---
title: "The Scribe Trained for the Kingdom"
category: "bible"
description: "Matthew 13:52 — Jesus makes a scribe out of a disciple, stocks his storeroom with everything God has said, and sends him to spend it"
tags: ["matthew", "discipleship", "study-method", "old-testament", "method/word-study", "lang/greek", "audience/teaching"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "Matthew 13:51-52"
bible_references: ["Matthew 13:10-17", "Isaiah 6:9-10", "Matthew 13:35", "Matthew 13:44-53", "Matthew 9:16-17", "Matthew 12:35", "Matthew 5:17-20", "Matthew 23:34", "Matthew 28:19-20", "Matthew 8:19", "Matthew 27:57", "Matthew 12:14-50", "Matthew 13:39-40", "Ephesians 3:5-9", "Colossians 1:26", "Daniel 2:27-28", "Ezra 7:6-11", "Psalm 78:2", "2 Timothy 3:16-17", "1 John 2:7-8"]
date_created: 2026-09-18
date_modified: 2026-10-31
ai_provider_models:
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
  - anthropic/claude-sonnet-5
  - meta/muse-glimmer
---

# The scribe trained for the kingdom

Jesus spends a whole afternoon telling parables, asks the Twelve whether they have followed
any of it, and they say yes. What He says next is the last line of the discourse, and He says
it about them.

> ✝️ Matthew 13:51-52 (ESV)
>
> 51 "Have you understood all these things?" They said to him, "Yes." 52 And he said to them,
> "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a
> house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

He calls them scribes. Matthew uses that word twenty-two times, and all but a few of them name
the men ranged against Jesus. Here He hands the title to the Twelve as a description of what He
has made them.

**In one sentence:** Jesus tells the Twelve they have been discipled into a scribal role that holds the whole Old and New revelation and is sent to spend it.

## Key Takeaways

### Lessons about Jesus

- **Jesus makes scribes.** The participle is passive — μαθητευθείς, *"having been discipled"* —
  and the chapter says whose work the understanding is: "to you it has been given" (13:11, ESV).
  Jesus is the one who gives it, and He gives it to people who started the day as fishermen
  and a tax collector.
- **Jesus gives His disciples the whole of what God has said.** The storeroom holds new stock
  and old stock together. He had already put it plainly: "I have not come to abolish them but to
  fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17, ESV).
- **Jesus puts His disciples in the master's chair.** Matthew uses οἰκοδεσπότης, "master of a
  house," seven times. Twice the text itself makes the master Jesus: in 10:25, and in 13:27,
  where the master is the sower Jesus names "the Son of Man" (13:37, ESV). The vineyard owner
  of 21:33 is God by strong implication, since he sends "his son" (21:37, ESV); the owner of
  20:1 and 20:11 is God on the usual reading, which the parable leaves to its hearers. At 13:52
  the master of the house is the disciple.

### Memory verses

> ✝️ Matthew 13:52 (ESV)
>
> 52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven
> is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

> ✝️ Matthew 5:17 (ESV)
>
> 17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to
> abolish them but to fulfill them."

> ✝️ Ezra 7:10 (WEB)
>
> 10 For Ezra had set his heart to seek Yahweh's law, and to do it, and to teach statutes and
> ordinances in Israel.

### Be Transformed

- **Think.** Your understanding of Scripture is something God has worked in you — take "it has
  been given" (13:11) seriously. Thank Him for it by name this week, and go on asking Him for
  more of it, the way the disciples kept coming back to Jesus for the explanations (13:36; 15:15).
- **Attitude.** Stop ranking the old stock below the new. If you have quietly settled into the New
  Testament and left the Old for other people, the householder in this verse has half a storeroom.
  Read a prophet this month.
- **Do.** Spend it. The scribe trained for the kingdom "brings out of his treasure what is new and
  what is old" (Matthew 13:52, ESV), and the verb is present tense and habitual. Find one person
  this week who gets something out of your store: a child, a younger believer, someone at your
  table.

### Prayer

Father, You are the God who teaches. You opened the disciples' ears when the crowd's stayed
shut, and You have done the same for me — I did not earn a word of what I understand. Thank You
for Your Son Jesus, who took twelve ordinary men and made them scribes of Your kingdom. Fill my
storeroom, Lord: with the promises You made to Israel and the Gospel You have now revealed, and
let me love both halves. Then send me out with my hands full, and make me generous with what
You have given. In Jesus' name. Amen.

