The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds #8

The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, also known as the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, is a story Jesus told about a farmer whose field is secretly sown with weeds by an enemy. It appears only in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 13:24-30), and Jesus later gives his disciples a detailed explanation of it (Matthew 13:36-43). It is one of the main biblical images for how good and evil coexist until the final judgment.

The Parable

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. While people were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away (Matthew 13:24-25). When the plants sprouted and produced grain, the weeds appeared as well. The servants asked whether they should go and gather them up, but the owner said no, since pulling the weeds would uproot the wheat with them. He told them to let both grow together until the harvest, when he would instruct the reapers to collect the weeds first, tie them in bundles to be burned, and gather the wheat into his barn (Matthew 13:26-30).

Context

The story is the second of the kingdom parables in Matthew 13, following the Parable of the Sower. Jesus tells it to the crowds, and afterward, in the house, the disciples ask him to explain it (Matthew 13:36). The weed in view is probably darnel, a grass that looks almost identical to wheat until the grain heads form, and whose roots intertwine with those of the crop. A farmer of that time would know that weeding it early was nearly impossible without damaging the wheat, and that darnel seeds could cause illness if harvested with the grain. The detail of an enemy sowing weeds at night also reflected real acts of malicious sabotage known in the ancient world.

Meaning

Jesus explains that the one who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, and the weeds are the children of the evil one. The enemy is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. At that time the angels will gather out of the kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil, and the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom (Matthew 13:37-43; compare Daniel 12:3).

Two ideas stand out. The presence of evil in the world does not mean that God is absent or that the kingdom has failed, and final judgment belongs to God and his angels rather than to his followers. Christians have applied this differently. Augustine and many later church leaders used it to argue that the visible church will always contain both sincere and insincere members and that it should not be purified by force. Anabaptist and many free-church writers pointed out that Jesus says the field is the world, not the church, and used the parable to argue for religious tolerance. Others emphasize the parable’s call to patience and humility about whom we judge, as well as its sober picture of a separation still to come.