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Matthew13:31–32

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

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Matthew 13:31–32 — The Parable of the Mustard Seed. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

31

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in his field.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

parethēken autois Allēn parabolēn legōn hē basileia tōn ouranōn estin Homoia sinapeōs kokkō hon anthrōpos labōn espeiren en autou tō agrō

Word by word21 · parsed
παρέθηκενparethēkenHe put beforeG3908
√ παρατίθημι — to place alongside, iVerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
paratithēmi: to place alongside The verb of setting something before a guest. Jesus does not explain this parable or the next one; Ellicott observes that the two are “left without an explanation, as though to train the disciples in the art of interpreting for themselves.” The word itself already concedes that much: what is placed alongside must be picked up.
αὐτοῖςautoisthemG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounDative Masculine 3rd Person Plural
ἌλληνAllēnanotherG243
√ ἄλλος — "else," iAdjectiveAccusative Feminine Singular
παραβολὴνparabolēnparableG3850
√ παραβολή — a similitude ("parable"), iNounAccusative Feminine Singular
parabolē: a similitude, a parable Literally a throwing-alongside. Within Matthew 13 this is the fourth in a chain (13:24 uses the same noun with the same adjective Ἄλλην), and Benson divides the chain at exactly this seam: the first two parables concern unfruitful hearers, these two concern those who bear fruit.
λέγωνlegōnG3004
√ λέγω — properly, to "lay" forth, iVerbPresent Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Singular
ἡhēTheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
βασιλείαbasileiakingdomG932
√ βασιλεία — properly, royalty, iNounNominative Feminine Singular
basileia: properly, royalty Strong's root sense is not territory but reign, royal rule. The commentators split over its referent and do so openly: Barnes allows “either piety in a renewed heart or the church”; Gill reads it as the Gospel church state with its ministry and ordinances; Benson takes it as both the dispensation in the world and the kingdom of grace in the soul, “especially the former.” The parable is elastic enough to hold all three, and none of them can be proved from the word alone.
τῶνtōnofG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Masculine Plural
οὐρανῶνouranōnheavenG3772
√ οὐρανός — the skyNounGenitive Masculine Plural
ouranos: the sky Plural here, “the heavens.” Keep the word in view: it returns in v. 32 for the birds. The same sky that names the kingdom names the creatures who come to lodge in it.
ἐστὶνestinisG1510
√ εἰμί — I exist (used only when emphatic)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
ὉμοίαHomoialikeG3664
√ ὅμοιος — similar (in appearance or character)AdjectiveNominative Feminine Singular
σινάπεωςsinapeōsa mustardG4615
√ σίναπι — mustard (the plant)NounGenitive Neuter Singular
sinapi: mustard (the plant) A rare noun, occurring in only five verses of the New Testament, and every one of them is this proverb or its cousin (Matthew 17:20, Luke 17:6, Mark 4:31, Luke 13:19). Ellicott and Pulpit disagree about the botany: Ellicott doubts that Sinapis nigra ever becomes anything tree-like and points to Salvadora persica, while Pulpit quotes Tristram for black mustard itself growing in the Jordan valley “as tall as a horse and its rider.” The exegesis does not depend on settling this.
κόκκῳkokkōseedG2848
√ κόκκος — a kernel of seedNounDative Masculine Singular
kokkos: a kernel of seed Not the generic σπέρμα of v. 32 but the single grain, the individual kernel. This is the rare word (seven verses) that carries the whole comparison, and the same word John puts on Jesus' lips for the grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies (John 12:24), and that Paul uses for the bare grain that is sown before it is clothed with a body (1 Corinthians 15:37).
ὃνhonthatG3739
√ ὅς — the relatively (sometimes demonstrative) pronoun, who, which, what, thatPersonal / Relative PronounAccusative Masculine Singular
ἄνθρωποςanthrōposa manG444
√ ἄνθρωπος — from G3700 (ὀπτάνομαι))NounNominative Masculine Singular
anthrōpos: a man Anarthrous and unidentified. Ellicott makes the identification the Church has generally made: “Here again the sower is the Son of Man.” Gill says the same. The text itself does not say it; the identification is drawn from the sower parables around it in this chapter, and is an inference, though an old one.
λαβὼνlabōntookG2983
√ λαμβάνω — while G138 (αἱρέομαι) is more violent, to seize or remove))VerbAorist Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Singular
lambanō: to take, to receive An aorist participle, not a second main verb. Pulpit reads it as deliberate: the insertion of λαβών excludes the idea of a chance sowing. The reality being described, he argues from Titus 1:3 and 1 Peter 1:20, was the result of long and settled purpose.
ἔσπειρενespeiren[and] plantedG4687
√ σπείρω — to scatter, iVerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
speirō: to scatter, to sow The controlling verb of Matthew 13, shared with 13:24 and with the sower of 13:3. The whole chapter is an argument about what happens to sown things: some devoured, some choked, some multiplied, and here, one grain buried and forgotten until it towers.
ἐνeninG1722
√ ἐν — "in," at, (up-)on, by, etcPreposition
αὐτοῦautouhisG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Masculine 3rd Person Singular
τῷtōG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Masculine Singular
ἀγρῷagrōfieldG68
√ ἀγρός — a field (as a drive for cattle)NounDative Masculine Singular
agros: a field Gill takes the field as “the world, or his church throughout the world,” and Matthew 13:38 inside this very chapter has already glossed the field as the world. Cambridge notes Luke's variant, “his own garden,” which he reads as pointing to the land of Israel. Two evangelists, two scopes: one universal, one national. Neither reading is forced on the other.
32

