gospel, when first proposed, seemed to be lost in that enormous mass of passions and worldly thoughts with which men’s minds were filled; yet did they then, through the Divine Spirit, most eminentlyexert their influence, converting men’s thoughts and desires intoa conformity to truth. The precise difference, therefore, between this and the foregoing parable is, that the former represents the extensive propagation of the Gospel from the smallest beginning; but this, the nature of the influence of its doctrines upon the minds of particular persons. Our Saviour mentions here three measures of meal in particular, because this seems to be the quantity they usually kneaded at once. See Gen 18:6. Macknight, Beausobre and Lenfant.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Mat 13:33 . ] , one-third of an ephah, a dry measure, and, according to Josephus, Antt. ix. 4. 5, and Jerome on this passage, equivalent to one and a half Roman bushels. It befits the pictorial style of the passage that it should mention a definite quantity of flour; without any special object for doing so, it mentions what appears to be the usual quantity (Gen 18:6 ; Jdg 6:19 ; 1Sa 1:24 ). So much the more arbitrary is Lange’s remark, that three is the number of the spirit. A great deal in the way of allegorizing the three is to be found in the Fathers. According to Theodore of Mopsuestia, they denote the Greeks, Jews, and Samaritans; Augustine, Melanchthon suppose them to signify the heart, the soul, and the spirit.
The parable of the mustard seed is designed to show that the great community, consisting of those who are to participate in the Messianic kingdom, i.e . the true people of God as constituting the body politic of the future kingdom, is destined to develope from a small beginning into a vast multitude, and therefore to grow extensively; , , Euth. Zigabenus; Act 1:15 ; Act 2:41 ; Act 2:47 ; Act 4:4 ; Act 5:14 ; Act 6:7 ; Act 21:20 ; Rom 15:19 ; Rom 11:25 f. The parable of the leaven , on the other hand, is intended to show how the specific influences of the Messiah’s kingdom (Eph 4:4 ff.) gradually penetrate the whole of its future subjects, till by this means the entire mass is brought intensively into that spiritual condition which qualifies it for being admitted into the kingdom.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
DISCOURSE: 1362
LEAVEN HID IN MEAL
Mat 13:33. Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
AS our Lord was not weary of multiplying his parables, so neither should we be of considering them. There is indeed an inexhaustible variety in them; and in those, which most resemble each other, there will be found a rich and instructive diversity. Scarcely any two are more alike than this and the one which precedes it. But that declares the extensive spread of the Gospel from small beginnings, and this its assimilating and transforming efficacy. In tracing the parallel between the Gospel kingdom and leaven hid in the meal, we shall find that they are,
I.
Assimilating in their nature
[Leaven changes not the substance of the meal in which it is hid, but materially alters its qualities: it so impregnates the meal as to transform it, as it were, into its own likeness. Thus does the Gospel affect those who receive it into their hearts: it makes us partakers of a Divine nature [Note: 2Pe 1:4.]. It does not indeed essentially change either the faculties of the soul, or the members of the body; but it communicates to them a new life and power, a new direction and tendency. The Gospel is compared to a mould, into which souls, when melted by Divine grace, are cast [Note: Rom 6:17. This seems to be the proper meaning of , though it is not so expressed in our translation.], and from which they derive a new and heavenly form. Hence, when converted by it, we are said to be renewed after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness [Note: Eph 4:23-24.]; and the more this leaven works within us, the more are we changed into Christs image, from glory to glory [Note: 2Co 3:18.].
The same effect does the Gospel produce also in the world at large: wherever it prevails, it invariably brings men to the same mind, temper, and disposition. All are rendered vile in their own eyes; all are made willing to receive mercy through Christ alone; and all pant after holiness, as the perfection of their nature and the summit of their bliss. There is indeed a great diversity of parties and opinions respecting things of smaller moment; but in the fundamental points all are agreed, and, when upon their knees before God, have the most perfect resemblance to each other. Being joined to the Lord they are one spirit with him, and with each other [Note: 1Co 6:17.]. The same spirit pervades both the Head and all the members. Hence all true Christians of every place and every age are one bread, being impregnated with the same heavenly leaven, and formed into one mass for the service of their common Lord and Master [Note: 1Co 10:17.].]
The resemblance further appears, in that both of them are,
II.
Mysterious in their operation
[How, in the leavening of meal, the one substance acts upon the other so as to produce a fermentation, is a mystery, which the wisest philosophers are not able to explain. The secret energy of the leaven is discoverable in its effects; but the precise mode of its operation cannot be ascertained. The same difficulty occurs in explaining the operation of the Gospel on the hearts of men: its truths have an energy that is not found in any thing else. The word is quick, and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, penetrating the very inmost recesses of the soul [Note: Heb 4:12.]. But how this leaven, as soon as it is put into the heart, begins to work, how it operates with such invincible power, and how it uniformly changes, as well the most guilty and obdurate hearts, as those which seem more likely to yield to its impressionsthis is indeed a mystery. The effects produced by it are evident and undeniable; but how it produces those effects so as to transform the vilest sinner into the very image of God, is known to God alone. On account of this mysterious property, our Lord compared the Gospel to the wind, which, though manifest enough in its effects, is in many respects inexplicable [Note: Joh 3:8.].
If the Gospel be so mysterious in its operation upon individuals, it must of necessity be so too in its operations upon the world at large. We pretend not to say how the simple doctrine of the cross should be made to triumph over all the prejudices and passions of mankind; but, from what we have already seen, we cannot doubt of its final success.]
Lastly, they are both,
III.
Universal in their influence
[Leaven, when it has begun to work, never ceases till it has leavened all the meal. Thus does the Gospel also work in the hearts of men. It changes, not their outward conduct only, but the inward dispositions of the heart. Both body and soul are thoroughly renewed by it; not indeed perfectly as to the degree, but universally in all their members and all their faculties. Their members are made instruments of righteousness [Note: Rom 6:13.], and their faculties are filled with light and holiness. The man is made altogether a new creature; old things are passed away, and all things are become new [Note: 2Co 5:17.].
Thus will the world also be regenerated by the grace of the Gospel. Those who are now sitting in darkness and the shadow of death shall behold its light, and those who are abandoned to the most brutish lusts and ignorance, shall be transformed into the very image of their God. This leaven has long been put into the great mass of mankind: it has already raised a ferment throughout a great part of the world, and in due season shall leaven the whole lump. Though its progress be but slow at present, it shall work, till it has pervaded every soul, and brought all nations to the obedience of faith.]
The parable, thus explained, is of signal use,
1.
To rectify our judgment
[Some think that they have the grace of God, while yet they have never experienced any change in their souls; while others, on account of the commotion raised there, are ready to despond, as though they were utterly abandoned by God. But both of these may see their error, if they will duly consider this parable. To the former we could say, can leaven be put into the meal and no fermentation be produced? much less can the grace of God be in the heart and cause no commotion there. Be assured it will work as it did on the day of Pentecost, and cause you to cry out with earnestness, What shall I do to be saved? Yea more, if it do not continue to operate, if it do not gradually pervade all your powers, and progressively change them into your Saviours image, you may be sure that the leaven of Divine grace has never yet been put into your hearts. To the latter we would say, be not discouraged at the commotion in your soul; but be thankful for it. It is infinitely better to know our guilt and danger than to be lulled asleep in a fatal security. Your disquietude affords reason to hope that God has caused the heavenly leaven to blend itself with your souls. Give it time then to work. If it be of God, it shall stand; and the effects produced shall discover the true cause from whence they sprang. O beg of God that it may work effectually, and that it may never cease till it has made you perfect and complete in all his will.]
