The Mileses

Paul and Olena Miles with Grace Abroad Ministries

The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven

Upon the final rejection of the kingdom offer when Israel’s leadership commits the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, Jesus withdraws the offer and postpones the kingdom to a future day. No such postponement had ever been expressed in clear terms prior to this, though details such as the depictions of a suffering Messiah and a conquering Messiah could be clues that the Old Testament prophets only see the hills while the valleys remain unseen. The grammatical-historical reading of the parables in Matt 13 keeps in mind that God has obligated Himself to the promise of a future kingdom, so the consistent dispensationalist brings out of the treasure both old and new and sees these parables as descriptive of the kingdom postponement. Granted, there are variations within dispensationalist interpretations of these parables and there is room for internal dispute, but the views to be rejected are those that turn the postponement parables into inauguration parables that fundamentally redefine the terms of the Messianic Kingdom.

Parable of the Mustard Seed

After delivering the Parable of the Sower (Matt 13:3–9, 18–23) and the Parable of the Tares (Matt 13:24–30),Jesus puts forth another agricultural parable, this time comparing the kingdom to a small mustard seed. In short, the Parable of the Mustard Seed is about the kingdom being offered to Israel, but because of Israel’s rejection, a different Satanic kingdom grows in place of Messiah’s kingdom. This is in contrast to many interpreters who see the tree as God’s kingdom that the Church is tasked with growing. Such interpretations are most popular and are expressed with terms such as “From an insignificant beginning the Lord’s people grow to a mighty kingdom”1 or “A well known saying reminds us that ‘great oaks from little acorns grow.’ This is another way to express this parable.”2

To defend this minority position, attention is first due to the identity of the mustard seed and the description of the tree, before moving on to the significance of the parable in its biblical context.

The Mustard Seed

To understand this parable, it is first necessary to identify the mustard plant in question. The mustard seed is a common object that Jewish teachers refer to:

Hence it is passed into a common proverb, כזרע חרדל “According to the quantity of a grain of mustard:” and כטיפת חרדל “According to the quantity of a little drop of mustard,” very frequently used by the Rabbins, when they would express the smallest thing, or the most diminutive quantity.3

Modern English-speaking tourists may confuse the mustard plant with the tree, Salvadora persica, because its English names include “toothbrush tree, mustard tree, salt bush,”4 perhaps because its “leaf is somewhat bitter and aromatic, with a taste likened to mustard,”5 but it is known in Israel by its transliterated Latin nomenclature, סלוודורה פרסית, and is entirely unrelated to חרדל. The actual mustard plant (from the Brassica or perhaps Sinapis genus of the Brassicaceae family) is not a tree; in fact, the etymology of σίναπι “mustard” (Attic and Ionic Greek have νᾶπυ),6 comes from its smallness and lack of growth, as Athenaeus explains:

for no Attic writer ever used the form σίναπυ, although there is a reason for each form. For νάπυ may be said, as if it were νάφυ, because it has no φύσις, or growth.[For] it is ἀφυὲς and little, like the anchovy, which is called ἀφύη, and is called σίναπυ, because it injures the eyes (σίνεται τοὺς ὦπας) by its smell, as the onion has the name of κρόμμυον, because it makes us wink our eyes (ὅτι τὰς κόρας μύομεν).7

According to ancient Greek sources, the mustard seed “has no φύσις, or growth,” but this is in stark contrast to the plant that actually grew in the parable’s mustard garden.

The Tree

Of the grown plant, Jesus says, “when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree” (Matt 13:32). This tree is a different plant from the original seed of the mustard herb. All three accounts include the detail of birds nesting in the tree (Matt 13:31; Mark 4:32; Luke 13:19), with Mark including καὶ ποιεῖ κλάδους μεγάλους, ὥστε δύνασθαι ὑπὸ τὴν σκιὰν αὐτοῦ τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατασκηνοῦν “and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade” (Mark 4:32). Three key details emerge in this phrase that gives insight about the tree: first, the tree produces large branches; second, the birds can build a nest (κατασκηνόω implies to make a home, rather than just temporary landing, note the σκῆνος root), such that the structural integrity of the branches is sufficient to build a nest; third, they do so ὑπὸ τὴν σκιὰν αὐτοῦ “under[the tree’s] shade,” such that the tree’s branches are big enough to bring an internal shade. This is not at all descriptive of Israel’s white mustard plant (Hebrew חרדל לבן; Latin Sinapis alba), which has a stem described by Flowers In Israel as “Root is a thin taproot, sparsely branching; stem cylindrical; to 60 cm by 30 cm.”8

