1 Kings 6:8

6:8 The entrance to the bottom ¹  level of side rooms was on the south side of the temple; stairs went up ²  to the middle floor and then on up to the third ³  floor.

Matthew 13:32

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, ⁴  so that the wild birds ⁵  come and nest in its branches.” ⁶ 

Hebrews 6:1

6:1 Therefore we must progress beyond ⁷  the elementary ⁸  instructions about Christ ⁹  and move on ¹⁰  to maturity, not laying this foundation again: repentance from dead works and faith in God,

[6:8]  ¹ tc The Hebrew text has “middle,” but the remainder of the verse suggests this is an error.

[6:8]  ² tn Heb “by stairs they went up.” The word translated “stairs” occurs only here. Other options are “trapdoors” or “ladders.”

[6:8]  ³ tc The translation reads with a few medieval Hebrew mss, the Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate הַשְּׁלִשִׁית (hashÿlishit, “the third”) rather than MT הַשְּׁלִשִׁים (hashÿlishim, “the thirty”).

[13:32]  ⁴ 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.

[13:32]  ⁵ 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).

[13:32]  ⁶ 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.

[6:1]  ⁷ tn Grk “Therefore leaving behind.” The implication is not of abandoning this elementary information, but of building on it.

[6:1]  ⁸ tn Or “basic.”

[6:1]  ⁹ tn Grk “the message of the beginning of Christ.”

[6:1]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “leaving behind…let us move on.”