2.
To reform our hearts
[The true and uniform tendency of the Gospel has been abundantly manifest. It is incumbent therefore on every one to ask himself. What reason have I to think that this kingdom of God is within me [Note: Luk 17:21.]? What change has it wrought. what assimilating and transforming efficacy has it discovered? There is, it is true, a leaven in the heart of natural men; but it is either a leaven of malice and wickedness [Note: 1Co 5:8.], or a leaven of hypocrisy [Note: Luk 12:1.]: whichever of these it be, it must be purged out, that they may become a new lump [Note: 1Co 5:7.]. Their souls must be impregnated with a very different leaven, even that of grace and truth. Let us then hide the word of God within us, that by its influence we may be renewed [Note: Psa 119:11.]. Let our prayer be, Lord, sanctify me through thy truth [Note: Joh 17:17.]. And may the very God of peace sanctify us wholly, that thus our whole body, soul and spirit, may be preserved blameless unto his heavenly kingdom [Note: 1Th 5:23.]!]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
“Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”
This parable, like the former, is meant to shew what wonderful works are wrought, when the grace of God, like leaven, sanctifieth the whole nature.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 56
A Double Aspect of the Kingdom
Mat 13:33
Let me try to reveal the kingdom of heaven today under two aspects. It has already come before us under the image of the sower, the parable of the tares, the grain of mustard seed, the treasure hid in a field, the pearl of great price by this time surely we ought to be well acquainted with this kingdom of heaven, yet it is the eternal mystery as surely as it is the eternal revelation. Jesus Christ now gives us two more opportunities of knowing still more clearly what his great kingdom is. He condescends to paint two more pictures, a woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal, and a man casting a net into the sea.
“The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” It follows then that the kingdom of heaven, like all other truth, is penetrating in its influence. It goes forward to its work little by little: it never rests it cannot rest until it has covered the whole space of its opportunity. It can never give in all things must go down before it, not violently, but certainly. No great or true idea can be in the human mind without penetrating that mind through and through, and passing on to other minds and completing the same subduing process there.
Not only is it penetrating, but it is gradual in its process and advancement. Great ideas do not seize the mind all at once and rule it with undisputed domination. One by one, little by little, a man here and a man there such is the rule of this gradualness. But it never goes back, though appearances may seem sometimes to indicate the contrary. The movement of truth is always forward. The truth was never so fully, broadly, and benignly established in the human mind as it is this day. You can quote a thousand instances to indicate the badness of the race, its love of error and its pursuit of corruption, and every instance that is quoted may be perfectly right, within its own limits. Nevertheless the kingdom moves, the penetrating influence gradually asserts itself. How long will it continue to assert itself? Till the whole is leavened. The time is fixed in the parable, the date is here marked down in plain figures, if we have eyes to read it. This is a dated promise, and the date is “till the whole is leavened.”
Have we any parallels in our own life that will enable us to seize, more completely, the gracious and generous meaning of this parable? We have a parallel, certainly, in the education of the mind. No mind is educated in one day: education is not something thrust upon a man which he can seize in a moment and make his own without a long transaction. You cannot tell how you were educated: there is no specific day in our human life upon which we can say we were then educated, in any complete or final sense of the term. We may have vivid memories of certain days, but education is not a day’s work, it is not a time work, it is an eternal process. How the light came upon the mind, how the new idea seemed to strike us with instancy and startling suddenness yet when we came carefully to look into it we found that it was the culminating point of a long process, and that but for the process the culmination never could have supervened. Watch your child’s progress in letters, and it will be impossible for you to indicate any time at which he became a scholar. Jesus Christ says, “Just the same in my kingdom: it is not one sermon, one book, one act of prayer, but the repetition of many a process through the whole space of the lifetime. It is not one shower that makes the summer, it is shower upon shower, baptism following baptism in gracious intermission and yet in gracious persistency.” It is thus we grow.
We have a parallel not only in education, but in the deepening and ripening of all great convictions. If you will search into the history of your mind, you will find that some of your convictions have taken a long time to form: there were prejudices to be overcome, there were defects to be made up, there was information to be gained, there were experiments to be conducted for a long time you wondered and hesitated, you oscillated between two opposite points, you knew not to which point you would at last gravitate and where you would “finally” settle, and yet there did come a point in your thinking and deliberation at which you said, “This is right, I see it at length, and for ever I will take my stand here.”
It was so in your appreciation of character, it was so in your decisions of a literary and commercial kind, it was so in the election of your companionships, it was so in the change of your most profound and solemn opinions; it was so, too, in that grandest act of life for which there is no better term than the old word conversion. You remember your being converted, turned round, set in a homeward direction, taken from the wrong road, and placed in the right one: without cant or whine or mocking pretence, you are not ashamed to say that you were converted.
You have a parallel also in the formation of character. No man makes a character in a day. He may destroy a character in a moment, but it takes a lifetime to build one. Many of you are in the time of blossom and of promise, but not of character. Many who now hear me are young, and they, as we say, shape well, but we do not pronounce anything like a final judgment upon them at this time. No young man can have such a character as is possible to old age if that old age has been reached by the right processes. It would be impertinence for thirty to compare itself with sixty or with seventy, if on the part of the elder there has been a lifelong endeavour after truth and purity and perfectness.
“Till the whole was leavened.” Do not say that the right leaven is not in us because the end has not been reached. Judge nothing before the time. You complain of the unripeness and unmellowness, the superficiality of many a young character, and the incompleteness and imperfectness of many a young career. Consider and see how foolish you are in pronouncing such judgment. The leaven may just have been hid in the three measures of meal: the leaven has not yet had time to work: the leaven has been in you for half a century, but it has only been in your son for half a month or half a year it would therefore be unwise on your part to condemn the young because of their imperfectness, incompleteness, immaturity. It is right for youth to be imperfect, but for you at your ripe seventy to be as childish, foolish, worldly as the youth of twenty, that would be double crime, redoubled, multiplied by many an aggravation, and carried up to a point of black blasphemy against every law of growth and right and divinity.
Whilst I thus speak a word on your behalf, young hearers and young Christians, understand that you owe my defensive advocacy wholly to the fact that you are young. That which applies to you today will have no application whatever in twenty years. Then some other preacher must defend some other generation. Do not interrupt the working of this good ministry in your hearts: do not imagine that that ministry has completed itself in your life; you will expose yourself to just and bitter taunting if you give your elders the idea that the leaven of the gospel has worked out its whole influence in your spirit and career at a time when it has just begun to move in penetrating and subduing influence.
The kingdom of heaven is not only penetrating and gradual, it is silent in its ministry. The leaven makes no noise, it works quietly. Do not measure progress by violence: the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation. There is a subtle as well as an ostentatious working. You have got to learn the full scope and value of this most simple fact. A vulgar age talks as if aggressiveness had but one form and one method only as we are making a noise, organising great bodies and forces, publishing programmes in blood-red ink and beating a thousand drums; it is thought that we are making no announcement. My symbol of progress is neither a hammer nor a sword, it is the shining light, the growing seed, the coming summer: no crash of wheels, no blare of trumpets, no fluttering of banners driven by the wind, but silent, solemn, irresistible day, spreading its conquering light over all the spaces of darkness, awaking all living things to labour and to song, and leaving behind it a benediction that shall be no burden. Fussy, fussing little man, trumpeter and drummer, and gifted with making nothing but noises, learn from thy great parabolical Master this day that the kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened a penetrating, gradual, secret, silent process, but a process that never ended till the work was done.
