Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43   

Jesus spoke another parable to them, thus: "Heaven's rule may be compared to the one who sowed good seed in his field. And while everyone was sound asleep, an enemy came and sowed the seed of weeds among the wheat and then slunk away. When the crop began to come up, so came up the weeds as well. The slaves who worked for the field's owner came to him and said, 'Master, we thought the seed you sowed was good seed. If that's true, where did these weeds come from?' The owner answered, 'Some enemy has done this to me.' The slaves answered, 'Then shall we pluck up the weeds?' 'No,' the owner replied. 'If you do that, you'll pluck up the wheat along with the weeds. Let both grow up side by side [until they are obviously distinguishable], then at the harvest I will instruct the harvesters to gather the weeds first and tie them up in bundles for the burning. Then they can harvest the wheat for me.'" . . . Jesus left the crowds behind and went [back] into the house. Whereupon his disciples approached him, wanting to have some explanation of the weeds in the parable. This is what he said: "The one who sows the good seed is The One Like Us; the field is the world and the good seed are the heirs of heaven's rule; the weeds are the offspring of the enemy [the evil one]. That one is the devil; the harvest is the end of this age, and those who do the reaping are [heavenly] messengers who will scoop up all those who undermine heaven's rule, and they will pitch them into the furnace of fire where, as a result, there will be heard the sound of weeping and gnashing teeth. Then those who have been found righteous [judged and vindicated] will shine like the sun under the rule of heaven. So if you have ears, use them."

(Translated, condensed and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

The parable of the wheat and the weeds over time has been not only misunderstood but misapplied, sometimes in a spirit so unlike the one to whose its imagination is credited. It has been used to demonize heretics whom prevailing hierarchies in the church found troublesome. The Donatists of the late fourth century CE, who apparently prized doctrinal purity above peace and good will, wanted anathematized as unwanted weeds any who did not believe as they believed. Martin Luther was content to exclude heretics but not to kill them, while, by a kind of twisted logic, was willing to have the ruling secular authorities do both.  

The implication is that heterodoxy is the work of an evil one just as the parable suggests of the weeds. Orthodoxy is the fruit of the good seed. And so it goes. We will attempt to make the understanding of the parable less extreme and more useful to the contemporary world as we recall George Orwell's condemnation of ideology as a collection of smelly little orthodoxies.

 Matthew was a committed recycler. Within the space of one chapter he reuses the material of 13: 1-9 and its allegorical interpretation of 13: 18-23, this time making explicit that the parabolic referent is the "rule of heaven." It may be that Matthew knew of the parable of the seed growing in secret of Mark 4: 2-29 and appropriated some of its basic material and edited it for his own use. However, the direction is not the optimistic one of the hundred-fold harvest, but the regrettable reality of weeds sown by an "enemy" -- the Greek there (έχθρός) means "a hateful or hated person."

There is a natural desire on the part of those trying to encourage good to root out the bad at the first opportunity. But the teller of the original parable was apparently familiar with crop farming and knew that to attempt to remove the weeds (ζιζάια) -- a wheat-lookalike called "darnel," which was a nuisance -- would remove the wheat as well because the one could be mistaken for the other. The idea was to wait until both the wheat and the weed had grown to maturity, then removing and discarding the latter while harvesting the former.

The parable poses an interesting question about the nature of the Matthean communities from which this peculiar material (the explanation of the parable) came. Was there internal strife with competing teachers, each perceived by the other to be headed in a wrong direction? The hint of final judgment comes with the gathering of the faux wheat and its consignment to the fire. How bad were things at century's end for the Matthean communities that they gave in to a them-and-us mentality so reminiscent of the struggle visible in the Fourth Gospel where the "them" finally became simply "the Jews?"

In Matthew's interpretation of his own parable the at-first anonymous sower becomes "The One Like Us," a messianic figure. The field (αγρός) becomes the world (κόσμος), the good seed is equated with the heirs of the heavenly rule and the bad with the offspring of the enemy. And so goes the allegorical interpretation.

One wonders what the phrase "heirs of the heavenly rule" denoted in the Matthean understanding of the time. The rule of heaven may have denoted the environment resulting from the internalization (planting?) and practice of "these sayings" (Matthew 7:28) -- largely the ethic enunciated in the so-called Sermon on the Mount -- in the community (harvest?) The offspring of the enemy would have been those who in the eyes of the communities did not commit to or embrace Jesus Judaism.

It has certainly been tempting to some who read the gospels as eschatological tracts to use Matthew 13: 36-43 as a prophecy of coming judgment. There is an odor of Manichaeism about it, to be sure. Yet it cannot be seen as anything less than regrettable that the Judaism of the synagogue and the movement of Jesus Judaism diverged in opposition. It reminds one of the unfortunate schism that occurred in the 18th century between Anglican and Methodism. Jesus Judaism could have profited from keeping in useful dialogue with the synagogue (see Matthew 5: 17-19) and the synagogue from the reform and renewal Jesus Judaism offered (see Matthew 9: 16-17).

Matthew here, though, burns the bridge with his thinly veiled metaphor of the "furnace of fire" and the weeping and gnashing of teeth. The language of 13:43 (Then those who have been found righteous [judged and vindicated] will shine like the sun under the rule of heaven) borrowed from Daniel 12:3 gives an uncompromising Maccabean fierceness to the text. One can readily see how the early church cut off its synagogue roots and went its own way, consigning to perdition those who did not follow. It is a tendency that has too often been manifested in the life of the church, and, furthermore, has been one of the contributing factors of anti-Semitism.

It may be that the wheat-weed parable reflects an unfortunate period of religious history and needs to be viewed in that light.