Mateus 13

Mateus 13

Barnes has an interesting note - The plant here described was very different from that which is known among us. It was several years before it bore fruit and became properly a tree. Mustard, with us, is an annual plant: it is always small, and is properly an herb. The Hebrew writers speak of the mustard-tree as one on which they could climb, as on a fig-tree. Its size was much owing to the climate. All plants of that nature grow much larger in a warm climate, like that of Palestine, than in colder regions....“I have seen,” says Dr. Thomson, “this plant on the rich plain of Akkar as tall as the horse and his rider....It may have been perennial, and have grown to a considerable tree; and there are traditions in the country of such so large that a man could climb into them; and after having seen red pepper bushes grow on year after year, into tall shrubs, and the castor-bean line the brooks about Damascus like the willows and the poplars, I can readily credit the existence of mustard-trees large enough to meet all the demands of our Lord’s parable.”—The Land and the Book, vol. ii. p. 101. (Barnes Notes) Thomson - With the help of my guide, I uprooted a veritable mustard-tree which was more than twelve feet high. In the presence of such stout bushes, which overtop all surrounding “herbs,” one feels that there was no exaggeration in the parable about “the mustard-seed:”....We have along our path abundant evidence of the extraordinary productiveness of this plain. The thistles are higher than our heads, even on horseback, and so thorny that the horses hesitate to pass through them. Wild mustard grows equally tall; and I saw little birds, mostly finches, “lodge in the branches thereof.” (The Land and the Book) Marvin