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
21:33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner 4 who planted a vineyard. 5 He put a fence around it, dug a pit for its winepress, and built a watchtower. Then 6 he leased it to tenant farmers 7 and went on a journey.
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 The term here refers to the owner and manager of a household.
5 sn The vineyard is a figure for Israel in the OT (Isa 5:1-7). The nation and its leaders are the tenants, so the vineyard here may well refer to the promise that resides within the nation. The imagery is like that in Rom 11:11-24.
6 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.
7 sn The leasing of land to tenant farmers was common in this period.