Matthew 13:33

Amplified Bible

The Leaven

³³He told them another parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like ^[a]leaven, which a woman took and worked into three ^[b]measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”^(A)

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Footnotes

Matthew 13:33 This is the first time leaven is mentioned in the New Testament. See Ex 12:15 for the first mention of leaven in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word (seor) refers specifically to the leavening agent (as opposed to dough containing it), which today is thought of as yeast, a type of fungi. In Jewish thinking, leaven was symbolic of impurity and corruption. Jesus used it as a symbol for the corrupt and hypocritical teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees (see especially Luke 12:1; cf Matt 16:11; Mark 8:15), but He also used leaven’s ability to permeate a mass of dough many times its own size as an illustration of the spread of the kingdom of heaven as here and in Luke 13:21.
Matthew 13:33 A measure was about a peck and a half, which would be enough bread to feed a hundred people.