Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 13:39

"and the enemy that sowed them is the devil: and the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are angels." — Matthew 13:39 (ASV)

The enemy that sowed them is the devil — Here, as in the parable of the Sower, there is a distinct recognition of a personal power of evil—the enemy of God, thwarting His work.

It should be noted that our Lord, as if gradually training His disciples in the art of interpretation, provides the main points of the parable's explanation rather than a fully detailed one. Therefore, it is appropriate for us, as it was for them, to pause and ask what is taught by what seems to be the most striking and important part of the parable: Who were the servants? What was meant by their question and the householder's answer?

The answers to these questions, it will be seen, supply a solution to many problems in the history and policy of the Church of Christ.

1. The enemy sowed the tares “while men slept.” The time of danger for the Church is when it appears secure. People cease to watch. Errors grow and develop into heresies, carelessness turns into license, and offenses abound.
2. The “servants” are obviously distinct from the “reapers” and represent the zealous pastors of the Church. Their first impulse is to clear the kingdom of evil by rooting out the evildoers.

But the householder in the parable is more patient and discerning than they are. Seeking the ideal of a perfect Church in this way may lead to worse evils than those it attempts to remedy. True wisdom is found, for the most part, in what might seem a policy of indifference: “Let both grow together until the harvest.” This is the broad, salient lesson of the parable.

At first, this may seem at odds with our primary conceptions of both ecclesiastical discipline and the duty of civil rulers. Is it not the work of both to root out the tares and punish evildoers? The solution to the difficulty is found, as it were, by reading “between the lines” of the parable.

Doubtless, evil is to be checked and punished in both the Church and civil society, but it is not the work of the rulers of either to root out the evildoers. Below the surface lies the latent truth that, by a spiritual transmutation not possible in the parable's natural framework, the tares may become wheat. There is no absolute line of demarcation separating one from the other until the time of harvest.

What the parable condemns, therefore, is the over-hasty endeavor to attain an ideal perfection—the zeal of the founders of religious orders or of Puritanism in its many forms. It would have been well if those who identify the tares with heretics had been more mindful of the lesson that this identification suggests.

The harvest is the end of the world — Strictly speaking, this means the end of the age—that is, the end of the period that precedes the “coming” of the Son of Man as Judge, which will usher in the “world” or “age” to come.

The reapers are the angels — It is not easy to define the actual work of the angels' ministry in the final judgment, but their presence is implied in all our Lord’s greater prophetic utterances about it (Matthew 25:31). This ministry was brought prominently to attention in the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Daniel, where for the first time the name of the Son of Man is identified with the future Christ (Matthew 7:13), and the Messianic kingdom itself is brought into new clarity in connection with a final judgment. Our Lord’s teaching simply expands on the hints from Daniel: the thousand times ten thousand that ministered before the Ancient of Days when the books were opened (Daniel 7:9–10), and Michael the prince as connected with the resurrection of many that sleep in the dust of the earth (Daniel 12:1–2).