Matthew 17:
You can move the mountain if you have faith as small as a mustard seed. Really?
No, not really, according to Ellicott.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers:20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
The disciples knew it was proverbial hyperbole.If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed.—The hyperbolical form of our Lord’s words, repeated afterwards in Matthew 21:21, excluded from the thoughts of the disciples, as from our own, the possibility of a literal interpretation.
Gill mentions a few extrabiblical references to this proverb:The “grain of mustard seed” was, as in Matthew 13:31, the proverbial type of the infinitely little. To “remove mountains” was, as we see in 1 Corinthians 13:2 (this may, however, have been an echo of our Lord’s teaching), the proverbial type of overcoming difficulties that seemed insurmountable.
"A grain of mustard seed" is proverbial for smallness. The "moving mountain" hyperbole follows it.for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed; which was a very small seed, the least of all seeds, and is used very often proverbially by the Jews, to signify anything of a small quantity or weight (b), and is sometimes used of faith, as here; so speaking of the congregation of Edom, meaning the Christians, they (c) say,
"they have not, "faith as a grain of mustard seed".''
And it is used in like sense in other eastern nations; and by Mahomet in his Alcoran (d), who says,
"We will appoint just balances in the day of resurrection, neither shall any soul be injured at all, although the merit or guilt of an action be of the weight of "a grain of mustard seed".''
You can move the mountain if you have faith as small as a mustard seed. Really?
No, not really, according to Ellicott.