The Biblical Context

All three accounts of the Parable of the Mustard Seed include other horticultural parables that give insight to the corruptness of the growth. Immediately before the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Mark 4:30–32), Mark has the Parable of the Growing Seed (4:26–29), in which a man watches carefully the development of the grain and harvests it immediately when the grain is ready. The Parable of the Growing Seed begins Οὕτως ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ὡς ἄνθρωπος βάλῃ τὸν σπόρον ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground,” (4:26) thus comparing the kingdom to the farmer, who represents God bringing in the kingdom when it is ready9 (and sleeping in the meantime), but the Parable of the Mustard Seed has ὡς κόκκῳ σινάπεως “It is like a mustard seed” (4:31), which represents the kingdom itself being corrupted. Even if the tree growing in the mustard garden was a monstrosity of a mustard plant (as countless interpreters say), it shows a lack of attentiveness on the gardener’s part in contrast to the gardener who harvests at the proper time. It is more likely that Mark uses the first parable to show that God will bring in the kingdom at the end of the tribulation when Israel is ready, but the mustard seed shows that in the meantime a giant corrupt kingdom will grow like a weed instead of the Messianic Kingdom. Luke is even more explicit. Chapter 12 begins with a warning of hypocrisy and the “leaven of the Pharisees” (Luke 12:1), then warns against the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (12:8–12), and tells them to discern the time (12:54–56). “They refused to see that prophecies were being fulfilled around them which were bound up with the coming of Messiah, and that Messiah Himself must be in the midst of them.”10 Jesus continues to urge them to repentance in accordance with the kingdom offer (12:57–13:5), which sets the context for the Parable of the Fig Tree, in which He warns that if the fig tree does not bear fruit (meaning, if Israel does not repent), then it will be cut down (that is, the kingdom offer will be withdrawn). The Parable of the Fig Tree sets the horticultural mood for the corruption of the mustard seed, but between the two parables, Luke records an attack from the Pharisees over healing on the Sabbath (12:10–17), which parallels Matthew’s account in Matt 12:1–21. Having established the requirement of repentance, the contemporary controversies about the Messiah, and the consequence for failure, Luke’s context is perfectly aligned to present the truth that the kingdom is like a mustard seed in that Jesus offers it contingent upon repentance, but in light of the contemporary controversies it is rejected, and as a consequence the kingdom is postponed and another takes its place in the meantime.

Describing a kingdom as a tree with birds in the branches is reminiscent of Ezek 31:1–14,11 when Assyria (אַשּׁוּר vs. 3) is compared to a cedar with birds in its branches that will be cut down. The tree here represents the Assyrian kingdom and the birds “are figures for the people which passed under Assyrian domination,”12 though the birds in the Parable of the Mustard Seed could be affiliated with the birds of the Parable of the Sower, that is, Satan. The coming tribulation kingdom is a Satanic government as “The Great Tribulation is Satan’s supreme opportunity to prove God false. If he can simply eliminate from earth’s inhabitants all Jews who believe in Jesus, God will have no one among men to whom the kingdom of God can be given.”13 Through the prophet Isaiah, God announces, “That I will break the Assyrian[אַשּׁוּר] in My land” (Isaiah 14:25) and likewise Micah has “When the Assyrian[אַשּׁוּר] comes into our land… we will raise against him… They shall waste with the sword the land of Assyria[וְרָעוּ אֶת־אֶ֤רֶץ אַשּׁוּר]…Thus He shall deliver us from the Assyrian[מֵֽאַשּׁוּר]” (Micah 5:5–6). Thomas Constable comments:

“This” Redeemer would also be responsible for—and the source of—the “peace” that God promised Israel that she would experience (in the Millennium; cf. 4:3–5; Eph. 2:14)…

Assyria was the main threat to the Israelites in Micah’s day, but this prophecy predicts Israel’s victory over the Assyrians. This did not happen in the history of Israel; Assyria defeated the Northern Kingdom and most of the Southern Kingdom. Thus, this prophecy must be a continuation of the vision of the distant future that God gave Micah (4:1—5:5a).14

While the tree with birds’ nests is predictive of dark days in Israel’s future, it also conjures imagery from prophecies of Christ’s glorious conquest and establishment of the Messianic Kingdom. This interpretation is significantly more Jewish than the notion that the Church is a mustard tree spiritual kingdom that grows in a positive sense.

