Luke 13:18

Luke 13:18, in plain English

Jesus asks: 'What is the kingdom of God like? What can I compare it to?' He's about to use two tiny, ordinary things to describe something huge and extraordinary.

Why it's here

After demonstrating the kingdom's power through healing, Jesus now paints a picture of how the kingdom grows. It's not what you'd expect.

Who's speaking

Jesus poses a question that sets up two of His most memorable parables about how God's kingdom works.

Where it sits in the story

Jesus loves to describe the kingdom using things people already understand. What He's about to say will challenge every expectation about how God works.

The scholarly reading

Jesus asks tini homoia estin hē basileia tou theou (what is the kingdom of God like?), introducing twin parables about the kingdom's growth. The question format invites comparative thinking about an incomprehensible reality.

Language and setting

These kingdom parables follow the synagogue healing, connecting the miraculous liberation to the broader theme of God's kingdom advancing. The rhetorical question acknowledges that the kingdom defies simple definition.

Voice

Jesus transitions from healing controversy to teaching about the nature of God's kingdom through parable.

Significance

After demonstrating the kingdom's power in healing, Jesus now describes its nature through comparison. The kingdom defies explanation but can be illuminated through everyday images.

16Then should not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be released from her bondage on the Sabbath day?”

17When Jesus said this, all His adversaries were humiliated. And the whole crowd rejoiced at all the glorious things He was doing.

18Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it?

19It is like a mustard seed that a man tossed into his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.”

20Again He asked, “To what can I compare the kingdom of God?

Read all of Luke 13 — A bent-over woman is healed on the Sabbath, a mustard seed grows into a tree, and Jesus weeps over Jerusalem's refusal to come home.