Matthew Chapter 13 verse 33 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 33. - The parable of the leaven. Parallel passage: Luke 13:20, 21. The growth of the kingdom regarded in its quiet and secret influence. This is to be ultimately complete and universal. The prophecy is partially fulfilled with every fresh recognition of Christian principles in public opinion, or customs, or laws. For "every thought" shall be brought "captive unto the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5). Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven. This is the only passage where leaven is spoken of with reference to its permeating qualities alone, without any trace of the notion of defilement, which the Paschal and other regulations (Exodus 12:15, 18; Exodus 23:15, 18; Leviticus 2:11) so readily suggested. Even in 1 Corinthians 5:6 and Galatians 5:9 this connotation of evil is not altogether absent. In Talm. Bab., 'Berach.,' 17a, it is used as a figure of the "evil impulse" within us. Hence some have interpreted it in a similar sense here, and have understood our Lord to be referring to the spread of worldliness in the Church (especially after the conversion of Constantine); but (1) this is opposed to the prima facie meaning; (2) it is unreasonable to insist that a symbol must always have the same connotation; (3) it is opposed to the idea of deliberate purpose underlying the action of the woman; . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(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 "leaven"--commonly, as in the Passover ritual, the symbol of malice and wickedness (1Corinthians 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 food--this symbolism is traceable in the leavened loaves that were offered on the day of Pentecost (Leviticus 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 games--in the new reverence for childhood and womanhood, for poverty and sickness--we 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 (Luke 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 man's nature, which the new truth is to permeate and purify, are all in this sense equally legitimate applications.