Although it is the smallest of all seeds, yet it grows into the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

men ho estin mikroteron pantōn tōn spermatōn de hotan auxēthē estin meizon tōn lachanōn kai ginetai dendron hōste ta peteina tou ouranou elthein kai kataskēnoun en autou tois kladois

Word by word29 · parsed
μένmenAlthoughG3303
√ μέν — properly, indicative of affirmation or concession (in fact)Conjunction
men: indicative of affirmation or concession The concessive half of a men ... de pair with v. 32's δὲ. The Greek concedes the smallness before it asserts the greatness.
ὃhoitG3739
√ ὅς — the relatively (sometimes demonstrative) pronoun, who, which, what, thatPersonal / Relative PronounNominative Neuter Singular
ἐστινestinisG1510
√ εἰμί — I exist (used only when emphatic)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
μικρότερονmikroteron[the] smallestG3398
√ μικρός — small (in size, quantity, number or (figuratively) dignity)AdjectiveNominative Neuter SingularComparative
mikros: small in size, quantity, number or dignity Comparative in form. Strong's root covers smallness of dignity as well as of size, which is where the commentators land: Gill spends his whole note on the contemptibility of the Gospel's author, subject, preachers and circumstances, not on the diameter of a seed. JFB says flatly that “least of all seeds” is meant “not absolutely, but popularly and proverbially.”
πάντωνpantōnof allG3956
√ πᾶς — all, any, every, the wholeAdjectiveGenitive Neuter Plural
τῶνtōnG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Neuter Plural
σπερμάτωνspermatōnseedsG4690
√ σπέρμα — something sown, iNounGenitive Neuter Plural
sperma: something sown The generic word for sown seed, over against the particular κόκκος of v. 31. Benson bounds the claim to “all those seeds with which the people of Judea were then acquainted,” and Pulpit points to the proverbial use of mustard for something very small recorded in the Talmuds.
δὲdeyetG1161
√ δέ — but, and, etcConjunction
ὅτανhotanG3752
√ ὅταν — whenever (implying hypothesis or more or less uncertainty)Conjunction
αὐξηθῇauxēthēit grows intoG837
√ αὐξάνω — to grow ("wax"), iVerbAorist Subjunctive Passive3rd Person Singular
auxanō: to grow, to wax Aorist subjunctive passive, the theological pivot of the unit. The seed does not grow itself; it is grown. Matthew leaves the agent unnamed, and Henry points to the companion parable at Mark 4:26-29, where the growth likewise proceeds without the sower's understanding of it. Henry names the unnamed agent from elsewhere: the word “was made powerful by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, who works, and none can hinder.” That is an inference brought to the grammar, but the passive invites it.
ἐστὶνestin. . .G1510
√ εἰμί — I exist (used only when emphatic)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
μεῖζονmeizonthe largestG3173
√ μέγας — big (literally or figuratively, in a very wide application)AdjectiveNominative Neuter SingularComparative
megas: big, literally or figuratively Comparative, paired with μικρότερον. The parable's whole architecture is this pair: the same object measured twice, against two different classes, with two opposite results. Neither measurement is absolute; both are relative to what stands beside it.
τῶνtōnofG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Neuter Plural
λαχάνωνlachanōngarden plantsG3001
√ λάχανον — a vegetableNounGenitive Neuter Plural
