Mustard, mustard seed

(Matt. 13:31; Mark 4:31; Luke 13:19) — a leguminous shrub plant, of the family of the cruciferous plants. It grows wild in Egypt and Palestine, and is also cultivated in gardens and orchards. Mustard seeds, by their outward appearance, are very small and fine, and their smallness has even become proverbial, so that when the Hebrews wished to indicate some small thing, they would say that it was “like a grain of mustard seed” (Luke 17:6). The Savior, offering the people a parable of the Kingdom of God, says that it is like a grain of mustard seed, “which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it” (Luke 13:19).

The words of the parable, that the seed becomes a tree, or, according to the Evangelist Luke, a great tree, in whose branches the birds of the air find shelter, must evidently be understood as figurative expressions, characteristic of Eastern language; but in general the mustard plant, which varies in height according to the difference of climate and soil, indeed, in a temperate climate and on fertile soil, reaches the greatest height and spreads its branches remarkably wide.