---

## Study outline

- [Who is writing, and to whom](#who-is-writing-and-to-whom). A tax collector writing for readers
  who knew the Law.
- [Where the verse sits](#where-the-verse-sits). The disciples' "yes" and the "therefore" that
  answers it.
- [What a scribe was](#what-a-scribe-was). Ezra's office, the first-century profession, and the
  two scribes in Matthew who belong to Jesus.
- [The householder's storeroom](#the-householders-storeroom). A stocked room, a habitual
  bringing-out, new and old on one shelf.
- ["Has been trained"](#has-been-trained-the-passive). Who does the discipling.
- ["For the kingdom of heaven"](#for-the-kingdom-of-heaven-the-hardest-two-words). A dative the
  Greek leaves open.
- [Why the new was new](#why-the-new-was-new-reading-this-dispensationally). The mystery disclosed
  on the day of rejection.
- [What Jesus is making](#what-jesus-is-making). A stocked disciple sent to spend it.

## Who is writing, and to whom

### Matthew the tax collector

The early church is unanimous that the tax collector wrote this Gospel. Papias of Hierapolis names
him around AD 135 and Irenaeus of Lyons around 175, and no competing tradition survives (*ESV Study
Bible*, introduction to Matthew). That matters for this verse in particular. Matthew records the
promise that Jesus makes scribes, and Matthew had no scribal training — Jesus called him off a tax
booth (9:9), from the one profession in Galilee more despised than the scribes were respected.

### Written for readers who knew the Law

He writes for readers who know the Law and the Prophets. He quotes the Old Testament constantly,
opens with a genealogy running back to "the son of Abraham" (1:1, ESV), and writes "the kingdom
of heaven" 31 times against 4 uses of "the kingdom of God." Mark and Luke write "the kingdom of
God" 14 and 31 times and "the kingdom of heaven" never (counts from the SBLGNT). That
circumlocution is what a Jewish readership would expect. So when Jesus reaches for a scribe and a
household storeroom to describe His disciples, Matthew's first readers knew both pictures from
the inside.

## Where the verse sits

### Given to the disciples, withheld from the crowd

Matthew 13 is the third of the five long discourses that give this Gospel its shape. The whole
chapter is parables, and the chapter tells you why. The disciples ask Jesus outright: "Why do
you speak to them in parables?" (13:10, ESV). His answer divides the room.

> ✝️ Matthew 13:11 (ESV)
>
> 11 And he answered them, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of
> heaven, but to them it has not been given."

Jesus then grounds that division in Isaiah. Matthew 13:14-15 quotes Isaiah 6:9-10 at length —
two full verses, thirteen words running unbroken — on ears that hear and never understand. The
parables sort hearers who were already sorted.

"Secrets" translates μυστήρια (*mystēria*, G3466). The ESV Study Bible glosses these as the mysteries
of how the kingdom of heaven would operate, revealed to the disciples and withheld from the
unresponsive crowd. Six verses on, Jesus tells the
Twelve that prophets and righteous people longed to see what they were seeing (13:17).

### Why 13:52 follows 13:51

So by verse 51 the disciples are holding something. Jesus asks whether they have understood.
They say yes. Then comes Διὰ τοῦτο, *"therefore"* — and the therefore reaches back to their
yes. Because you have understood, here is what you now are.

Verse 52 is itself a parable in miniature ("is like a master of a house"), and is read like
any parable, for the point its first hearers would catch.

## What a scribe was

### Greek γραμματεύς and Hebrew סֹפֵר

The Greek is γραμματεύς (*grammateus*, "gram-mat-YOOCE", G1122). Behind it stands the Hebrew
<span dir="rtl">סֹפֵר</span> (*sofer*, "so-FARE", H5608a), and the Septuagint uses γραμματεύς to
translate it — including for the man who defines the office.

> ✝️ Ezra 7:6 (WEB)
>
> 6 this Ezra went up from Babylon. He was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which Yahweh,
> the God of Israel, had given; and the king granted him all his request, according to Yahweh
> his God's hand on him.