lachanon: a vegetable A rare noun, only four verses in the New Testament, and it means kitchen-garden produce (Romans 14:2, Luke 11:42). Pulpit notes the classification is technical: greater than the things usually called λάχανα. Gill quotes the rabbinic rule that mustard is not planted in a field of fruits but in a field of herbs, which is why even a tree-sized mustard was still reckoned among the herbs.
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
γίνεταιginetaibecomesG1096
√ γίνομαι — to cause to be ("gen"-erate), iVerbPresent Indicative Middle or Passive3rd Person Singular
ginomai: to cause to be, to generate The verb of becoming. The plant does not merely get bigger within its class; it crosses out of it. An herb that becomes a δένδρον has broken the category it was sown into.
δένδρονdendrona treeG1186
√ δένδρον — a treeNounNominative Neuter Singular
dendron: a tree Benson's defence is botanical and careful: the term tree is applied by botanists to plants of the larger kind which reach the size of shrubs, and he cites Lightfoot and Buxtorf on rabbinic mustard-trees. Cambridge is more restrained and warns that Luke's “waxed a great tree” “must not be pressed.” Two sound commentators, two levels of confidence, and the parable works at either.
ὥστεhōsteso thatG5620
√ ὥστε — so too, iConjunction
τὰtatheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Neuter Plural
πετεινὰpeteinabirdsG4071
√ πετεινόν — a flying animal, iNounAccusative Neuter Plural
peteinon: a flying animal The birds of 13:4 and 13:19, earlier in this same chapter, were the devourers of the sown word. Here they are not. Both Ellicott and Pulpit say so explicitly, Ellicott calling them “no longer, as before, the emblems of evil,” Pulpit insisting there is “not necessarily any connotation of evil about these.” A single image reverses its value inside one chapter, which is itself a warning against fixing parable symbols into a dictionary.
τοῦtouof theG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Masculine Singular
οὐρανοῦouranouairG3772
√ οὐρανός — the skyNounGenitive Masculine Singular
ouranos: the sky The same noun as v. 31's “kingdom of the heavens,” here in the singular and attached to the birds. The kingdom named for heaven ends up housing heaven's own homeless creatures.
ἐλθεῖνeltheincomeG2064
√ ἔρχομαι — to come or go (in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively)VerbAorist Infinitive Active
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
κατασκηνοῦνkataskēnounnestG2681
√ κατασκηνόω — to camp down, iVerbPresent Infinitive Active
kataskēnoō: to camp down A rare verb, four verses in the New Testament. It is not the word for building a nest but for pitching a tent, a temporary shelter under someone else's roof. Cambridge reaches for the booths of tabernacles. JFB, following Trench, floats the further suggestion that the birds come for food as well as shelter, and asks, with visible caution, whether that is straining the parable. The caution is warranted and worth keeping.
ἐνeninG1722
√ ἐν — "in," at, (up-)on, by, etcPreposition
αὐτοῦautouitsG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Neuter 3rd Person Singular
τοῖςtoisG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleDative Masculine Plural
κλάδοιςkladoisbranchesG2798
√ κλάδος — a twig or bough (as if broken off)NounDative Masculine Plural
klados: a twig or bough, as if broken off Strong's root carries the sense of a branch broken off, which is where Paul's olive-tree image in Romans 11 gets its force. Nothing in this parable makes that connection; the branches here are only the tree's reach. But the same noun stands in Matthew 21:8 and in the fig-tree parable of Matthew 24:32, so it is a word Matthew keeps near the kingdom.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The dish set before them — 13:31

