The twenty-fifth passage of the Sefer Yeshua is based on Mt 13:33, Lk 13:21, and Thomas 96:1-2a. It doesn’t appear in Mark, so it is probably from the Q-Gospel. The initial question in the passage is based on Lk 17:20a (“How will the Kingdom come?”).
25. 1Yeshuas followers said to him, ‘How will the kingdom of God be fulfilled?’ 2So Yeshua said to them, ‘The kingdom of God is like a little leaven that a woman took and hid in three sata of flour. 3Eventually all the flour was leavened.’
Background notes
The position of this parable is significant. In both Luke and Matthew, the parable of the leaven follows directly after the parable of the mustard seed, but in Thomas, they are separate. Since Lk and Mt do not seem to copy one another, the two parables were probably in this arrangement even in the Q-Gospel. I have therefore preserved this order in the Sefer Yeshua.
In the last parable, it is a man who takes something small (a mustard seed) and it becomes something big. In this parable, it is a woman who takes something small (a lump of leaven) and it becomes something great (it leavens a very large batch of flour). Some commentators say that there is a significance in having an ordinary man and woman as the protagonists in the two parables. Yeshua is not portraying the Kingdom with royal or lavish imagery here; he has chosen the lives of ordinary people and everyday places for these two parables of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is for all of us, even to the least of us, and we all have our part to play in its growth. We start off with something small; slowly, our words and works permeate through, and eventually they compound over time to become something great.
However, the parable of the leaven is not simply a rewording of the parable of the mustard seed – there is a different emphasis. While the purpose of the previous parable was to impress upon us not to view the Kingdom of God as a grandiose messianic empire, the purpose of this parable is to emphasise the gradual fulfilment of the Kingdom. Whereas the mustard plant itself grew, the focus here is not on the leaven, but on the great change in the flour.
The symbolism of Leaven in Jewish culture
In keeping with Yeshua’s oratory style, he uses imagery which is unusual, in the sense that it is not expected.
In this parable, he uses the imagery of leaven to symbolise God’s Kingdom. The Hebrew word for leaven, chameits, comes from the root verb chamats: to be sour. It is similar to words like chomeits: violent or cruel, and chamots: a cruel oppressor.
An absence of leaven symbolised what was pure and holy. It was therefore forbidden to have leavened bread offered as sacrifices on the altar, because it was considered impure, symbolic of the impurity of sin. Leaven, especially during the festival of Unleavened Bread, represents that inclination within us towards what is evil, which we have to overcome in our spiritual life with the good within us. Leaven is almost synonymous with corruption; cutlery, pots and plates that had come into contact with anything leavened had to be purified before use during Hag Matzot.
With all this negative cultural symbolism in mind, it would have been astonishing to Yeshua’s audience that he should use leaven or yeast as a symbol for something good – God’s Kingdom. Once we have got over the initial surprise, we cease to focus on leaven being something negative, since it is used the rest of the year, without any noteworthy symbolism, in making bread – it is not negative for 51 weeks of the year. We shift our focus instead onto the ability of the leaven to permeate and change what it is put into.
The leaven, stripped of its symbolic negativity, might here symbolise an imperfect humanity working for a perfect Kingdom. The leaven has a dramatic effect on the flour; so too, God’s faithful servants have a dramatic and positive effect on human society.
We might be tempted to focus too much on our flaws and weaknesses, and so come to think that, as individuals, we are not worthy to work for the Kingdom, or that whatever we might do won’t amount to much. But God knows us, and what we are capable of – that is precisely why God sent our souls to work for God on earth. Regardless of what imperfections we might have, our willingness to work quietly and diligently for God’s Kingdom is what is important. The sincerity and integrity of our devotion is what matters.
The Flour
The Aramaic word sātā is the plural of se’āh, which was an ancient Jewish unit of measure for dry goods, such as grain or flour. The parable specifies three sātā, which is the equivalent of one eifāh (3 sata = 1 eifah). One eifah is equivalent to 35 litres, which is about 9.25 US gallons (or 7.7 UK gallons). By weight, this is 26.9 kgs (59.3 pounds). As you can appreciate, this is quite a large quantity of flour. Flour would have been stored in a clay jar, so the flour in the parable would have been kept in a large jar in the woman’s house.