On the other hand, let no man mistake the parable, and by a mischievous perversion of its teaching cover his own indifference and neglect. Do not say that you are silent because there is no virtue in silence itself; you must not be silent only, but penetrating, progressive. Not only is the figure negative, it is positive; quietness may be taken as the negative side, but penetration is the active and positive aspect.
What about your kingdom of heaven is it a thing locked up in a safe, well shut in, deposited within an inner door, on which you turn twenty cunningly-formed keys? It is a kingdom, mayhap, but it is not the kingdom of heaven, it is not the divine thought, it is not the life that cometh down from heaven; that life is not demonstrative, ostentatious, aggressive in any offensive sense of the term, but it is penetrating, subtle in its influence, always moving, always conquering, never resting till the whole is leavened. Be such influence yours and mine.
Take the next parable for one moment: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind.” There was nothing discriminating in the net itself. The Church is a net that holds all sorts of people. Have we no parallels to this idea in our own courses of imperial, civil, and social action? Truly we have a thousand parallels. The kingdom of patriotism is like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind. Do you suppose that all who have gathered themselves together in the people’s House of Parliament are patriots of the divine sort, men who have no ulterior object of a selfish kind, men who have spent thousands upon thousands of pounds to go into Parliament, that they might die as pure martyrs on the altar of their country? Are you no further advanced in your study of human nature than to believe such to be the case? The House of Commons is as a net cast into the sea that has gathered of every kind. There are in all Houses of Parliament, all over the world, noble men, high-spirited patriots, incorruptible spirits that devote themselves to the noblest interests of their country; there are others who, perhaps, were never moved by a noble impulse in any direction, and to whom the country is nothing but a gigantic money-producing machine. Shall we, therefore, revile patriotism, and run down great national institutions, and hurl indiscriminating epithets against forms of civilisation to which we owe so much? It would be not only unwise and rash, but unjust and inexcusable.
The kingdom of philanthropy is also like a net cast into the sea, and which gathered of every kind. Do you suppose that all persons who wear the name of philanthropists are philanthropic in heart? There are men who make a trade of philanthropy; there are those who live upon the charitable dispositions of others; there are men who coin the tears of sympathy into wealth for their own using. On the other hand, there are philanthropists without whom the world would be poor, who have great, broad, soft hands that lay upon the world’s weakness a grip that helps it, and that give to the world’s poverty donations which make it forget its destitution. But because there are all sorts of persons in the kingdom of philanthropy shall we say that there is no philanthropy of a pure and noble sort? He would be a foolish and an unjust man who would bring any such wild accusation against the philanthropic spirit of the age.
Then, again, the kingdom of general society is like a net cast into the sea, which gathered of every kind. When your house-parties gather, do you suppose that every man in the little crowd is a friend of yours, sincere, true, genuine, disinterested? You are not so weak. Do you judge men wholly by their clothes because they have respectable coats, have they therefore respectable characters? Because they have had good schooling in the head, have they had a thorough education in the heart? You know the answer to these searching inquiries. Shall we, therefore; go round and condemn society, and regard all fellowship and communion as an organised lie? We shall stoop to no such folly.
It was inevitable that the kingdom of heaven should draw within itself every kind. The Church has its bad members as well as its good ones. I do not wonder the Church is an excellent lodging. To be in the Church is to look well; to have a pew in church is to begin on the right list; to make a profession of the most popular religion is, at all events, to have a card of introduction to very large sections of honourable society. Shall we, therefore, say there is no kingdom of heaven because of the insincere, the unworthy, and the hypocritical? You would not allow me to say so about patriotism, philanthropy, and social institutions, and therefore, faithful to your own wise reasoning, I must protest against any man’s arising to bring a wild and indiscriminating accusation against what is known as the Christian Church.
Observe, Christ does not hide the fact of a mixture. Christ never hides any ugly facts; Christ makes more of his own failures than any other man could make of them. He cries over them, he drenches them with tears, he lifts up his voice and fills the whole space of the firmament with his moan. He acknowledges that he would, but the cities would not. You will observe, also, that the bad is a testimony and compliment to the good. The children of this world are not unwise in their generation. They know where to cross the stream, they know the best form and attitude to assume in order to attract the friendly attention of the world; they are learned men in their own policies and methods, and if some of them have counterfeited the metal, it was because it was the metal of heaven that it was counterfeited.
And observe that the bad do not succeed in hiding themselves. There is no impenetrable secrecy in character. Every bad fish was found in the net and cast out. We may be in the visible church and not in the invisible. The Church is a mystical body. Not who was baptized with water, but who has been baptized with fire, is the deciding question. Not who preached with infinite eloquence, but who lived with blameless consistency, is the determining, penetrating question. Not who professed, but who carried out, will be the rule of judgment. But observe and here with a sharp knife I cut off the pleasures of a thousand clitics it was the angels that had to perform the work of discrimination and separation, and not the fellow-members of the Church. It was not the good fish that expelled the bad; the angels came forth and severed the wicked from among the just. So shall it be at the end of the age, so shall it be with the tares and the wheat. The question was, “Shall we go and root out the tares?” and the answer was, “No, lest in pulling up the tares ye pull up the wheat also.” It is not my business to find out your badness; it is not your business to find out my corruption. When one or the other becomes so exposed and evident and mischievous as to admit of no dispute and no palliation, I say not that action may not be taken under such conclusive circumstances; but when the question is one of difficulty the decision should be one of charity. I would expel no man unless driven to it by evidence that not only convinced me, but that blinded me by its dazzling light. And why not expel any human soul? Because the good may be larger than the bad in that very soul. It would be easy for me to condemn any man who practises a sin for which I have no liking but what of my own sin? Who are we that we shall judge one another, except nobly and hopefully? We shall be much deceived and disappointed in so doing; still it may be better to be disappointed and deceived in large applications of charitable criticism than to be confirmed, and to have our judgment approved, by some narrow, selfish, unworthy judgment.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
33 Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
Ver. 33. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven ] Which soon diffuseth itself into the whole lump. The word of God is not bound, though the preacher, haply, be in bonds, 2Ti 2:9 , but runs, and is glorified, 2Th 2:14 . In the beginning of Queen Mary’s reign, almost all the prisons in England, saith Mr Fox, “were become right Christian schools and churches.” During the time of Mr Bradford’s imprisonment in the King’s Bench and Counter in the Poultry, he preached twice a day continually, unless sickness hindered him: where also the sacrament was administered. And through his means (the keeper so well did bear with him) such resort of good people was daily at his lecture and ministration of the sacrament, that commonly his chamber was well nigh filled therewith. Concerning the Christian congregation, saith the same author, “in Queen Mary’s time, there were sometimes 40, sometimes 100, sometimes 200 met together. I have heard of one, who being sent to them to take their names, and to spy out their doing, yet in being among them was converted, and cried them all mercy.”
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
33. ] FOURTH PARABLE. THE LEAVEN. Luk 13:20-21 . Difficulties have been raised as to the interpretation of this parable which do not seem to belong to it. It has been questioned whether must not be taken in the sense in which it so often occurs in Scripture, as symbolic of pollution and corruption . See Exo 12:15 , and other enactments of the kind, passim in the law; and ch. Mat 16:6 : 1Co 5:6-7 . And some few have taken it thus, and explained the parable of the progress of corruption and deterioration in the outward visible Church. But then, how is it said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like this leaven? For the construction is not the same as in Mat 13:24 , where the similitude is to the whole course of things related , but answers to , .: so , . Again, if the progress of the Kingdom of Heaven be towards corruption, till the whole is corrupted , surely there is an end of all the blessings and healing influence of the Gospel on the world. It will be seen that such an interpretation cannot for a moment stand, on its own ground; but much less when we connect it with the parable preceding. The two are intimately related. That was of the inherent self-developing power of the Kingdom of Heaven as a seed containing in itself the principle of expansion; this , of the power which it possesses of penetrating and assimilating a foreign mass , till all be taken up into it. And the comparison is not only to the power but to the effect of leaven also, which has its good as well as its bad side, and for that good is used: viz. to make wholesome and fit for use that which would otherwise be heavy and insalubrious. Another striking point of comparison is in the fact that leaven, as used ordinarily, is a piece of the leavened loaf put amongst the new dough ( . Chrys. Hom. xlvi. 2, p. 484) just as the Kingdom of Heaven is the renewal of humanity by the righteous Man Christ Jesus.