⚙ The unit opens with a serving verb. παρέθηκεν (G3908, “to place alongside”) is what a host does when he sets food in front of a guest, and Ellicott notices what follows from it: these two parables are “left without an explanation, as though to train the disciples in the art of interpreting for themselves.” He adds that the disciples appear to have managed, since they ask about the Tares and ask nothing about this. Benson locates the seam exactly here: the two earlier parables concerned unfruitful hearers, these two concern those who bear fruit. Then the comparison itself. Ὁμοία takes a dative, so the Greek says the kingdom is like to a grain; and the noun chosen is not the general σπέρμα but κόκκος (G2848), the single kernel, a word standing in only seven New Testament verses. Gill will not narrow the referent, and lists three: “either the Gospel, or the people of God, or the grace of God in them.” Ellicott narrows it where Gill would not, to “the Christian society, the Church.” Both are reading beyond what the sentence states, and both say so in their own way. What the sentence does state is the agency: Pulpit reads the participle λαβών as deliberately inserted “to exclude the idea of a chance sowing,” and Cambridge observes that Mark, by contrast, “does not name an agent,” while Luke has a garden rather than a field. Three evangelists, three degrees of focus on the one who sows.

ii. Two comparatives and a passive — 13:32

⚙ Verse 32 is built of two comparatives with a single passive verb hinged between them. μικρότερον is comparative, not superlative: “less than all seeds,” as Pulpit renders it with the Revised Version, and μεῖζον is comparative too, which Ellicott insists on: “More literally, greater than the herbs, i.e., belonging to a higher order of vegetation.” English superlatives flatten both hinges. The commentators are unanimous that the smallness is proverbial rather than botanical, and each bounds it differently: JFB says “not absolutely, but popularly and proverbially, as in Lu 17:6”; Cambridge says “least in proportion to the plant that springs from the seed”; Gill concedes plainly that “there are seeds lesser than this” and restricts the claim to seeds “commonly known in Judea”; Benson quotes Doddridge to the same effect and points to Matthew 17:20 for the proverb. Pulpit finds the proverb itself in the Talmuds. This is a rare case of ten sources agreeing, and the agreement is a concession, not a defence.

⚙ Between the two comparatives stands αὐξηθῇ (G837), aorist subjunctive passive: not “it grows” but “it has been made to grow.” No agent is named. That grammatical fact is the quiet centre of the parable, and it is what Geneva supplies theologically: “God begins his kingdom with very small beginnings so that by its growing (even though men neither hope nor expect it to) his mighty power and working may be displayed all the more.” Henry, reading the same growth through the companion parable of the leaven, says the word “was made powerful by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, who works, and none can hinder.” Then the plant crosses a category: γίνεται δένδρον, it becomes a tree. Benson defends the botany from Lightfoot and Buxtorf and the rabbis; Barnes reports Thomson's mustard “as tall as the horse and his rider” on the plain of Akkar; Cambridge, more cautious, warns that Luke's “waxed a great tree” “must not be pressed.” We follow Cambridge's caution and note that the parable's force survives either verdict.