In the Bible, a whole eifah of flour is prepared and baked for special occasions. Gideon prepared an eifah for an angel of God who visited him (Judges 6:19). Hannah prepared an eifah of flour for when she presented Samuel as a boy at the shrine in Shiloh (1Sam 1:24). And in Gen 18:6, Abraham asked Sarah to make 3 seahs of flour into bread for their three heavenly visitors. The quantity is therefore significant, alluding to these verses in the Bible, which share the theme of preparing to encounter God. Three sata (= 1 eifah) of flour is significant in the parable, because it symbolises our preparation to encounter God’s future Kingdom – that is, what God’s present Kingdom will grow into in the future.
Hiding the leaven
The act of hiding the leaven in the flour was a deliberate act, just as the act of sowing the mustard seed in the previous parable was a deliberate act. This has relevance for how the kingdom will come – that we must play our part in preparing a world ripe for the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom.
One would expect the woman in the parable to mix and knead the yeast in with the flour, but instead she merely hides it. This choice of words may simply be a reflection of the fact that, just as the work of the leaven in the flour goes unseen, so too the process of changing human society goes unseen too. We need not know how it changes, we need only know that it does.
In ancient times, they did not use powdered yeast as we would today. They would take a small portion of kneaded dough that had yeast in it, and keep it aside like sour-dough, to mix in later with a new batch of flour. Each time a new batch of dough was made, the lump of sour-dough would be mixed in with the flour, and then a small lump of that would be kept for the next batch. Therefore the yeast would have been in a small lump of dough, and it was this small lump of dough that was hidden in the flour.
Usually, the sourdough would be kept in a separate container, but the woman in the parable hides it in the flour itself. This suggests an act of haste to me. Was Yeshua alluding to the future time of tribulation, when war would cause Jewish people in Jerusalem to have to leave their homes in haste? Or might it have been a reverse allusion to the Exodus, when the Israelite had no time to put leaven into their bread, because they had to leave in haste?
It is also noteworthy that a small lump of leaven was used. In order to leaven a large batch of flour, much more than a mere lump of sour-dough would be needed. This detail might also have been used by Yeshua for effect, emphasising that it is not great works that lead to the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom – it is not the work of great and powerful people that bring on the Kingdom – but rather the work of people like us.
We should also note the totality of the change. The implication is that eventually, the whole of human society and the whole world, will be changed by the Message of God as it permeates the world.
The meaning of the Kingdom in this parable
As I pointed out and explained in my commentary for passage 20, Yeshua’s sayings and parables on the Kingdom of God can be classified into four types.
One particular aspect of his teachings on the Kingdom, which modern readers find especially confusing, is that sometimes Yeshua speaks of a present Kingdom which has always existed, and sometimes it is obvious that he is speaking of a future Kingdom – sometimes in the near future, sometimes in the distant future. If you are unable to make this distinction, or accept that this distinction exists, then you will never be able to understand Yeshua’s important teachings on the Kingdom of God.
In this parable, Yeshua is referring to what will happen with the Kingdom of God in the distant future.
In the Our Father, we have the line, ‘Thy Kingdom come’. If God’s Kingdom is already present with us, and always has been, what can this possibly mean? What is it about the Kingdom that will ‘come’?
In the books of the Prophets, there are descriptions of a time in the distant future, when the very laws of nature will be different. This implies that this ‘coming’ actually refers to the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom.
In the Book of Isaiah (Isa 11:6-9), it says,
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard shall lie down with the young goat;
The calf and the young lion shall feed together,
With a little boy to herd them.
The cow and the she-bear shall graze,
With their young lying down together;
And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.
A baby shall play over a viper’s hole,
And an infant pass its hand over an adder’s den.