"Skilled scribe" is <span dir="rtl">סֹפֵר מָהִיר</span> (*sofer mahir*), which the Septuagint
renders γραμματεὺς ταχύς — "a quick scribe," my own rendering of the Greek (Ezra 7:6, Septuagint
text from Brenton's edition; no English Brenton is quoted here). Four verses later the Hebrew
gives the job description as three infinitives: <span dir="rtl">לִדְרוֹשׁ</span> (*lidrosh*,
to study), <span dir="rtl">וְלַעֲשֹׂת</span> (*vela'asot*, and to do),
<span dir="rtl">וּלְלַמֵּד</span> (*ulelammed*, and to teach). Ezra studied the Law, obeyed
it, and taught it — and the Greek Bible calls him a γραμματεύς for doing so.

### A first-century profession

By the first century the office had hardened into a profession. The *NIV Cultural Backgrounds
Study Bible* notes at Matthew 5:20 that while the term could stretch to cover village clerks
who drew up legal documents, in the Gospels it normally means men who were literate, formally
trained in the Law of Moses, and teaching it to others. These were respected men, and they
worked by citation. The same commentary observes at Matthew 7:29 that a teacher of the period
avoided speaking on his own authority and reached for earlier authorities wherever he could.

So the word carries the sense of a credentialed professional: literate, trained, employed to
know a text and rule from it. The **student** word in Greek is μαθητής (*mathētēs*, G3101), and it is a
different word. That is what makes verse 52 the sentence it is — Jesus puts the two together.
γραμματεὺς μαθητευθείς. The professional who is also an apprentice. A man with a qualification,
sitting under someone else's teaching.

Why "scribes and Pharisees" pairs a trade with a school is taken up in a separate study,
[Scribes and Pharisees: a Trade and a School](https://the-way.lewy.au/scripture/scribes-and-pharisees/).

### The 22 Matthew occurrences

A scribe's stock was old by design. Which makes what Matthew does with the word across his
Gospel the thing to watch.

γραμματεύς appears **22 times in Matthew**. They are with the chief priests when Herod hunts
the infant Christ (2:4). They are the benchmark of an insufficient righteousness (5:20). They
are the foil for Jesus's own authority in 7:29, the ones who say "this man is blaspheming"
(9:3, ESV), the demanders of a sign (12:38), and the addressees of six woes in chapter 23
(23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29). Twice a scribe stands somewhere else. In 8:19 one walks up and
says, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go" (ESV). And in 23:34, at the bottom of the
woes, Jesus says this:

> ✝️ Matthew 23:34 (ESV)
>
> 34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and
> crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town,

Jesus has scribes of His own, and He sends them. The Macula linguistic annotation of the Greek
New Testament — an open-licensed scholarly dataset, so a considered judgement by its editors —
assigns the semantic domain of "religious official" to twenty of Matthew's
twenty-two occurrences, and gives 13:52 and 23:34 the domain of "teacher, scholar" instead.
Those two verses are exactly the two where the scribe belongs to Jesus.

## The householder’s storeroom

### θησαυρός = storeroom, not just treasure

θησαυρός (*thēsauros*, "thay-sow-ROSS", G2344) is the word behind English *thesaurus*, and it carries
two senses: the valuables, and the room they are kept in.

Matthew uses it nine times. Seven of them mean the valuables — treasure in heaven (6:20), the
heart's treasure (6:21), the treasure hidden in a field eight verses before ours (13:44). The
annotation tags the magi's treasures (2:11) both as valuables and as the chests that held them.
It puts 13:52 alone in a different semantic
domain, one that contains just two words: θησαυρός and ταμεῖον, "storehouse" — the word Jesus
uses for the private room you shut the door of to pray (6:6).

Four translation committees reached the same conclusion independently. The NIV, CSB, NLT and
BSB all render it **storeroom**; the ESV, NKJV, NASB, LSB, KJV, ASV, WEB and YLT keep
**treasure**. Both are inside the word's range. The storeroom reading is the one that makes the
picture work — a householder walks into the room where the household's supplies are kept, and
carries some out.