iii. The birds that lodge — 13:32

⚙ The parable ends in a result clause, ὥστε with two infinitives, and the last of them is the rare κατασκηνοῦν (G2681, four verses in all), which Cambridge glosses “literally dwell in tents” and ties to the leafy huts of tabernacles. The birds themselves are the interpretive test. Earlier in this same chapter, at 13:4 and 13:19, τὰ πετεινὰ devoured the sown word. Here Ellicott says they are “no longer, as before, the emblems of evil,” and Pulpit says there is “not necessarily any connotation of evil about these; the thought is simply that those who are naturally outsiders are glad to come under cover of this tree.” Ellicott reads them as “the systems of thought, institutions, and the like, of other races.” JFB reports Trench's further suggestion about shelter, repose and food, and leaves it as an open question rather than a claim; we keep the question open too. Pulpit alone among these commentators presses the political application and its parody, warning against a kingdom whose growth is measured by nations submitting “to the dictates of claimants to spiritual superiority.” That is a nineteenth-century Protestant edge on an ancient image, and the reader should see it as such.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ Our own fallible reading, offered to be tested. The line the commentators reach for is smallness to greatness, and it is certainly here. But the grammar puts something else at the centre, and the sourced facts, not our preference, put it there: αὐξηθῇ is passive, and Matthew declines to name who does the growing. Everything the man does in this parable he does in the first verse, in aorists: he took, he sowed. Then he vanishes from the sentence entirely and never returns. What the parable actually contrasts is not small against large but acting against receiving: one deliberate burial, and then a growth that happens to the seed rather than by it. This is why the two comparatives matter so much, and why the English superlatives do real damage. A comparative always needs something to stand beside. The grain is smaller than the seeds; the plant is greater than the herbs; the same object, measured twice against two different neighbours, with opposite verdicts. Nothing about the seed changed except what it was put next to, and who put it there. And the end of it is shelter for creatures that had nothing to do with the sowing. The birds of the heaven did not plant, did not wait, did not grow; they arrive at the end and pitch a tent in branches they never earned. That is our reading, and we hold it loosely: that the parable measures the kingdom not at its beginning and not by itself, but by what is finally at home in it. (The line set beside this reading is ours, not Scripture.)

Nothing about the seed changed except what it was put next to, and who put it there.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The same parable in three hands: Mark's anonymous sower, Luke's garden verbal / quotation: confirmed

The Verifier confirms a dense lexical overlap with both synoptic parallels: Mark 4:31 shares σίναπι (G4615, in 5 verses) and κόκκος (G2848, in 7 verses) along with σπείρω; Mark 4:32 shares the rare κατασκηνόω (G2681, in 4 verses); Luke 13:19 shares σίναπι and λαμβάνω. These are the same words, not merely the same story. Cambridge marks the two places the wording diverges: Mark writes “Which when it is sown” and “thus does not name an agent, the planter of the seed,” while Luke has “into his (own) garden,” which Cambridge reads “with special reference to the land of Israel” over against Matthew's open ἀγρός. Pulpit and Barnes both list the parallels at the head of their notes. Because all three refs are Greek and the shared lexemes include two rare ones, the verbal link is secure; what it means that Matthew alone keeps both the agent and the world-sized field is an interpretive question the lexemes cannot settle.

Mark 4:31 · Mark 4:32 · Luke 13:19

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G4615 σίναπι (rare, in 5 vv) and G2848 κόκκος (rare, in 7 vv) with Mark 4:31; G2681 κατασκηνόω (rare, in 4 vv) and G4687 σπείρω (in 42 vv) with Mark 4:32; G4615 σίναπι and G2983 λαμβάνω with Luke 13:19. Greek to Greek throughout, rare lexemes present, synoptic parallel

“As a grain of mustard seed”: the proverb of the least verbal / quotation: confirmed

Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6 carry the same two rare nouns as this unit, σίναπι (G4615, in 5 verses) and κόκκος (G2848, in 7 verses), and in both the phrase measures faith rather than the kingdom. Four of this thread's five commentators reach for it unprompted: JFB glosses it “as in Lu 17:6, ‘If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed,’ that is, ‘never so little faith’”; Benson cites Matthew 17:20 to show the phrase “was become proverbial for expressing a small quantity”; Gill cites the same verse; Barnes says the seeds' smallness against the plant's size made them “an apt illustration of the progress of the church and of the nature of faith, Matthew 17:20.” Pulpit adds that the Talmuds use mustard proverbially the same way, which puts the idiom outside the New Testament altogether. The verbal link is firm; the leap from kingdom-growth to faith-growth is the commentators' analogy, and we mark it as theirs.