The Parable, like the last, has its general and its individual application: (1) in the penetrating of the whole mass of humanity , by degrees, by the influence of the Spirit of God, so strikingly witnessed in the earlier ages by the dropping of heathen customs and worship: in modern times more gradually and secretly advancing, but still to be plainly seen in the various abandonments of criminal and unholy practices (as e.g. in our own time of slavery and duelling, and the increasing abhorrence of war among Christian men), and without doubt in the end to be signally and universally manifested. But this effect again is not to be traced in the establishment or history of so-called Churches, but in the hidden advancement, without observation, of that deep leavening power which works irrespective of human forms and systems. (2) In the transforming power of the ‘new leaven’ on the whole being of individuals. “In fact the Parable does nothing less than set forth to us the mystery of regeneration, both in its first act, which can be but once, as the leaven is but once hidden; and also in the consequent (subsequent?) renewal by the Holy Spirit, which, as the ulterior working of the leaven, is continual and progressive.” (Trench, p. 97.) Some have contended for this as the sole application of the parable; but not, I think, rightly.
As to whether the has any especial meaning, (though I am more and more convinced that such considerations are not always to be passed by as nugatory,) it will hardly be of much consequence here to enquire, seeing that would be every where a matter of course.
has given rise to a technical word , signifying a leavened cake (which however, Passow, Lex. explains to be a cake baked under hot ashes , thus applying the differently: cf. ref. Ezek.). See reff.
, (Aram. ), = the third part of an ephah = , Jos. Antt. ix. 4. 5. Three of these, an ephah, appears to have been the usual quantity prepared for a baking: see Gen 18:6 ; Jdg 6:19 ; 1Sa 1:24 . This being the case, we need not perhaps seek for any symbolical interpretation: though Olsh.’s hint that the body, soul , and spirit may perhaps be here intended can hardly but occur to us, and Stier’s, that “of the three sons of Noah was the whole earth overspread,” is worth recording.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Mat 13:33 . , like in respect of pervasive influence. In Rabbinical theology leaven was used as an emblem of evil desire (Weber, p. 221). Jesus had the courage to use it as an emblem of the best thing in the world, the Kingdom of God coming into the heart of the individual and the community. , hid by the process of kneading. : with the indicative, referring to an actual past occurrence.
Both these parables show how thoroughly Jesus was aware that great things grow from minute beginnings. How different His idea of the coming of the kingdom, from the current one of a glorious, mighty empire coming suddenly, full grown! Instead of that a mustard seed, a little leaven!
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Matthew
LEAVEN
Mat 13:33
How lovingly and meditatively Jesus looked upon homely life, knowing nothing of the differences, the vulgar differences, between the small and great! A poor woman, with her morsel of barm, kneading it up among three measures of meal, in some coarse earthenware pan, stands to Him as representing the whole process of His work in the world. Matthew brings together in this chapter a series of seven parables of the kingdom, possibly spoken at different times, and gathered here into a sequence and series, just as he has done with the great procession of miracles that follows the Sermon on the Mount, and just as, perhaps, he has done with that sermon itself. The two first of the seven deal with the progress of the Gospel in individual minds and the hindrances thereto. Then there follows a pair, of which my text is the second, which deal with the geographical expansion of the kingdom throughout the world, in the parable of the grain of mustard-seed growing into the great herb, and with the inward, penetrating, diffusive influence of the kingdom, working as an assimilating and transforming force in the midst of society.
I do not purpose to enter now upon the wide and difficult question of the relation of the kingdom to the Church. Suffice it to say that the two terms are by no means synonymous, but that, at the same time, inasmuch as a kingdom implies a community of subjects, the churches, in the proportion in which they have assimilated the leaven, and are holding fast by the powers which Christ has lodged within them, are approximate embodiments of the kingdom. The parable, then, suggests to us, in a very striking and impressive form, the function and the obligations of Christian people in the world.
Let me deal, in a purely expository fashion, with the emblem before us.
‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.’ Now of course, leaven is generally in Scripture taken as a symbol of evil or corruption. For example, the preliminary to the Passover Feast was the purging of the houses of the Israelites of every scrap of evil ferment, and the bread which was eaten on that Feast was prescribed to be unleavened. But fermentation works ennobling as well as corruption, and our Lord lays hold upon the other possible use of the metaphor. The parable teaches that the effect of the Gospel, as ministered by, and residing in, the society of men, in whom the will of God is supreme, is to change the heavy lump of dough into light, nutritious bread. There are three or four points suggested by the parable which I could touch upon; and the first of them is that significant disproportion between the apparent magnitude of the dead mass that is to be leavened, and the tiny piece of active energy which is to diffuse itself throughout it.
We get there a glimpse into our Lord’s attitude, measuring Himself against the world and the forces that were in it. He knows that in Him, the sole Representative, at the moment, of the kingdom of heaven upon earth-because in Him, and in Him alone, the divine will was, absolutely and always, supreme-there lie, for the time confined to Him, but never dormant, powers which are adequate to the transformation of humanity from a dead, lumpish mass into an aggregate all-penetrated by a quickening influence, and, if I might so say, fermented with a new life that He will bring. A tremendous conception, and the strange thing about it is that it looks as if the Nazarene peasant’s dream was going to come true! But He was speaking to the men whom He was charging with a delegated task, and to them He says, ‘There are but twelve of you, and you are poor, ignorant men, and you have no resources at your back, but you have Me, and that is enough, and you may be sure that the tiny morsel of yeast will penetrate the whole mass.’ Small beginnings characterise the causes which are destined to great endings; the things that are ushered into the world large, generally grow very little further, and speedily collapse. ‘An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning, but the end shall not be blessed.’ The force which is destined to be worldwide, began with the one Man in Nazareth, and although the measures of meal are three, and the ferment is a scrap, it is sure to permeate and transform the mass.
Therefore, brethren, let us take the encouragement that our Lord here offers. If we are adherents of unpopular causes, if we have to ‘stand alone with two or three,’ do not let us count heads, but measure forces. ‘What everybody says must be true,’ is a cowardly proverb. It may be a correct statement that an absolutely universal opinion is a true opinion, but what most people say is usually false, and what the few say is most generally true. So if we have to front-and if we are true men we shall sometimes have to front-an embattled mass of antagonism, and we be in a miserable minority, never mind! We can say, ‘They that be with us are more than they that be with them.’ If we have anything of the leaven in us, we are mightier than the lump of dough.
