Isaiah 66:8

66:8 Who has ever heard of such a thing?

Who has ever seen this?

Can a country ¹  be brought forth in one day?

Can a nation be born in a single moment?

Yet as soon as Zion goes into labor she gives birth to sons!

Daniel 2:35

2:35 Then the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were broken in pieces without distinction ²  and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors that the wind carries away. Not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a large mountain that filled the entire earth.

Daniel 2:44

2:44 In the days of those kings the God of heaven will raise up an everlasting kingdom that will not be destroyed and a kingdom that will not be left to another people. It will break in pieces and bring about the demise of all these kingdoms. But it will stand forever.

Matthew 13:31-32

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

13:31 He gave ³  them another parable: ⁴  “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed ⁵  that a man took and sowed in his field. 13:32 It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest garden plant and becomes a tree, ⁶  so that the wild birds ⁷  come and nest in its branches.” ⁸ 

Acts 2:41

2:41 So those who accepted ⁹  his message ¹⁰  were baptized, and that day about three thousand people ¹¹  were added. ¹² 

Acts 5:14

5:14 More and more believers in the Lord were added to their number, ¹³  crowds of both men and women.

Revelation 7:9

7:9 After these things I looked, and here was ¹⁴  an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, ¹⁵  people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb dressed in long white robes, and with palm branches in their hands.

¹ tn Heb “land,” but here אֶרֶץ (’erets) stands metonymically for an organized nation (see the following line).

² tn Aram “as one.” For the meaning “without distinction” see the following: F. Rosenthal, Grammar, 36, §64, and p. 93; E. Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae, 60.

³ tn Grk “put before.”

⁴ tn Grk “He set before them another parable, saying.” The participle λέγων (legwn) is redundant and has not been translated.

⁵ sn The mustard seed was noted for its tiny size.

⁶ sn This is rhetorical hyperbole, since technically a mustard plant is not a tree. This could refer to one of two types of mustard plant popular in Palestine and would be either ten or twenty-five ft (3 or 7.5 m) tall.

⁷ tn Grk “the birds of the sky” or “the birds of the heaven”; the Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos) may be translated either “sky” or “heaven,” depending on the context. The idiomatic expression “birds of the sky” refers to wild birds as opposed to domesticated fowl (cf. BDAG 809 s.v. πετεινόν).

⁸ sn The point of the parable seems to be that while the kingdom of God may appear to have insignificant and unnoticeable beginnings (i.e., in the ministry of Jesus), it will someday (i.e., at the second advent) be great and quite expansive. The kingdom, however, is not to be equated with the church, but rather the church is an expression of the kingdom. Also, there is important OT background in the image of the mustard seed that grew and became a tree: Ezek 17:22-24 pictures the reemergence of the Davidic house where people can find calm and shelter. Like the mustard seed, it would start out small but grow to significant size.

⁹ tn Or “who acknowledged the truth of.”

¹⁰ tn Grk “word.”

¹¹ tn Grk “souls” (here an idiom for the whole person).

¹² tn Or “were won over.”

¹³ tn Or “More and more believers were added to the Lord.”

¹⁴ tn The phrase “and here was” expresses the sense of καὶ ἰδού (kai idou).

¹⁵ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated before each of the following categories, since English normally uses a coordinating conjunction only between the last two elements in a series of three or more.