Matthew 17:20 · Luke 17:6

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G4615 σίναπι (rare, in 5 vv) and G2848 κόκκος (rare, in 7 vv) with both refs. All Greek to Greek; the shared proverbial formula is lexical, not a quotation of one by the other

The grain that is buried: κόκκος in John and Paul verbal / quotation: confirmed

The particular noun of v. 31 is not the generic σπέρμα of v. 32 but κόκκος (G2848), and the Verifier finds it in only seven verses. Two of them are John 12:24, where Jesus says the grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die or it abides alone, and 1 Corinthians 15:37, where Paul says what is sown is a bare grain, not the body that shall be. 1 Corinthians 15:37 shares σπείρω (G4687) with this unit as well, so both the seed-noun and the sowing-verb stand together there. All three passages run the same shape: a single grain, hidden, and a disproportionate body afterward that the grain did not build for itself. That shape is real and lexically anchored. We do not claim Matthew is citing John or Paul, or they him; the link is one rare word shared by three independent uses.

John 12:24 · 1 Corinthians 15:37

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G2848 κόκκος (rare, in 7 vv) with John 12:24; G2848 κόκκος plus G4687 σπείρω (in 42 vv) with 1 Corinthians 15:37. Greek to Greek, rare lexeme, no quotation claimed in either direction

Birds in the branches of the imperial tree: Daniel and Ezekiel structural / thematic: confirmed

Pulpit sends the reader straight to the Old Testament for this image: “Compare, for both thought and language, Daniel's description of the empire of Babylon (Daniel 4:12, 21), and Ezekiel's prophecy of the kingdom of Judah (Ezekiel 17:23).” Ellicott makes the same move with slightly different references, calling the grown plant “a tree among the trees of the forest, a kingdom among other kingdoms (comp. the imagery of Ezekiel 31:3; Daniel 4:10).” Both sources are naming a standing prophetic convention: a kingdom is a tree, and the nations sheltering under it are birds in its branches. This link cannot be verbal. The refs are Hebrew and Aramaic and this unit is Greek, so no shared Strong's lexeme exists to record, and the Verifier accordingly returns none; the basis is the shared image and its shared political sense, attested by two independent commentators in this brief. Note also what the convention does not say: in Daniel the world-tree is cut down.

Daniel 4:12 · Daniel 4:21 · Ezekiel 17:23 · Ezekiel 31:3

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew and Aramaic), so no shared Strong's lexeme is possible and none is claimed. Basis is the shared prophetic figure of kingdom-as-tree with birds of the air lodging in its branches, named independently by Pulpit (Daniel 4:12, 21; Ezekiel 17:23) and Ellicott (Ezekiel 31:3; Daniel 4:10)

κατασκηνόω: the tenting word, and where else it stands verbal / quotation: confirmed

The Verifier reports the rare verb κατασκηνόω (G2681, in only 4 verses) shared with Acts 2:26, where Peter, quoting the Greek Psalter at Pentecost, uses it of flesh resting in hope. Cambridge independently insists on the literal sense here, “dwell in tents,” pointing to the booths of tabernacles, and Pulpit cross-references Matthew 8:20, where the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head while the birds have their kataskēnōseis. We state the lexical fact and stop short of the theology: a shared rare verb is a real link, but a body resting in hope and a bird lodging in a branch are not thereby the same idea, and we do not claim they are. Peter's context is resurrection; Matthew's is shelter. What the word does supply, in every one of its uses, is the note of provisional shelter rather than permanent construction.