The kingdom offer movement in the life of Christ is indeed a tiny mustard seed. Few people were willing to accept it, so as a result it did not grow. Instead, an evil kingdom stands in its place15 and the satanic birds that prevent people from believing unto salvation are able to build their nests in this tree’s branches. This kingdom’s culmination will come during the tribulation period and will end when Jesus returns to establish His kingdom.

Parable of the Leaven

The parable of the leaven has caused problems for many interpreters who come with the presupposition that the kingdom is now manifest in the Church or somehow related to the proclamation of the Gospel. Alford explains the problem:

Difficulties have been raised as to the interpretation of the parable which do not seem to belong to it. It has been questioned whether ζύμη must not be taken in the sense in which it so often occurs in Scripture, as symbolic of pollutions and corruptions… But then, how is it said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like this leaven? …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.16

To avoid relating the kingdom with corruption, many expositors skip the Jewish implication of leaven and simply take it as a growing effect. For example, David Hill has “From hidden beginnings in Jesus’ ministry, which must have caused many to be impatient, God causes his Kingdom to grow”17 and “The verb hid is important (cf. 13:35 and 44): the Kingdom was inaugurated without display or pomp; its silent, secret character must have surprised those who were zealously impatient for its expected manifestation in power and glory.”18 Such interpretations are neither coherent with the biblical usage of “leaven” nor Church history. At one point, Darby writes, “He knows that leaven everywhere else is the symbol of that which is bad. Has not the history of Christendom supplied that which fully corresponds to such a symbol?”19 A more plain reading would accept the leaven as an evil influence within a worldly kingdom, which happens to align well with the Parable of the Mustard Seed, which proceeds the Parable of the Leaven in every account (Matt 13:31–32; Mark 4:30–32; Luke 13:18–19).

Indeed, Jesus even uses the term “the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” to mean “the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Sadducees” a few chapters later in Matthew (Matt 16:3, 5–12) and Luke records Jesus saying “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1) in the chapter prior to his record of the Parable of the Leaven. He does not call their hypocrisy, “leaven,” because it is growing, but rather because He wants to attach something negative to His warning to “Take heed and beware” (Matt 16:6). This hypocrisy is rooted in aberrant doctrine, so as Robert Govett’s writes likewise, “The Leaven manifests the false doctrine which accompanies this worldly system, and which will finally leaven all national establishments.”20 William Kelly writes from a similar perspective:

Again, whenever “leaven” occurs symbolically in the word of God, it is never employed save to characterize corruption which tends to work actively and spread; so that it must not be assumed to be the extension of the gospel. The meaning, I doubt not, is a system of doctrine which fills and gives its tone to a certain given mass of men. On the other hand, the gospel is the seed — the incorruptible seed — of life, as being God’s testimony to Christ and His work. Leaven has nowhere anything to do with Christ or giving life, but expressly the contrary. Hence there is not the smallest analogy between the action of leaven and the reception of life in Christ through the gospel. I believe that the leaven here sets forth the propagandism of dogmas and decrees, after that Christendom became a great power in the earth (answering to the tree — which was the case, historically, in the time of Constantine the Great). We know that the result of this was an awful departure from the truth. When Christianity grew into respectability in the world, instead of being persecuted and a reproach, crowds of men were brought in. A whole army was baptized at the word of command. Now the sword was used to defend or enforce Christianity.21

Even Francis Wright Beare, a nondispensationalist, in a commentary by W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., also nondispensationalists, proposes that Matthew 13:33 “was originally a warning against the dangerous contagion of evil. It would be understood as an illustration of the warning against ‘the leaven of the Pharisees.’”22

For the parable of the leaven to speak of evil and corruption would flow naturally with the rest of the parables. Haldeman has a slightly different interpretation of the Parable of the Mustard Seed, but agrees that the leaven is part of an ongoing theme within the parables:

Beginning with the parable of the sower, indicating, as it does, a not universal reception of the Gospel, going on with the story of the tares, presenting to us the introduction of a false and corrupt profession of Christianity, and a world divided between God and Satan till the end, and closing with the mustard tree, showing us the birds which our Lord uses as a symbol of evil and uncleanness nesting in and finding shelter in the professed kingdom of heaven in this age, are we warranted to expect—would we have any legitimate ground on which to base our expectation—that the next parable would reverse the whole course of the previous teaching, and announce to us the universal reception of the Gospel? The answer to such a question must be in the negative. No such expectation is or could be warranted. And when it is added that the symbol on which such an interpretation relies is the known and confessed symbol in every other scripture to set forth corruption and sin, such an exegesis of the parable is ruled out of court.23

The Parable of the Leaven essentially repeats the Parable of the Mustard Seed in that it proclaims a wicked kingdom that grows in the interim period. The Parable of the Mustard Seed is clear in its distinction between the seed and the tree, but it is restricted in that the birds cannot technically nest in the tree until its branches are ready. “It was not the leaven alone that illustrated the kingdom of heaven, but the whole of the parable… The leaven was hidden in the meal, and as a type of evil, represents the way in which Satan’s subtle forces militate against the truth.”24 The Parable of the Leaven clarifies that there is not a time when evil is absent and it will continue to grow and corrupt the entire world.

