The Stone That Was Sown: The Parable Read Through

A companion to the breakdown of the parable of the mustard seed. Nothing is argued here. The parable runs start to finish, with the meaning of each image carried alongside the words it belongs to.

MARK 4:30–32 — KJV

And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of Yahuah? [the question the whole crowd was carrying — Daniel said the kingdom would be set up in the days of these kings, and Rome was standing over them] or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, [the stone in Daniel’s dream, small enough to be held in a hand before it became a mountain that filled the whole earth] which, when it is sown in the earth, [it did not fall on the world from outside it, it went into the ground — buried, unseen, working from inside the field it was dropped into] is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: [a man out of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem with almost no one aware it had happened, no throne behind Him and no army in front of Him] But when it is sown, it groweth up, [the part Daniel never showed — the years between the stone and the mountain, the kingdom already growing while men were still watching for a conquest] and becometh greater than all herbs, [the mountain that filled the whole earth, the greatest thing in the field and no longer hidden from anyone] and shooteth out great branches; [the kingdom opened wide enough for the nations to come into it] so that the fowls of the air [the peoples coming in out of the nations, trembling as a bird out of Egypt and a dove out of Assyria, and settled by Yahuah in their houses] may lodge under the shadow of it. [given a place to stay and kept there — taking refuge under Yahuah, taught His ways, and walking in His paths, for out of Zion goes forth the law]

Put together, the parable says the kingdom Daniel saw did arrive in the days of those kings, and it arrived as a seed rather than as a conquest. It went into the ground where nobody was looking, in a man nobody was watching, and it grew from the smallest thing in the field into the greatest, until the nations could come in out of the world and find a place under it. What they come for is named by the prophets and not by the size of the tree: they come to be taught the law of Yahuah and to live under it.

A man waiting for an overthrow will walk straight past a seed. That was the mistake of the crowd standing on the shore, and it is still being taught — the stone pushed out to a second coming, the kingdom left unstarted, a thousand-year reign invented to hold what has been shoved into the future. The seed has been in the ground for twenty centuries and the branches are already out. The only question left is whether a man is living under them, being taught, or still standing in the open watching the sky for something to fall.