Acts 2:26

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G2681 κατασκηνόω (rare, in 4 vv). Greek to Greek. The verbal link is secure; the thematic connection between the two contexts is our own suggestion and is not claimed as confirmed. Matthew 8:20 is mentioned in the body on Pulpit's authority but is not carried in the refs, since it uses the cognate noun and was not returned by the Verifier

“Another parable he set before them”: the chain of Matthew 13 structural / thematic: confirmed

The Verifier links this unit to Matthew 13:24, the Tares, on three shared lexemes: ἄλλος (G243), παραβολή (G3850) and σπείρω (G4687). The overlap is the chapter's own formula, and the formula is doing structural work: Benson uses precisely this seam to divide the chapter, “the two former parables relate chiefly to unfruitful hearers: the two that follow, to those who bear good fruit,” and Cambridge pairs 13:31 to 13:33 as a unit in which “the first regards the growth in its external aspect, the second in its inner working.” Gill sets the two side by side the same way: the previous parable gives the church's condition to the end of the world, this one its small beginnings and large increase. The shared lexemes here are all common words, so we do not tier this verbal despite the Greek-to-Greek match; what is confirmed is a structural seam in one author's composition.

Matthew 13:24

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G4687 σπείρω (in 42 vv), G243 ἄλλος (in 136 vv), G3850 παραβολή (in 48 vv). All three are common, so we decline the verbal tier and record this as an authorial structural link within Matthew 13, as read by Benson, Cambridge and Gill

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The man who took and sowed ancient/widely-held

⚙ The parable leaves the sower anonymous: ἄνθρωπος, anarthrous, a man. The reading of the Church has been to name him. Ellicott does so without hesitation: “Here again the sower is the Son of Man,” taking his cue from the interpretation Jesus himself gives earlier in this same chapter. Gill names him with the same directness, identifying “by the man that took and sowed it, the Lord Jesus Christ; and by his field, in which he sowed it, the world.” Pulpit supports the same reading from the grammar rather than the imagery, arguing that the participle λαβών is there “to exclude the idea of a chance sowing,” and that what is described “was the result of long and deliberate purpose,” for which he cites Titus 1:3 and 1 Peter 1:20, the eternal purpose and the foreknown Lamb. This is the widely-held reading, and it is an inference: the identification is carried over from Matthew 13:37, where Jesus does say it in so many words.

Matthew 13:37 · Titus 1:3 · 1 Peter 1:20

Smaller than all the seeds: the shape of the King is the shape of the kingdom ancient/widely-held

⚙ Gill will not let the smallness stay abstract. He runs it through the person before he runs it through the church: the Gospel and its ministry were “little, mean, and contemptible; the author of it, Christ, was so to the Jews, in his birth, parentage, education, and outward appearance; the subject of it a crucified Christ, and salvation by him.” The kingdom is like a grain smaller than all the seeds because its King came that way. Geneva supplies the reason for the disproportion: God begins his kingdom with very small beginnings so that “his mighty power and working may be displayed all the more.” Barnes describes the same trajectory in the church, which had “few at first, ignorant, unknown, and unhonored; yet soon it was to spread through the world.” The pattern of a lowly form followed by an exaltation not earned by the form is the pattern Philippians 2 gives for Christ himself and Isaiah 53:2 for the root out of dry ground. And the grammar holds it: αὐξηθῇ is passive. The seed is grown; the Son was raised.

Philippians 2:7-9 · Isaiah 53:2 · Acts 2:32

The kernel that must be buried novel

⚙ Matthew's chosen noun in v. 31 is κόκκος (G2848), a word standing in only seven New Testament verses, and one of the seven is John 12:24, where Jesus applies it to himself: unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone. Another is 1 Corinthians 15:37, Paul's bare grain that is not the body that shall be. The shared rare word is a fact the Verifier records. What we build on it is not: reading Matthew's buried kernel as a figure of the burial of Christ is a synthesis move, and none of the ten commentators in this brief makes it here. Ellicott identifies the sower with the Son of Man but keeps the seed distinct from him, calling it the Christian society. We offer the reading as fallible, and note honestly what restrains it: in this parable the man sows the seed, so the sower and the seed are not the same figure unless one presses past the story. The word invites the thought; the parable does not compel it.