  1. George DeHoff, Dehoff’s Commentary (Murfreesboro, TN: 1981), 5.67.
  2. Landrum P. Leavell, “Mark” in The Teacher’s Bible Commentary, H. Franklin Paschall and Herschel H. Hobbs, eds. (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1972), 622.
  3. John Lightfoot, Horæ Hebraicæ et Talmudicæ in The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot, John Rogers Pitman, ed., (London: J.F. Dove, 1823), vol XI, 206.
  4. Agroforestry Database 4.0 (Orwa et al.2009), 1. Available online at http://old.worldagroforestry.org/treedb2/AFTPDFS/Salvadora_persica.PDF (accessed November 30, 2019).
  5. Ibid., 3.
  6. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon 9th edition, Sir Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie, eds.(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), σίναπι. Available online here.
  7. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 9.2. Available online here.
  8. Martha Modzelevich, “Sinapis alba, White mustard, Salad mustard, Hebrew: חרדל לבן, Arabic: خردل اصفر” FlowersInIsrael.com. Available online here.
  9. “But the circumstance that, when the fruit offers itself to him, the man at once applies the sickle, shows anew that his previous inaction was not owing to want of concern about the grain, but was prescribed to him by the nature of the case. When the time comes for him to intervene, he acts without delay.” Siegfried Goebel, The Parables of Jesus: A Methodical Exposition, J.S. Banks, trans. (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1883), 86.
  10. J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts On The Gospels: Luke 11–24 (Grand Rapids, MI: 1977 Reprint), 101–102.
  11. Similar imagery also occurs in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan 4:10–18) to make a similar point, as the tree with birds represents his kingdom (4:19–22) on the verge of humiliation (4:23–33). Nebuchadnezzar’s situation is unique as his includes restoration. “A cut-down tree was a symbol of judgment, but the protected stump (the bands of iron and bronze) suggests a future for the tree (Daniel 4:26). The vision was a message of judgment and restoration.” David Jeremiah, Agents of Babylon: What the Prophecies of Daniel Tell Us about the End of Days, Study Guide (San Diego, CA: Turning Point, 2015), 54.
  12. Solomon Fisch, Soncino Books of the Bible: Ezekiel, second impression, A. Cohen, general editor, (London: Soncino Press: 1960), 209.
  13. Zane Hodges, Power to Make War: The Career of the Assyrian Who Will Rule the World (Dallas, TX: Redención Viva, 1995), 66.
  14. Thomas Constable, Constable’s Notes on Micah, 2019 ed., 49. Available online at https://planobiblechapel.org/tcon/notes/pdf/micah.pdf (accessed December 2, 2019).
  15. A similar interpretation, which is also consistent with a full kingdom postponement, holds that the mustard tree is the corruption of the Church. See Herbert Lockyer, All the Parables of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1963), 184–189.
  16. Henry Alford, The Greek Testament, vol 1 (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1863), 144.
  17. David Hill, The Gospel of Matthew in New Century Bible Commentary, Ronald E. Clements and Matthew Black, eds. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1972), 233.
  18. Ibid., 234.
  19. John Nelson Darby, The Gospel According to Matthew, ch. 13. Available online here.
  20. Robert Govett, The Jews, The Gentiles, and the Church of God, in the Gospel of Matthew (Miami Springs, FL: Schoettle Publishing Co., Inc., 1989), 26.
  21. William Kelly, Lectures on the Gospel of Matthew, ch. 13. Available online here.
  22. The precise citation is not given, but presumably this is intended to be Francis Wright Beare, The Gospel according to Matthew (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 309 cited by W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), vol. ii, 422.
  23. I. M. Haldeman, How to Study the Bible, The Second Coming and Other Expositions, 4th ed. (New York: Charles C. Cook, 1904), 461.
  24. Herbert Lockyer, All the Parables of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1963), 190.