Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Matthew 13:24-52, Darnel, mustard, yeast, treasure and a net
More parables of the kingdom: weeds sown among wheat, a mustard seed, yeast in flour, treasure in a field, a pearl, and a dragnet, with the weeds and the net explained as the judgment at the end of the age.
Matthew 13:24-52, in every translation this tool compares.
Jesus tells a string of short stories about God's reign. Weeds and wheat grow together until harvest, and a net hauls in good and bad fish to be sorted later, and he explains both as the judgment at the close of history. A tiny seed and a little yeast show small beginnings that end large, and a hidden treasure and a fine pearl show something worth giving up everything to have. He ends by comparing a teacher trained for the kingdom to a householder bringing out things both new and old.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sowing-and-harvest\/","n":"Sowing, harvest and threshing","s":"The farming year every hearer lived by: seed scattered on thin and thorny ground, weeds that look like wheat, the harvest rush, and grain winnowed in the wind while the chaff burned.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/parables\/","n":"Parables and riddles","s":"Short stories that compared one thing to another. Jewish teachers used them to make a point plain, and without the point stated they worked as riddles.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/kingdom-of-god\/","n":"God's kingdom","s":"Kingdom meant God's reign, God becoming king in fact. It was the good news Isaiah promised, and in Jesus' day it was also a slogan.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/gehenna\/","n":"Gehenna","s":"The valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place with a dark history, whose name had become the word for the fiery place of the wicked after death.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/son-of-man\/","n":"The Son of Man","s":"Plain Aramaic for a human being, and also the figure in Daniel 7 who comes on the clouds and receives a kingdom. It is Jesus' favorite way of speaking about himself in the Gospels.","r":""}
The mustard seed was proverbially small, the smallest seed Jews regularly planted, Blomberg says, and the shrub usually grew to about four feet, sometimes more. Three measures of flour would feed about a hundred people (Keener). Treasures were often buried for safekeeping (Keener), and Blomberg says burying treasure in hopes of reclaiming it "was a common enough practice"; commentators disagree about the ethics of the finder hiding it and buying the field. A dragnet strung between two boats caught clean and unclean fish alike. The furnace and the righteous shining like the sun echo 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra and Daniel 12:3 (Keener). The Copper Scroll from Qumran lists sixty-four hiding places for treasure, and a dragnet could stretch 750 to 1,000 feet (Wilkins).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 13:24, 13:25-27, 13:30, 13:31-32, 13:33, 13:36-43, 13:44, 13:45-46, 13:47-50 and 13:51-52
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 13:24, 13:31, 13:33, 13:44, 13:45, 13:47 and 13:52
- Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 6.7 The Wheat and the Tares, 8.2.1 The Hidden Treasure and the Pearl, and 8.2.3 The Mustard Seed and the Leaven
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Matthew 13:31-32
- Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Matthew 13:44 and 13:47