John 12:24 · 1 Corinthians 15:37

Room in the branches for the birds of the heaven ancient/widely-held

⚙ The parable ends with creatures that had no part in the sowing arriving to pitch a tent in branches they did not grow. Ellicott takes this as the turn of the parable and reads the birds as “the systems of thought, institutions, and the like, of other races,” explicitly noting they are “no longer, as before, the emblems of evil.” Pulpit agrees that the thought “is simply that those who are naturally outsiders are glad to come under cover of this tree.” JFB carries Trench's further suggestion that the tree offers “shelter, repose and blessedness ... to the nations of the world,” but poses it as a question and asks whether it strains the parable, and we keep his question mark. Read with Daniel's and Ezekiel's world-trees, where the birds of the air lodging in the branches are the nations gathered under a kingdom, the shelter of the Gentiles is the ancient sense of the figure. That the Gentiles are brought into a household they did not build is the Ephesians 2 argument exactly; the shelter is the tree's, and the tree was not theirs.

Ezekiel 17:23 · Daniel 4:12 · Ephesians 2:19

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

⚙ Honesty notes for this unit. Text. The Greek is stable here and the brief records no variant. The two comparatives, μικρότερον and μεῖζον, are parsed as comparatives in the interlinear supplied to us, and the Revised Version renderings cited by Pulpit (“is less than all seeds,” “it is greater than the herbs”) agree. BSB's superlatives are a translation choice, not a textual one, and we have flagged them as divergences rather than errors.

⚙ The botany is genuinely unsettled among our sources. Ellicott holds that Sinapis nigra “does not grow in the East, any more than with us, into anything that can be called a tree,” and proposes Salvadora persica instead. Pulpit, quoting Tristram, identifies the plant as black mustard and reports it growing in the Jordan valley as tall as a horse and its rider. Benson and Gill defend the tree-sized mustard from rabbinic sources (Lightfoot, Buxtorf, and Gill's citations of the Shichin stalk whose branch roofed a potter's booth). Cambridge, alone, cautions that Luke's “a great tree” “must not be pressed.” We have not adjudicated this. Every commentator agrees the exegesis does not depend on it, and we have followed the most cautious of them.

⚙ What is second-hand. Barnes's long paragraph on the mustard of Akkar is quoted from Dr. Thomson's The Land and the Book, and Cambridge and Pulpit both cite Tristram's Natural History of the Bible; the same Thomson observation therefore reaches us through three commentators and should be counted once. Benson's bracketed material is Doddridge's, and JFB's suggestion about the birds coming for food is Trench's, posed as a question. We have kept every attribution chain visible rather than letting a nineteenth-century traveller's note harden into consensus.

⚙ What the sources will not settle. The referent of the seed is genuinely disputed within the brief: Gill lists three possibilities and refuses to choose, Ellicott chooses the Church, Barnes allows either the renewed heart or the church, Benson takes both with a preference. We have reported the spread rather than picking a winner. Poole's entries for both verses are cross-references only (“See Poole on Matthew 13:33”), so he contributes no exposition to this unit and is not quoted.

⚙ Our own additions. The observation that αὐξηθῇ is passive, and the weight we place on it in the sola reading, come from the supplied parse, not from any commentator in this brief; the commentators reach the same theological point by other routes (Geneva from doctrine, Henry from the leaven). The reading of the burial of the κόκκος as a figure of Christ's own burial is marked novel and is not supported by any source here. The κατασκηνόω thread records a real rare-lexeme link to Acts 2:26 while explicitly declining to claim the two contexts share a theme. Where we have had a choice between a stronger badge and a weaker one, we have taken the weaker.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)