But there is another point here, and that is the contact that is necessary between the leaven and the dough. We have passed from the old monastic idea of Religion being seclusion from life. But that mistake dies hard, and there are many very Evangelical and very Protestant-and in their own notions superlatively good-people, who hold a modern analogue of the old monastic idea; and who think that Christian men and women should be very tepidly interested in anything except what they call the preaching of the Gospel, and the saving of men’s souls. Now nobody that knows me, and the trend of my preaching, will charge me with undervaluing either of these things, but these do not exhaust the function of the Church in the world, nor the duty of the Church to society. We have to learn from the metaphor in the parable. The dough is not kept on one shelf and the leaven on another; the bit of leaven is plunged into the heart of the mass, and then the woman kneads the whole up in her pan, and so the influence is spread. We Christians are not doing our duty, nor are we using our capacities, unless we fling ourselves frankly and energetically into all the currents of the national life, commercial, political, municipal, intellectual, and make our influence felt in them all. The ‘salt of the earth’ is to be rubbed into the meat in order to keep it from putrefaction; the leaven is to be kneaded up into the dough in order to raise it. Christian people are to remember that they are here, not for the purpose of isolating themselves, but in order that they may touch life at all points, and at all points bring into contact with earthly life the better life and the principles of Christian morality.
But in this contact with all phases of life and forms of activity, Christian men are to be sure that they take the leaven with them. There are professing Christians that say: ‘Oh! I am not strait-laced and pharisaical. I do not keep myself apart from any movements of humanity. I count nothing that belongs to men alien to a Christian.’ All right! but when you go into these movements, when you go into Parliament, when you become a city Councillor, when you mingle with other men in commerce, when you meet other students in the walks of intellect, do you take your Christianity there, or do you leave it behind? The two things are equally necessary, that Christians should be in all these various spheres of activity, and that they should be there, distinctly, manifestly, and, when need be, avowedly, as Christian men.
Further, there is another thought here, on which I just say one word, and that is the effect of the leaven on the dough.
It is to assimilate, to set up a ferment. And that is what Christianity did when it came into the world, and
‘Cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould.’
But there is one more point on which I touch. I have already anticipated some of what I would say upon it, but I must dwell upon it for a little longer; and that is, the manner in which the leaven is to work.
Here is a morsel of barm in the middle of a lump of dough. It works by contact, touches the particles nearest it, and transforms them into vehicles for the further transmission of influence. Each particle touched by the ferment becomes itself a ferment, and so the process goes on, outwards and ever outwards, till it permeates the whole mass. That is to say, the individual is to become the transmitter of the influence to him who is next him. The individuality of the influence, and the track in which it is to work, viz. upon those in immediate contiguity to the transformed particle which is turned from dough into leaven, are taught us here in this wonderful simile.
Now that carries a very serious and solemn lesson for us all. If you have received, you are able, and you are bound, to transmit this quickening, assimilating, transforming, lightening influence, and you need never complain of a want of objects upon which to exercise it, for the man or woman that is next you is the person that you ought to affect.
Now I have already said, in an earlier portion of these remarks, that some good people, taking an erroneous view of the function and obligations of the Church in the world, would fain keep its work to purely evangelistic effort upon individual souls in presenting to them the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Saviour. But whilst I vehemently protest against the notion that that is the whole function of the Christian Church, I would as vehemently protest against the notion that the so-called social work of the Church can ever be efficiently done except upon the foundation laid of this evangelistic work. First and foremost amongst the ways in which this great obligation of leavening humanity is to be discharged, must ever stand, as I believe, the appeal to the individual conscience and heart, and the presentation to single souls of the great Name in which are stored all the regenerative and quickening impulses that can ever alleviate and bless humanity. So that, first and foremost, I put the preaching of the Gospel, the Gospel of our salvation, by the death and in the life of the Incarnate Son of God.
But then, besides that, let me remind you there are other ways, subsidiary but indispensable ways, in which the Church has to discharge its function; and I put foremost amongst these, what I have already touched upon, and therefore need not dilate on now, the duty of Christians as Christians to take their full share in all the various forms of national life. I need not dwell upon the evils rampant amongst us, which have to be dealt with, and, as I believe, may best if not only, be dealt with, upon Christian principles. Think of drink, lust, gambling, to name but three of them, the hydra-headed serpent that is poisoning the English nation. Now it seems to me to be a deplorable, but a certainly true thing, that not only are these evils not attacked by the Churches as they ought to be, but that to a very large extent the task of attacking them has fallen into the hands of people who have little sympathy with the Church and its doctrines. They are fighting the evils on principles drawn from Jesus Christ, but they are not fighting the evils to the extent that they ought to do, with the Churches alongside. I beseech you, in your various spheres, to see to it that, as far as you can make it so, Christian people take the place that Christ meant them to take in the conflict with the miseries, the sorrows, the sins that honeycomb England to-day, and not to let it be said that the Churches shut themselves up and preach to people, but do not lift a finger to deal with the social evils of the nation.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mat 13:33
33He spoke another parable to them, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”
Mat 13:33 “leaven” In the OT yeast was often a symbol of evil, but here it was an obvious symbol of the pervasiveness and growth of the Kingdom of God. Be careful of attaching one definition or connotation to a word, regardless of its context. Context determines meaning! See Special Topic at Mat 16:6.
“hid” In context this refers to the mixing process. It describes the hiddenness of the kingdom.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
leaven = sour dough. Always used in a bad sense, as meal is in a good sense: therefore the common interpretation as to the Gospel’s improving the world is the exact contrary of the leaven corrupting the whole of the meal. The same is true of the symbol of the “woman”, see below. The Lord mentions three kinds of leaven, all of which were evil in their working: the leaven (1) of the Pharisees = hypocrisy or formalism (Luk 12:1); (2) of the Pharisees and Sadducees = evil doctrine or teaching (Mat 16:11, Mat 16:12); (3) of Herod = political religion, or worldliness (Mar 8:15). Compare also Gen 19:3. 1Co 5:6-8. 1Co 23:14, 1Co 23:16, 1Co 23:23-28.
a woman. A common symbol of evil in the moral or religious spheres. See Zec 5:7, Zec 5:8. Rev 2:20; Rev 17:1-6.
hid. Compare Mat 13:44, and see the Structure. App-145.
leavened = corrupted.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
33.] FOURTH PARABLE. THE LEAVEN. Luk 13:20-21. Difficulties have been raised as to the interpretation of this parable which do not seem to belong to it. It has been questioned whether must not be taken in the sense in which it so often occurs in Scripture, as symbolic of pollution and corruption. See Exo 12:15, and other enactments of the kind, passim in the law; and ch. Mat 16:6 : 1Co 5:6-7. And some few have taken it thus, and explained the parable of the progress of corruption and deterioration in the outward visible Church. But then, how is it said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like this leaven? For the construction is not the same as in Mat 13:24, where the similitude is to the whole course of things related, but answers to , .: so , . Again, if the progress of the Kingdom of Heaven be towards corruption, till the whole is corrupted, surely there is an end of all the blessings and healing influence of the Gospel on the world. It will be seen that such an interpretation cannot for a moment stand, on its own ground; but much less when we connect it with the parable preceding. The two are intimately related. That was of the inherent self-developing power of the Kingdom of Heaven as a seed containing in itself the principle of expansion; this, of the power which it possesses of penetrating and assimilating a foreign mass, till all be taken up into it. And the comparison is not only to the power but to the effect of leaven also, which has its good as well as its bad side, and for that good is used: viz. to make wholesome and fit for use that which would otherwise be heavy and insalubrious. Another striking point of comparison is in the fact that leaven, as used ordinarily, is a piece of the leavened loaf put amongst the new dough-( . Chrys. Hom. xlvi. 2, p. 484)-just as the Kingdom of Heaven is the renewal of humanity by the righteous Man Christ Jesus.
