33
He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour, until all of it was leavened.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Greek — tap a word ↓
elalēsen autois Allēn parabolēn hē basileia tōn ouranōn estin Homoia zymē hēn gynē labousa enekrypsen eis tria sata aleurou heōs holon hou ezymōthē
Word by word23 · parsed
√ λαλέω — to talk, iVerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
laleō: to talk, to speak Aorist indicative active, a single completed act of telling. Matthew's narrative seam, not a theological claim.
√ 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
√ ἄλλος — "else," iAdjectiveAccusative Feminine Singular
allos: another (of the same kind) Feminine accusative agreeing with parabolēn. The classical distinction between allos (another of the same kind) and heteros (another of a different kind) is not always pressed in Koine, so I do not lean on it. What does hold is Matthew's arrangement: Maclaren reads this parable and the mustard seed as a deliberate pair inside a series of seven, "of which my text is the second."
√ παραβολή — a similitude ("parable"), iNounAccusative Feminine Singular
parabolē: a similitude, a parable Strong's: "a similitude (parable)." The Verifier records the lexeme in 48 verses of the Greek canon. The genre matters for the interpretive restraint the commentators keep urging: Barnes says of the number three that it is "a circumstance giving interest to the parable, but designed to convey no spiritual instruction," and the Pulpit Commentary warns against pressing a parable to yield a doctrine of world history.
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Feminine Singular
√ βασιλεία — properly, royalty, iNounNominative Feminine Singular
basileia: royalty, rule, kingdom Strong's gives the root sense as "properly, royalty," the reign before the realm. The subject of the sentence is therefore not an institution but a reign, which is why Maclaren refuses to equate kingdom and Church: "the two terms are by no means synonymous." The predicate that follows says what this royalty is like, and it is likened to something small, hidden, and active rather than to something enthroned.
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleGenitive Masculine Plural
√ οὐρανός — the skyNounGenitive Masculine Plural
ouranos: the sky, the heavens Genitive masculine plural, "of the heavens," Matthew's standing idiom. The plural reads as the Hebrew idiom carried into Greek rather than a claim about multiple heavens. The force of the genitive here is source and character: a reign whose origin is above is described entirely in terms of what happens inside a pan of dough.
√ εἰμί — I exist (used only when emphatic)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
√ ὅμοιος — similar (in appearance or character)AdjectiveNominative Feminine Singular
homoios: similar in appearance or character Nominative feminine, agreeing with basileia, governing the dative zymē. The comparison is grammatically to the leaven, but the sentence that follows makes the likeness the whole process: leaven, woman, hiding, measure, and the final passive verb. Read strictly as "the kingdom equals yeast" the parable collapses; read as "the kingdom is like this happening" it holds.
√ ζύμη — ferment (as if boiling up)NounDative Feminine Singular
zymē: ferment, leaven The pivot of the unit, and the commentators know it is a problem. Cambridge: "Except in this one parable, leaven is used of the working of evil." Ellicott concedes the same, that leaven is "commonly, as in the Passover ritual, the symbol of malice and wickedness," and that its action in flour "is of the nature of decay." Gill says the word "is every where else used in a bad sense" and then argues that here it is borrowed for quantity, penetration and assimilation rather than for corruption. The Pulpit Commentary is the most precise: 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." The lexeme itself occurs in only eleven verses of the Greek New Testament, and outside this parable and its Lukan parallel every one of the remaining nine is a warning: the leaven of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Herod, and Paul's old leaven of malice.
√ ὅς — the relatively (sometimes demonstrative) pronoun, who, which, what, thatPersonal / Relative PronounAccusative Feminine Singular
√ γυνή — a womanNounNominative Feminine Singular
gynē: a woman The commentators openly disagree, and none of them can settle it from the text. JFB calls the allegorizing a refinement: "It being a woman's work to knead, it seems a refinement to say that 'the woman' here represents the Church." The Pulpit Commentary agrees she "probably belongs entirely to the framework of the parable," comparing Luke 15:4, 8. Ellicott, more cautiously than he is often quoted, offers the divine Wisdom or the Church as "an application of it, if not as an interpretation." The honest position is that the parable assigns her no referent.