That picture has a prerequisite. A storeroom holds what was put in it. This householder has
spent years filling shelves, and what he carries out today is the fruit of someone else's
harvest and his own long labour of storing.

### ἐκβάλλει = he keeps bringing out

ἐκβάλλει (*ekballei*, G1544) is present tense: he brings out, and goes on bringing out. It is also a
surprisingly forceful verb. Matthew uses ἐκβάλλω 28 times, and the great majority of them are
violent — casting out demons (8:16; 9:34; 12:28; 17:19), throwing a man into outer darkness
(8:12; 22:13; 25:30), driving the traders from the temple (21:12), heaving the son out of the
vineyard (21:39).

Five of the 28 carry a quiet sense (9:38; 12:20; 12:35 twice; 13:52), and two of them bear
directly on this verse. The first is a commission. "Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to
send out laborers into his harvest" (9:38, ESV) — *send out* is ἐκβάλῃ, and the annotation gives
it the same semantic domain it gives 12:35. The second is the sentence ours is built like:

> ✝️ Matthew 12:35 (ESV)
>
> 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his
> evil treasure brings forth evil.

Same verb, ἐκβάλλει. Same noun, θησαυρός. Same preposition, ἐκ. Matthew builds 13:52 out of the
same three words as 12:35, in a different order, with the kingdom's contents poured in. (The
parallel is my own observation, offered for the reader to check in the Greek above; the
cross-reference data does not link the two verses.)

Matthew 12:35 comes with a diagnosis attached. Jesus says it while telling the Pharisees that
"out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (12:34, ESV). What a man brings out
reveals what he has stored. Set 13:52 against that and the storeroom becomes an examination:
what comes out of you when you open your mouth about God is an inventory of your shelves.

### New and old: time, not condition

καινὰ καὶ παλαιά — new things and old things, in that order.

Matthew has used this pair once before, and it looked like the opposite lesson:

> ✝️ Matthew 9:16-17 (ESV)
>
> 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the
> garment, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is,
> the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into
> fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.

There the new and the old cannot be mixed. Here they sit on the same shelf. The Greek marks the
difference.

παλαιός occurs **exactly three times in Matthew**: 9:16, 9:17, and 13:52 — verified against the
SBLGNT morphology, and there are no others. καινός (*kainos*, G2537) occurs four times: 9:17, 13:52, 26:29, and
27:60. Both passages use both adjectives, and the Macula annotation assigns them different
senses in each. At 9:16-17 both carry a Louw-Nida domain of nature and kind (58) — new as a
different kind of thing from the old. At 13:52 both carry the domain of time (67) — *of a former
period* against *of a recent one*.

The wineskins are old because they have perished. The stock in the storeroom is old because it
has been there longer. Jesus is making two different points with the same pair of words, and
both hold: a religious system worn through will not contain what He is pouring, and everything
God has ever said stays on the shelves.

**This shows that God does not discard His own words.** He made promises to Abraham, gave the
Law through Moses, spoke through the prophets, and every one of those is still stock. Jesus
said it Himself in the same Gospel: "not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all
is accomplished" (5:18, ESV). The God who speaks keeps what He has spoken.

#### The commentaries' reading, and a merism

The commentaries consulted here converge: the "new" revelation
from Jesus fulfils the "old" promises of the Old Testament (*ESV Study Bible*), which are read in
light of the fuller message of the kingdom (both *Cultural Backgrounds Study Bibles*), with
continuity between the eras and fresh items added (*NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible*). The *NLT
Life Application Study Bible* adds that the professional teachers of the law were trapped in the
old and blind to the new.

That reading is the settled one across every commentary consulted, and I hold it. A live
alternative reads καινὰ καὶ παλαιά as a merism — a figure meaning simply
*everything*, so that the point falls on the householder's abundance and generosity. Nothing in
the application changes either way; a storeroom of every vintage is still a storeroom to be
spent.

## "Has been trained": the passive

μαθητευθείς (*mathēteutheis*, "math-ay-tyoo-THICE", G3100) is an aorist **passive** participle of
μαθητεύω, "to make a disciple." The scribe in this verse has had discipling done to him.