The Parable, like the last, has its general and its individual application: (1) in the penetrating of the whole mass of humanity, by degrees, by the influence of the Spirit of God, so strikingly witnessed in the earlier ages by the dropping of heathen customs and worship:-in modern times more gradually and secretly advancing, but still to be plainly seen in the various abandonments of criminal and unholy practices (as e.g. in our own time of slavery and duelling, and the increasing abhorrence of war among Christian men), and without doubt in the end to be signally and universally manifested. But this effect again is not to be traced in the establishment or history of so-called Churches, but in the hidden advancement, without observation, of that deep leavening power which works irrespective of human forms and systems. (2) In the transforming power of the new leaven on the whole being of individuals. In fact the Parable does nothing less than set forth to us the mystery of regeneration, both in its first act, which can be but once, as the leaven is but once hidden; and also in the consequent (subsequent?) renewal by the Holy Spirit, which, as the ulterior working of the leaven, is continual and progressive. (Trench, p. 97.) Some have contended for this as the sole application of the parable; but not, I think, rightly.
As to whether the has any especial meaning, (though I am more and more convinced that such considerations are not always to be passed by as nugatory,) it will hardly be of much consequence here to enquire, seeing that would be every where a matter of course.
has given rise to a technical word , signifying a leavened cake (which however, Passow, Lex. explains to be a cake baked under hot ashes, thus applying the differently: cf. ref. Ezek.). See reff.
, (Aram. ), = the third part of an ephah = , Jos. Antt. ix. 4. 5. Three of these, an ephah, appears to have been the usual quantity prepared for a baking: see Gen 18:6; Jdg 6:19; 1Sa 1:24. This being the case, we need not perhaps seek for any symbolical interpretation: though Olsh.s hint that the body, soul, and spirit may perhaps be here intended can hardly but occur to us, and Stiers, that of the three sons of Noah was the whole earth overspread, is worth recording.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Mat 13:33. , concealed) The LXX. in Eze 4:12, render the Hebrew [630] (to bake) by (to conceal[631]), whence is derived , a cake.-[632] , three measures) As much as was generally carried by a man, or taken for baking, at once; see Gen 18:6.-, was leavened) I would rather refer this to the propagation, than the corruption of the Church. The leaven is the kingdom of heaven itself, including both the gospel and the apostles.[633]-, the whole) sc. flour.[634] A strong expression. This appears to refer to the whole human race, which consists of three measures, having spread over the earth from the three sons of Noah.[635]
[630] , (1.) prop, to go in a circle. Hence and a round cake.
[631] i.e., in the passage from Ezekiel, to cover with, sc. hot embers; E. V., bake.-(I. B.)
[632] , , , , a loaf baked in the ashes, Hipp. Luc. Dial. Mort. 20, 4, etc. LIDDELL and SCOTT.-(I. B.)
[633] Cujus rationes et evangelium et apostolos complectuntur.-(I. B.)
[634] A little leaven, as in evil, Gal 5:9, so in good, leavens the whole mass.-V. g.
[635] This conjecture will not be thought ridiculous by him who remembers that there may be not merely one reason for a particular circumstance or expression (as the reason already given in the note above on , which see), but several reasons.-E. B.
No necessity, in fact, compels us to take the leaven in a bad sense: hence, as the word does not necessarily imply censure, bad leaven is termed the old leaven in 1Co 5:7.-V. g
(2.) denom. from to bake bread or cake, Ezr 4:12.
and (1Ki 19:6; Eze 4:12), fem, a cake baked under hot cinders, etc., GESENIUS.-(I. B.)
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Another parable
That interpretation of the parable of the Leaven (Mat 13:33) which makes (with variation as to details) the leaven to be the Gospel, introduced into the world (“three measures of meal”) by the church, and working subtly until the world is converted (“till the whole was leavened”) is open to fatal objection:
(1) it does violence to the unvarying symbolical meaning of leaven, and especially to the meaning fixed by our Lord Himself. Mat 16:6-12; Mar 8:15 See “Leaven,” Gen 19:3. (See Scofield “Mat 13:33”).
(2) The implication of a converted world in this age (“till the whole was leavened”), is explicitly contradicted by our Lord’s interpretation of the parables of the Wheat and Tares, and of the Net. Our Lord presents a picture of a partly converted kingdom in an unconverted world; of good fish and bad in the very kingdom-net itself.
(3) The method of the extension of the kingdom is given in the first parable. It is by sowing seed, not by mingling leaven. The symbols have, in Scripture, a meaning fixed by inspired usage. Leaven is the principle of corruption working subtly; is invariably used in a bad sense (see “Leaven,” (See Scofield “Gen 19:3”), and is defined by our Lord as evil doctrine. Mat 16:11; Mat 16:12; Mar 8:15. Meal, on the contrary, was used in one of the sweet- savour offerings Lev 2:1-3. and was food for the priests Lev 6:15-17. A woman, in the bad ethical sense, always symbolizes something out of place, religiously, See Scofield “Zec 5:6”. In Thyatira it was a woman teaching (cf).; Rev 2:20; Rev 17:1-6. Interpreting the parable by these familiar symbols, it constitutes a warning that the true doctrine, given for nourishment of the children of the kingdom; Mat 4:4; 1Ti 4:6; 1Pe 2:2 would be mingled with corrupt and corrupting false doctrine, and that officially, by the apostate church itself; 1Ti 4:1-3; 2Ti 2:17; 2Ti 2:18; 2Ti 4:3; 2Ti 4:4; 2Pe 2:1-3.
4 Leaven
Summary:
(1) Leaven, as a symbolic or typical substance, is always mentioned in the O.T. in an evil sense Gen 19:3, (See Scofield “Gen 19:3”).
(2) The use of the word in the N.T. explains its symbolic meaning. It is “malice and wickedness,” as contrasted with “sincerity and truth” 1Co 5:6-8, it is evil doctrine Mat 16:12 in its three-fold form of Pharisasism, Sadduceeism, Herodianism; Mat 16:6; Mar 8:15. The leaven of the Pharisees was externalism in religion. Mat 23:14; Mat 23:16; Mat 23:23-28 of the Sadducees, scepticism as to the supernatural and as to the Scriptures Mat 22:23; Mat 22:29 of the Herodians, worldliness–a Herod party amongst the Jews; Mat 22:16-21; Mar 3:6.
(3) The use of the word in Mat 13:33 is congruous with its universal meaning.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Another: Mar 13:20
like: Luk 13:21, 1Co 5:6, 1Co 5:7, Gal 5:9
measures: Gr. “A measure containing about a peck and a half, wanting a little more than a pint.”
till: Job 17:9, Pro 4:18, Hos 6:3, Joh 15:2, Joh 16:12, Joh 16:13, Phi 1:6, Phi 1:9, Phi 2:13-15, 1Th 5:23, 1Th 5:24, 2Pe 3:18
Reciprocal: Gen 18:6 – three Lev 7:13 – leavened Lev 23:17 – leaven Num 23:7 – he took 2Sa 13:6 – make me Mat 3:2 – for Mat 13:24 – The kingdom Mat 18:23 – is Mat 20:1 – the kingdom Mar 4:26 – So Joh 3:7 – Ye
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE POWER OF LEAVEN
The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
Mat 13:33
This parable relates to the marvellous increase of the Kingdom of God, declaring its hidden working.
I. Mighty in operation.By the leaven we are to understand the word of the kingdom, which word, in its highest sense, Christ Himself was. The leaven is something apparently of slight account, but at the same time mighty in operation.
II. The Gospel a new power.The leaven which is mingled with the lump is different from it, for the woman took it from elsewhere to mingle it therein; and even such is the Gospel. It was a new and quickening power, cast into the midst of an old and dying world; a centre of life, by the help of which the world might constitute itself anew. This leaven is not merely mingled with, but hidden in, the mass which it renewed. For the true renovation, that which God effects, is ever from the inward to the outward.