√ λαμβάνω — while G138 (αἱρέομαι) is more violent, to seize or remove))VerbAorist Participle ActiveNominative Feminine Singular
lambanō: to take, to receive Aorist participle active, nominative feminine singular, agreeing with the woman and subordinate to the main verb: "having taken, she hid." The Verifier records the same lexeme carrying the mustard seed two verses earlier (Matthew 13:31); the brief does not give the form there, so I claim shared vocabulary and not an identical participle. Grammatically the participle is subordinate, which matters: the taking is not a second action but the setup for the one act the sentence reports.
√ ἐγκρύπτω — to conceal in, iVerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
enkryptō: to conceal in The main verb, and the theological weight of the verse. Aorist indicative active: one decisive act, done once, and done out of sight. The compound puts hiddenness at the center of a parable about the kingdom of heaven, which is the exact inversion of every expectation a first century hearer brought to the word basileia. Henry draws the whole application from it: "The apostles, by preaching the gospel, hid a handful of leaven in the great mass of mankind." The Pulpit Commentary adds an argument from this verb against reading the leaven as corruption: such a reading "is opposed to the idea of deliberate purpose underlying the action of the woman."
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
eis: into Motion inward, not merely contact. The leaven is put into the mass, not laid beside it.
√ τρεῖς — "three"AdjectiveAccusative Neuter Plural
√ σάτον — a certain measure for things dryNounAccusative Neuter Plural
saton: a dry measure (Hebrew seah) A rare word: the Verifier finds it in only two verses of the Greek New Testament, here and in the Lukan parallel. Gill gives the size, "a gallon and an half," and notes that three seahs make an ephah, adding from the Talmud that this was the quantity women fermented and kneaded at one time. Benson says the same more simply: "which seems to have been the quantity that they usually baked at once." Barnes, characteristically, refuses to let the number preach: "nor is anything to be inferred from the fact that three are mentioned." Against him, Ellicott lists the sons of Noah, the Jew, Greek and Barbarian, and body, soul and spirit as "equally legitimate applications," and JFB judges that none of them "yields much satisfaction." The measure is domestic, and the domesticity is the point.
√ ἄλευρον — flourNounGenitive Neuter Singular
aleuron: flour Genitive neuter singular after the measure, and the only thing in the sentence that is neither agent nor instrument. The flour is what gets acted on, and the parable gives it no name beyond its ordinariness: it is not dough already rising, not a second batch of leaven, just the inert mass that was there first. Gill reads it as the elect, ground and sifted and separated in the effectual calling; that is his soteriology brought to the parable, not a sense carried by the word, which Strong's glosses simply "flour." Maclaren, who does allegorize freely elsewhere, keeps this one concrete: "A poor woman, with her morsel of barm, kneading it up among three measures of meal, in some coarse earthenware pan."
√ ἕως — a conjunction, preposition and adverb of continuance, until (of time and place)Preposition
heōs: until, of time and place Strong's: "a conjunction, preposition and adverb of continuance." It sets a terminus, and the terminus is total. The Pulpit Commentary presses this honestly in both directions: the permeating influence "shall at last be entirely successful," yet "it is unfair to so press the parable" as to deduce a doctrine of continuous world improvement, since parable "frequently regards the ultimate result, and passes over the intermediate stages."
√ ὅλος — "whole" or "all", iAdjectiveNominative Neuter Singular
holos: whole, all Nominative neuter, thrown to the end of the clause after the verb. Its position is emphatic, and it is the word on which JFB rests the universal hope, that the gospel "will yet mould all institutions and tribes of men."
√ ὅς — the relatively (sometimes demonstrative) pronoun, who, which, what, thatPersonal / Relative PronounGenitive Masculine Singular
√ ζυμόω — to cause to fermentVerbAorist Indicative Passive3rd Person Singular
zymoō: to cause to ferment, to leaven Aorist indicative passive, third person singular: the dough is leavened, it does not leaven itself. The lexeme is rare, four verses in the Greek New Testament, and the other three are Paul's warnings (1 Corinthians 5:6; Galatians 5:9) and the Lukan parallel. Henry catches the force of the passive without using the grammatical term: the word "was made powerful by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, who works, and none can hinder." The parable begins with a hiding that is deliberate and ends with a leavening that is received.