The verb is rare. It occurs four times in the whole New Testament, and three of them are
Matthew's:

| Reference | Form | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Matthew 13:52 | μαθητευθείς, aorist passive | the scribe of the kingdom |
| Matthew 27:57 | ἐμαθητεύθη, aorist passive | Joseph of Arimathea |
| Matthew 28:19 | μαθητεύσατε, aorist active imperative | the Eleven, commanded |
| Acts 14:21 | μαθητεύσαντες, aorist active | Paul and Barnabas, in Derbe |

Matthew's Gospel opens this word in the passive and closes it in the active. In 13:52 the
disciple is made; in 28:19 the made disciple is sent to make others — "Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations" (ESV). Everything between those two verses is the training.

### How much the passive carries

How much the passive itself carries is contested. The passive of this verb can mean simply
"became a disciple": the ESV renders the same form at 27:57 "was a disciple of Jesus," the NIV,
CSB and NASB render 13:52 "has become a disciple," and the Macula annotation files both verses
with ἀκολουθέω, "follow," away from the "make disciples" of 28:19. The grammar allows the
reading that someone did the discipling without requiring it. Verse 11 settles who did.

**This shows that God is the teacher of His own people.** The understanding the Twelve claimed
in verse 51 had been handed to them in verse 11 — "to you it has been given" — and the ESV's
"has been trained" in verse 52 keeps that in view.
Whatever you understand of Scripture, Someone taught it to you.
The right response to it is thanks.

## "For the kingdom of heaven": the hardest two words

The Greek is a bare dative, τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν, with no preposition at all. Greek can
leave the relation unstated. English cannot, so every translation committee has to choose one.
Fourteen versions produce eleven wordings and seven different relations:

| Rendering | Versions |
|---|---|
| trained **for** the kingdom | ESV |
| become a disciple **of** the kingdom | NASB 1995, NASB 2020, LSB |
| become a disciple **in** the kingdom | NIV, CSB |
| discipled **in** the kingdom | BSB |
| made a disciple **in** the Kingdom | WEB |
| made a disciple **to** the kingdom | ASV |
| instructed **unto** the kingdom | KJV |
| taught **unto** the kyngdome | Tyndale (1526) |
| discipled **unto** the kingdom | Rotherham |
| instructed **concerning** the kingdom | NKJV |
| discipled **in regard to** the reign | YLT |

"Trained **for**" makes the kingdom the purpose of the training. "Disciple **of**" makes the
kingdom the subject matter. "Disciple **in**" makes the kingdom the place where it happened.
All three are available in the Greek, and the Greek declines to pick.

Read the verse with the dative left open and it says something larger than any single
rendering: the kingdom is what he was taught, why he was taught, and where the teaching
happened, all at once.

(This site cites YLT and the NKJV only as witnesses to a translation decision — see
[How to Read the Bible](https://the-way.lewy.au/scripture/how-to-read-the-bible/) and Fee and Stuart, below.)

## Why the new was new: reading this dispensationally

This site reads Scripture dispensationally — God administering His purposes through successive
arrangements, with the promises made to Israel staying Israel's (see
[Dispensationalism](https://the-way.lewy.au/glossary/#dispensationalism) and
[Israel and the Church](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israel-and-the-church/)). Matthew 13 is where that
reading does real work on verse 52, because the chapter itself says the contents of the storeroom
had been withheld until that day.

### Mystery in Matthew 13

Start with the word Jesus uses for them. μυστήριον (*mystērion*, "moo-STAY-ree-on", G3466) occurs
**26 times in the Greek New Testament, and exactly three times in the Gospels** — Matthew 13:11,
Mark 4:11 and Luke 8:10, which are the same sentence in three accounts. Everywhere else it is
Paul (19 times) or Revelation (4). Jesus says the word once, and He says it here.

[Israel and the Church](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israel-and-the-church/#what-scripture-means-by-a-mystery)
works out what the word means, tracing it back to the Aramaic <span dir="rtl">רָז</span> (*raz*, H7328)
of Daniel 2: something God alone knows, which stays unknown until He says it, and which is then
plain. Hidden, then disclosed. Matthew says the same thing about these parables in his own voice
later in the chapter — Jesus "will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world"
(13:35, ESV), which Matthew quotes from Psalm 78:2 and calls fulfilled.