III. A prophecy.The promise of the parable has hitherto been realised only in a very imperfect measure; yet we must consider these words, till the whole was leavened, as a prophecy of the final complete triumph of the Gospel, that it will diffuse itself through all nations and purify and ennoble all life.
Archbishop Trench.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF THE GOSPEL
The Gospel like the leaven is
I. An inward power.The leaven had no power until the woman hid it in three measures of meal. So when Gods grace takes possession of a man, it begins to work in the heart; and little by little the thoughts, the feelings, the wishes, the habits, are changed.
II. Gradual in its operation.The whole lump will be leavened, but it takes time. So with the work of grace. Old faults are not cured in a day; the new nature is not perfected at once; the fruits of the Spirit, like many other fruits, are slow in appearing and slow in ripening.
III. An assimilative power.The leavened dough transforms the meal by making it like itself. The yeast plant causes fermentation by the rapid multiplication of itself. Leavened dough produces leavened dough. This process, in which one thing changes another by making it like itself, is called assimilation. The food we eat becomes assimilated, that is, a part of the body which receives it. So the Holy Spirit slowly and gradually but surely transforms the soul into His own likeness.
W. Taylor.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
3:33
The next parable is con-tained in this one verse. The meaning is somewhat the same as the preceding one but from a different standpoint. The nature of leaven is to work its way through the mixture in which it has been deposited. If nothing interferes with its operation it will continue until it converts all of the material into a nature like itself. The leaven of the Gospel was deposited at Jerusalem and it spread its influence until it reached to the extremities of “the whole” world or was carried out according to the great commission (Rom 10:18; Col 1:23).
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
[In three (sata) measures of meal] that is, in an ephah of meal. Exo 16:36; “Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah.” The Chaldee reads, The tenth part of three sata. The LXX reads, The tenth part of three measures. And Rth 2:17; “It was as an ephah of barley.” Where the Targum reads, As it were three sata of barley.
“A seah contains a double hin, six cabes, twenty-four login; a hundred and forty-four eggs.”
Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels
Mat 13:33. Leaven. In those days a piece of the leavened loaf was put amongst the new dough to cause fermentation. This illustrates the power of pervading and assimilating foreign substances. The figure is generally applied to evil influences, but here probably to gracious ones, see below.
A woman. There may be no significance in this part of the figure, though some find in it a reference to the Church.
Took and hid. Two important points: took, from without; and hid, i.e., put it where it seemed lost in the larger mass.
Three measures of meal, probably the usual amount taken for one baking, an ephah (comp. Gen 18:6; Jdg 6:19; 1Sa 1:24). A large mass is to be pervaded and assimilated by the small piece of leaven. Three is not necessarily significant, though referred by some to body, soul, and spirit, by others to the three sons of Noah; the first not applicable historically, the second far-fetched.
Till it was all leavened. The length of time not indicated; the transformation of the whole mass is the one fact stated. This influence triumphs. Leaven. therefore does not represent evil here, as is usually the case. The parables indeed affirm a development of evil side by side with that of the kingdom, but the kingdom itself is like leaven. Leaven is used in a good sense (Lev 23:17); in household economy it has a wholesome influence. The parable indicates that the influence is internal and noiseless, not dependent upon external organization so much as upon quiet personal agency and example, since the leaven transforms the dough lying next, until it is all leavened. The last clause is not to be interpreted absolutely, since an evil development is set forth in the second and seventh parables, and hinted at in the third.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Mat 13:33. Another parable spake he unto them With a view still further to illustrate the progress of the gospel in the world, and of true religion in the soul. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman hid That is, covered up; in three measures of meal Which seems to have been the quantity that they usually baked at once; till the whole was leavened For although the leaven seemed lost for a while in the mass of dough, it secretly wrought through it by a speedy though almost insensible fermentation. Thus shall the gospel spread in the world, and divine grace in the souls of men, influencing and assimilating their spirit and conduct.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
CHAPTER 27
THE LEAVEN
Mat 13:33. He spake another parable to them: The kingdom of the heavens is like unto leaven, which a woman having taken, hid in three measures of meal, until all were leavened. Leaven is zume, which has no meaning but fermentation, corruption. . . .We have no right to depart from the lexical meaning and the uniform Biblical signification of a word. The point of illustration is its progressive and general dissemination throughout the entire lump in which it is deposited. You must not think that the parables all symbolize the kingdom in all its phases. This is not true.
Hence the number of them, some illustrating one phase, and some another. Of course our fallen Mother Eve is the woman here alluded to, in her common maternity of the whole human race. You must remember humanity took on three distinct varieties in the house of Noah-Shem, the red man, who inherited and populated Asia; Ham, the black man, who received Africa in the distribution of Father Noahs universal patrimony; and Japheth, the white man, Europe, which has spread out and taken in America. How do you know that the tri-color distinction there originated?
Shem is a Hebrew word, which means red; Ham, black; and Japheth, white. You see how the leaven i.e., depravity by the mother of humanity, was deposited in these three measures of antediluvian meal, which, in Noahs ark, survived the flood, and O, how it has spread to the ends of the earth! The gospel kingdom is like this leaven in the sense in which God is like the unjust judge (Luke 18), where the similitude is simply at the point of independency; this leaven of heavenly grace, being more contagious than small-pox, going to the ends of the earth, beautifying the elect and revealing the non-elect, and thus preparing the world for the coming of the Lord. Jesus spoke all of these things to the multitudes in parables, and without a parable He was not accustomed to speak to them; in order that the word, having been spoken by the prophet, may be fulfilled, I will open my mouth in parables; I will reveal things which have been hidden from the foundation of the world. (Psa 78:2.) The Old Testament is the gospel in symbolism i.e., blackboard exercises, spread out extensively and elucidated minutely, accommodatory to an uncultured, semibarbaric people, such as Israel, degraded by two hundred and fifteen years in Egyptian slavery. The Gospels of our Lord are in parables, occupying a much higher grade than the Mosaic typology, an intermediate between the rudimentary teaching of the Old Testament and the clear, straight, positive, and unequivocal, doctrinal, experimental, and practical deliverances of the Holy Ghost in the Acts, Epistles, and Revelation.
Then leaving the multitudes, Jesus came into the house. It is highly probable this was Peters house in Capernaum, headquarters of the Great Prophet and his apostles. His disciples came unto Him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. Responding, He said to them, The one sowing the good seed is the Son of man, and the field is the world, and these children of the kingdom are the good seed. He is the True Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (Joh 1:9.)
The omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient Excarnate Christ has been in this world from the beginning, sowing the good seed of the kingdom; His children, the elect, always having been here from the days of Abel. The tares are the sons of the wicked one; the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are the angels. Therefore, as the tares are gathered and burned with fire, so it shall be in the end of this age. The Son of man will send forth His angels, and he will gather out from His kingdom all things which offend and cause iniquity, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Here you see that these tares i.e., the hypocrites are the devils sort of Christians. They are everywhere in the Churches. We are just to let them alone till the end of the age, when the great tribulation will come upon the world, God hackling out of all nations the unsavable material (Dan 7:9), when the world will be divested of hypocrites, and infidels, and all others who have grieved away the Holy Spirit and sealed their doom in endless woe. On the resurrection morn, O how brightly will the risen and transfigured saints shine in the kingdom of God! When Satan shall be bound and cast into the bottomless pit (Revelation 20), and the reprobates all taken out of the world, thus Satan and his armies retreating before the King of kings and Lord of lords, descending in His glory, accompanied by the mighty host of His bridehood, to girdle the globe with the splendors of the Millennial Theocracy.
