13:33 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with 1 three measures 2 of flour until all the dough had risen.” 3
1 tn Grk “hid in.”
2 sn This measure was a saton, the Greek name for the Hebrew term “seah.” Three of these was a very large quantity of flour, since a saton is a little over 16 pounds (7 kg) of dry measure (or 13.13 liters). So this was over 47 lbs (21 kg) of flour total, enough to feed over a hundred people.
3 tn Grk “it was all leavened.”
sn The parable of the yeast and the dough teaches that the kingdom of God will start small but eventually grow to permeate everything. Jesus’ point was not to be deceived by its seemingly small start, the same point made in the parable of the mustard seed, which preceded this one.
4 tn Grk “was giving them to the disciples, and the disciples to the crowd.”
5 tc The problematic citing of Jeremiah for a text which appears to come from Zechariah has prompted certain scribes to alter it. Codex 22 has Ζαχαρίου (Zacariou, “Zechariah”) while Φ 33 omit the prophet’s name altogether. And codex 21 and the Latin ms l change the prophet’s name to “Isaiah,” in accordance with natural scribal proclivities to alter the text toward the most prominent OT prophet. But unquestionably the name Jeremiah is the wording of the original here, because it is supported by virtually all witnesses and because it is the harder reading. See D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” EBC 8:562-63, for a discussion of the textual and especially hermeneutical problem.
6 tn Grk “the sons of Israel,” an idiom referring to the people of Israel as an ethnic entity (L&N 11.58).
7 sn See the note on the word centurion in Matt 8:5.