### Given on the day of the rejection

Now put that beside what Matthew 12 has just finished doing. The Pharisees conspire to destroy
Jesus (12:14). The crowds ask, "Can this be the Son of David?" and the Pharisees answer that He
casts out demons by Beelzebul (12:23-24). He warns them about a blasphemy that will not be
forgiven (12:31), refuses them a sign beyond Jonah's (12:39), and redefines His family around
"whoever does the will of my Father in heaven" (12:50, ESV). Then: "That same day Jesus went out
of the house and sat beside the sea" (13:1, ESV). Matthew dates the parable discourse to the day
of the rejection.

### The kingdom's shape in the interval

The King has been formally refused, and
the kingdom's arrival in glory is therefore deferred. What Jesus discloses in these parables
is the shape the kingdom takes in the interval — sown among four soils, growing with
weeds in it until a harvest at "the end of the age" (13:39-40), netted good and bad together
until angels do the sorting (13:47-50). An interval the Old Testament prophets had not been
shown. Hence a mystery, and hence the "new" stock in verse 52.

### How firmly each step holds

Two different things are stacked here and they hold differently. That μυστήριον
means withheld-then-revealed is lexical and settled; Daniel 2, Colossians 1:26 and Ephesians 3:5
all say it in so many words. That Matthew 13 therefore describes a distinct administration of the
kingdom between the rejection and the return is a **systematic** reading. It is this site's, and
the exegesis above supports it, but covenant theologians read the same chapter as the kingdom
already inaugurated rather than deferred, and they are reading the same verses. A reader should
know which of the two they are being handed.

### What it does to the storeroom

Whichever way that question falls, verse 52 refuses to let the
disciple drop either half. The old stock is God's word to Israel. The new stock is what He disclosed that afternoon. This site's study
of Romans 11 puts the same shape in a heading:
[two mysteries, "and neither cancels the other"](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israel-and-the-church/#two-mysteries-and-neither-cancels-the-other).

**This shows that God adds without subtracting.** He had more to say than He had yet said. That is
why the picture is a storeroom: it has room for everything He has ever said.

## What Jesus is making

Pull the five words together and the verse describes a person.

A **scribe** — trained in the Scriptures, able to handle a text. **Discipled** — trained by
Jesus, in the passive, as a gift. Of and for and in the **kingdom** — its subject, its purpose,
its home. A **householder** with a stocked **storeroom** — a store filled before it was needed.
Who **brings out**, in the present tense, **new and old** — spending what God gave him, all of
it, on the household in front of him.

Understanding is for the household. The householder in this picture does not open his storeroom to admire
the shelves; he carries things out to be eaten. Matthew closes his Gospel with the same
movement, now as a command: "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (28:20,
ESV). Paul says the same to Timothy, and the whole of the storeroom is in his sentence — "All
Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and
for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good
work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17, ESV).

### What stays in Galilee and what carries over

Parts of this picture belong to its first hearers. The scribe as a trained profession and the
household storeroom are first-century furniture. So is the Twelve's own place: they heard the
new stock spoken aloud, what Paul calls "revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the
Spirit" (Ephesians 3:5, ESV), a position no later disciple holds. Your store is filled from
what they received and wrote down. The rest of the verse carries over whole: Jesus still does
the discipling, the store still holds both Testaments, and it is still stocked to be spent.
Matthew's close, quoted above, hands it on to every disciple the Eleven would make.

**This shows that God equips the people He sends.** He does not commission and then leave a
person to find supplies. He fills the store first, He does the filling Himself, and then He
opens the door. So you may teach your children, answer your friend, and open your Bible in
front of someone this week with something in your hands — because He put it there.

## Discussion questions

1. μαθητευθείς is passive: the scribe *has been discipled*. The ESV keeps the passive; the
   NIV and NASB read "has become a disciple." What would the verse claim if Jesus had used the
   active — "every scribe who has trained himself for the kingdom"? And if Jesus did the
   training, what does that say about Him?

2. The disciples say "Yes" in verse 51, and Jesus's "therefore" in verse 52 hangs on that yes.
   Read 13:10-17 and 13:36 alongside it. What had actually happened to these men that made the
   yes true, and how much of it was their doing?

