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The Linen Loincloth

13Thus said the Lord to me, ‘Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth, and put it on your loins, but do not dip it in water.’ ²So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins. ³And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, ⁴‘Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates,^* and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.’ ⁵So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates,^* as the Lord commanded me. ⁶And after many days the Lord said to me, ‘Go now to the Euphrates,^* and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.’ ⁷Then I went to the Euphrates,^* and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But now the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing.

8 Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁹Thus says the Lord: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. ¹⁰This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. ¹¹For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen.

¹⁸ You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;^*
   you forgot the God who gave you birth.

¹⁹ The Lord saw it, and was jealous;^*
   he spurned^* his sons and daughters.
²⁰ He said: I will hide my face from them,
   I will see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
   children in whom there is no faithfulness.
²¹ They made me jealous with what is no god,
   provoked me with their idols.
So I will make them jealous with what is no people,
   provoke them with a foolish nation.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

31 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

The Parable of the Yeast

33 He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with^* three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

The Use of Parables

34 Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. ³⁵This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet:^*
‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
   I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’^*