On my holy mountain – throughout all the Land,
Nothing vile or evil shall be done;
For the Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of YHVH,
As water covers the sea.
From the details described in this passage, it is obvious that these things cannot happen under the laws of our present world. They can only happen when God changes the very laws of nature themselves. In such a world, when God’s Kingdom is fulfilled, there will be no evil, no war, and no suffering. God will bring about a time in the future when everything changes.
The Book of Revelation also speaks about this time in the future, and much of its imagery is based on key passages in the Prophets.
Rev 21:1 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (this alludes to Isaiah 65:17). The passage goes on to describe a time when God’s Presence will dwell directly among mortal humans. In this future time, there will be no more death, mourning, pain or suffering. There will be no more war, only universal peace.
There will also be a new Jerusalem, which will have “the Glory of God, with a radiance like a very rare jewel” (Rev 21:11). If you are able to understand the Israelite meaning of ‘the Glory of God’ (ha-kevod elohim), you will begin to understand this passage. The Glory of God is the purifying fire of God’s Divine Radiance.
The veil inside the Sinai Tabernacle, dividing off the Holy of Holies from the main interior of the Tabernacle, symbolised the thin, metaphorical veil that exists between heaven and earth. When the Kingdom of God is fulfilled, this ‘veil’ will be removed, and the light of God’s Glory will dwell at full strength on earth. Although God is already present on earth, the Presence of God is not yet at its full strength here, because if it were, it would destroy our frail, mortal bodies.
Rev 21:23 says, “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the Glory of God will be its light”. This implies that in the distant future, the brilliant light of God’s Glory will not be restricted to heaven; this fiery light will exist on earth too. When that time comes, life will finally be ‘on earth, as it is in heaven’.
The ‘Glory of God’ does not mean ‘the splendour of God’. The Glory of God is not a quality, but a power, an aspect of God, which has the ability to completely purify everything of all blemish, to the point where a human soul is completely free of the stain of sin (this explains how Moses’s face shone after his encounter with God’s Glory; his soul had been so purified by being in the presence of God’s Glory, this his soul glowed within him, Ex 34:29-35).
Purification by the Glory of God is achieved only when we come before God in a state of repentance, because if we come before the fire of God’s Glory in a state of unrepentance, without any remorse for the wrongs we have done, then the Glory of God will harm us – it is not something that God wilfully does; it is the innate nature of God’s Glory. In other words, it is not God being angry; it is simply the inherent nature of God’s power, which automatically seeks out anything which is impure, purifying the good, and destroying what is evil.
Anyone in ancient times who was aware of this Israelite theology and belief, would also have been aware that this future time, when God’s Glory dwells among us at full strength, can only be achieved once all of humanity reaches an evolved spiritual state, a sanctified state of being, where humans are naturally able to dwell in the very midst of God’s Glory without being harmed.
The Kingdom of God will therefore be fulfilled once humanity has reached this higher, evolved, spiritual state of being. The son of man mentioned in the Book of Daniel, represents this evolved spiritual state of humanity (see Dan 7:18, 7:22, 7:27).
How the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled
Most religious people seem to think that the Kingdom of God will come about all by itself, without any input from human beings. They watch and wait, and do none of the things that God is expecting us to do. There are thing that we must do first, before God can then make the ultimate change to the earth.
If we do not change ourselves, then God’s Glory cannot dwell amongst us – at least, not at the full strength prophesied in Revelation. If humanity does not evolve and grow towards this higher state of being, then the dividing veil between heaven and earth cannot be taken down safely.
Just as the yeast leavens the flour, so too our good and positive actions change the world. The yeast is something tiny, a microscopic bundle of spores, and yet it can change an enormous batch of flour. So too, we must never think, “Who am I to make a difference? I am only one person.” This parable teaches us that we should never underestimate something small. What is small can grow, and over time, everything can be changed.
But as prophecy shows, it is God who will enact the final change, the final ‘coming’ and fulfilment. If we play our part in preparing the groundwork for the Kingdom, then likewise, God will play God’s part in its final fulfilment.