3. Fourteen English versions supply seven different relations for a Greek dative that supplies
   none (see the table above). If you had to pick one — trained *for*, disciple *of*, disciple *in* —
   which would you choose, and what does your choice commit you to about what discipleship is?

4. Matthew 9:17 says new wine bursts old wineskins. Matthew 13:52 says the householder carries
   out new and old together. How do you hold those two sentences at once, and where have you
   seen a church get one of them wrong?

5. Jesus uses the word μυστήριον once in the Gospels, at Matthew 13:11, and Matthew dates the
   whole discourse to "that same day" (13:1) — the day of the confrontations in chapter 12. What
   does it commit you to if the parables were given *because* the King had just been refused?
   What changes if they were not?

6. Matthew 12:35 says a man brings out of his treasure what he has stored there. Take that as a
   question about your own shelves: if someone listened to everything you said about God this
   month, what would the inventory look like — and which half of the storeroom is thin?

## References & Recommended Reading

### Bible texts and original-language data

All open-licence, queried from this repo's
`bible-text.db` — see [references/README.md](https://github.com/ding0t/bible_studies/blob/main/references/README.md):

- *SBL Greek New Testament* (CC BY 4.0) — the Greek text of Matthew quoted and parsed here.
- *MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets (SBLGNT)* (CC BY 4.0) — morphology and Louw-Nida semantic
  domains. Domain assignments are scholarly judgements by the dataset's editors, and are
  labelled as such wherever this study leans on one.
- *World English Bible* (public domain) — quotations labelled WEB.
- *Westminster Leningrad Codex* / *unfoldingWord Hebrew Bible* (public domain; CC BY-SA 4.0) —
  the Hebrew of Ezra 7.
- *Brenton Septuagint* (public domain) — Ezra 7:6, 7:11 in Greek.
- *American Standard Version*, *Berean Standard Bible*, *King James Version*, *Tyndale New
  Testament (1526)*, *Rotherham's Emphasised Bible*, *Young's Literal Translation* — the
  translation-comparison table.

### Translations quoted

Quoted under publishers' permission notices (see [copyright](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/copyright/)):

- *The Holy Bible, English Standard Version* (Crossway, 2016) — this site's default, and the
  translation of every quotation above unless otherwise labelled.
- NIV, CSB, NKJV, NASB 1995/2020, LSB and NLT renderings of Matthew 13:52 appear in the
  comparison table only.

### Commentary and background

Each cited for a sentence or less, with attribution:

- *ESV Study Bible* (Crossway, 2016) — introduction to Matthew on authorship and the early
  testimony of Papias and Irenaeus; notes on 13:10-11 and 13:51-52.
- *NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible* and *NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible*
  (Zondervan; John H. Walton and Craig S. Keener, eds.) — notes on Matthew 5:20 (what a
  first-century scribe was), 7:29 (citing earlier authorities), and 13:52.
- *NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible* (Zondervan) — note on 13:52.
- *NLT Life Application Study Bible, Third Edition* (Tyndale House, 2019) — note on 13:52.
- *CSB Ancient Faith Study Bible* (Holman) — translators' footnote at 13:52, "Or every scribe."
- Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, *How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth* — the exegesis-
  before-hermeneutics method behind this study, and the rule for parables followed here: find
  the point the first hearers would have grasped, and leave incidental details alone. Their
  assessment of the KJV/NKJV textual base and of Young's Literal Translation is why neither is
  quoted above as a verse's meaning.

### On this site

- [How to Read the Bible](https://the-way.lewy.au/scripture/how-to-read-the-bible/) — the method this study follows.
- [Original Language Data](https://the-way.lewy.au/scripture/original-language-data/) — where the Greek and Hebrew data above
  comes from and how to query it yourself.
- [Israel and the Church](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israel-and-the-church/) — the site's working-out
  of μυστήριον from Daniel 2 through Ephesians 3 and Romans 11, which the dispensational section
  above leans on rather than repeating.
- [Glossary: Dispensationalism](https://the-way.lewy.au/glossary/#dispensationalism) — the framework named, and the
  οἰκονομία behind the name.
- [Preparing to Teach](https://the-way.lewy.au/teaching/preparing-to-teach/) — Ezra 7:10's study, do, teach, and
  what Scripture asks of the scribe who teaches others.