THE HIDDEN TREASURE
Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like unto a treasure which has been hidden in the field, which a man, having found, concealed, and from his joy goes and sells all things, so many as he has, and purchases that field. The field here is the Church, which God has made the depository of redeeming grace. I was a member of the visible Church before I was converted, and during my regenerated life an enthusiastic amateur of it. It is the province of the Church to get souls converted to God. The man in this parable is a Church member, perhaps born and reared in it, ignorant of experimental salvation. Somehow he gets an inkling that there is something wonderful and glorious in the Church. Then he turns over all of his resources, soul, mind, body, and estate, and buys this field; i.e., he takes the Church for his portion, becoming truly devoted and exceedingly zealous. Very soon he is enabled to appreciate this treasure, which had been hidden in the field until he recently found out that it was there. O how grateful to the Church, and how enthusiastic and enterprising in her behalf!
THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE
Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like unto a mercantile man, seeking goodly pearls, who, having found one pearl of great price, having gone, sold all things which he had, and purchased it. Here is another selling out and new embarkation in mercantile enterprise. You must remember that these two are mercantile parables, the salient facts consisting in buying and selling. In the former parable the man had no treasure i.e., he was destitute of a heavenly investment of any kind; so he sold out his carnal chattels and bought the field i.e., the Church for the sake of the treasure hidden in it, only discernible by spiritually-illuminated eyes. Hence they could live and die all around it, and walk over it, and not know it was there. Now we see the man is a merchant i.e., a Christian in the phraseology of the parables. By some means he ascertains that there is on hand a pearl of great price i.e., of infinite value its beauty and brilliancy eclipsing all others. Now he goes and sells out all he has; and you must remember that now be has an infinitely better stock in trade than he had before he bought the field, and found in it the first blessing; but he makes a complete invoice of all, not only his earthly possessions, but the Church, the membership, the choir, the big pipe-organ, the Official Board, the pastor, presiding elder, bishop, and all the Conferences; the Creed, rites, and ceremonies, putting all on the altar, without any reservation, for time and eternity:
Here I give my all to Thee Friends, and time, and earthly store; Soul and body, Thine to be;
Wholly Thine, for evermore.
The final issue is, that he purchases the pearl of great price, entire sanctification, which a man does not get through the normal administration of the Church, but, forsaking all, must go to God alone, and sink away into Him.
THE DRAG-NET
Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like unto the net, having been cast into the sea, and gathering from every kind. This illustrates the kingdom after the similitude of the visible Church. Which, when it may be filled, drawing it up on the shore, and sitting down, they gathered the good into baskets, but threw the bad away. We are on the constant outlook for our Lord to appear, and take His saints with Him to glory, and turning over to Satan his due, and leaving them for the great tribulation, exposed to the doom of the ungodly. So it will be in the end of the age; i.e., the end of the gospel age, in which we live. The angels will come forth and separate the wicked from the midst of the righteous; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The gathering of the good into baskets is the rapture. (Mat 24:31.) Now we see the angels, girdling the globe with the splendor of their pinions.
A fiery stream issued, and came from before Him; thousands and thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. (Dan 7:10.)
This is the pre-millennial judgment by the Ancient of Days, dethroning all the kings of the earth, preparatory to the glorious coronation of His Son King of kings and Lord of lords. Here you see the Ancient of Days is attended by this innumerable host of angels, who are evidently His subordinates in the administration of the retributive judgments against the wicked, thus hackling them out of the world preparatory to the glorious millennial reign.
DISCIPLESHIP
Jesus says to them, Do you understand all these things? They say to Him, Yea, Lord. And He said to them, Therefore, every scribe, having been discipled into the kingdom of the heavens, is like unto a man who is a landlord, who bringeth out of his treasure things new and old.
Instructed into the kingdom, E.V., is not a literal translation of matheteutheis, which is the passive aorist participle from nathetes, a disciple. Hence it simply means being discipled; i.e., being made a disciple. The Commission reads, Go, disciple all nations. Hence the only way to become a member of the kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God, which are precisely synonymous, is to become a disciple of Christ, which requires a genuine regeneration, wrought by the Holy Spirit, leading on to entire sanctification, which is indispensable to the successful perpetuity of that discipleship. This is true of the scribe i.e., the preacher and every other human being. Now what is the characteristic of every one who has become a member of the Lords kingdom? He has a treasure in his heart which a world of gold can not purchase. Out of his treasure he bringeth forth things both new and old. Now what of the new? Do you not know that the work of the Holy Ghost is always new? Instead of getting old, stale, and dingy, a genuine experience shines brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. So his experience, regeneration and sanctification, is always new. What is old? Why the blessed truth of God. While a spiritual experience is always new, kept bright and sweet by the indwelling Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the Bible is always old, every new doctrine being false. Hence Solomon said, There is nothing new under the sun. And it came to pass, when Jesus finished these parables, He departed thence; i.e., He went away out of Capernaum to embark on the sea.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 33
The idea intended by both these similitudes is, that the Redeemer’s kingdom, though destined to be great and widely extended at last, was to commence by small beginnings, and in a noiseless and unobtrusive manner,–entirely contrary to the prevailing expectations among the Jews.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
The parable of the yeast hidden in meal 13:33 (cf. Luk 13:20-21)
This parable stresses the extensive ultimate condition and consequences of the kingdom that would be out of all proportion to its insignificant beginnings.
"Whereas the parable of the mustard seed answers the question of whether the phase of the kingdom planted by Jesus would survive, the parable of the leavening process answers how." [Note: Idem, "The Parable of the Leavening Process," Bibliotheca Sacra 156:621 (January-March 1999):62.]
Some interpreters have understood yeast as a metaphorical reference to evil. [Note: E.g., Toussaint, Behold the . . ., p. 182; Walvoord, Matthew: . . ., p. 103; and The New Scofield . . ., p. 1015.] However not all uses of yeast in the Old Testament carry this symbolic meaning (e.g., Lev 7:13; Lev 23:15-18). [Note: Cf. Barbieri, p. 51.]
This parable stresses the hidden internal change taking place in the kingdom between its inception in Jesus’ ministry and its final form when the kingdom will cover the earth in the Millennium (cf. Mat 5:13).
"The kingdom of heaven may be initially insignificant, but it is pervasive." [Note: France, The Gospel . . ., p. 528.]
". . . the Kingdom of God, when received within, would seem like leaven hid, but would gradually pervade, assimilate, and transform the whole of our common life." [Note: Edersheim, The Life . . ., 1:594.]
"The manifestation of the presence of the kingdom in some form in the Church age is clearly taught in the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven . . ." [Note: Gerry Breshears, "The Body of Christ: Prophet, Priest, or King?" Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37:1 (March 1994):9.]
This fact led J. Dwight Pentecost to call the inter-advent age the mystery form of the kingdom. [Note: J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come, pp. 142-44.]
The fact that a woman put the leaven in the meal is probably an insignificant detail of the parable as is the amount of flour. Three satas of flour (about three-fifths of a bushel) is the amount of flour that a housewife baked into bread for an average family. [Note: Idem, The Words . . ., p. 218.]
"Practical applications of this parable to present readers can include the following. First, believers should depend on what God is doing through His Spirit in the present age. Second, Christians should be suspicious of any man-made, externally influenced institutional structures that say they are the manifestation of God’s kingdom. Third, believers must be cautious about setting dates and presuming the arrival of the kingdom since the parable gives no hint as to when the permeation ends. Fourth, Jesus’ followers can be confident that regardless of any current perspectives, the kingdom of God has a glorious future." [Note: Bailey, "The Parable . . . Leavening . . .," p. 71.]