One of the keys to understanding the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13) is to understand the time frame. Jesus is speaking in pictures and symbols about some period of history, but which? What’s the beginning, and what’s the end of the parable? Is Jesus talking about what happens after Him, what happens before Him, or something else?
Typically, the parable of the tares and wheat has been understood as a description of church history. Jesus is the owner sowing the field, the devil sows tares into the church (like Judas), and for that reason the church remains a “mixed multitude” until the end of the age. We have to tolerate evil members of the church until the world ends and the final judgment occurs. The parable of the mustard seed is seen as a parable about the history of the church as well. Jesus has only a handful of close disciples during His lifetime; the kingdom is a mustard seed in the time of Jesus. But over the centuries the mustard seed becomes a tree in which the birds find shelter. During Jesus’ ministry, the leaven is put in the loaf, and through the history of the church the loaf is permeated until it is entirely leavened.
The history of the church does follow these patterns. The church really is a mixed multitude, and while we are responsible to exercise church discipline, we can’t read hearts. There are hypocrites in the church who will not be revealed as such until the last judgment. The church did start small, and it has become great. The church is like a packet of leaven permeating the whole lump. We can even say that these stories reveal a movement that recurs over and over in the history of the church. Luther was a mustard seed, but from Him came a great tree. Missionaries sent to 19th-century Africa put leaven in the lump of Africa, and since that time the leaven has been leavening the whole lump.
Parables thus teach us about God’s ways and help us to anticipate what happens next. Whenever a field is planted with wheat, whenever we see the word spreading out through the world, we can expect the devil to spread his own seed, and the two grow up until a harvest. These are mysteries of God’s dealings throughout the ages. By learning to interpret parables, God forms us into prophets who know the times and can see God’s trajectories.
For several reasons, though, I think Jesus is talking primarily about the history of Israel that climaxes in His own ministry. That is, we tend to read the parables as if Jesus’ ministry is at the beginning of the parables. He’s the Son of Man sowing seed; He’s the one planting the mustard seed; He’s the one who puts the leaven in the lump. He’s the beginning of the story, and the rest of the story is what happens after Jesus. I’m suggesting that we think about Jesus coming at the end of the story instead.
The parable of wheat and tares ends with a harvest when the wheat and tares are separated from one another. Jesus has already observed that Israel is ready for harvest: “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest” (9:37-38). In the next breath, Jesus is giving authority to the Twelve to be harvesters within Israel – both gathering in the wheat and dividing between wheat and tares. The harvest for Jesus is not in the distant future, but is already beginning in His ministry. He comes at the end of the story rather than at the beginning. In some parables this is very obvious, where everyone recognizes that Jesus is the end of the story rather than the beginning. The most obvious of these is the parable of the vineyard and the tenants. An owner leases his vineyard to tenants, and then sends His servants to collect rent. The tenants abuse the servants and chase them away. Finally, at the end of the story, the owner sends his son, whom the tenants kill in hopes of seizing the vineyard for themselves. Obviously, this is about Israel rejecting the prophets sent to her; the Son’s coming is the coming of Jesus, and He comes at the end of the story and is followed by a judgment that crushes the rebellious tenants to dust. I’m suggesting that we think about reading the parables of Matthew 13 in the same framework.
Finally, 13:34-35 shows that Jesus is retelling the story of Israel, not foretelling the story of the church. Matthew pauses to explain, again, why Jesus teaches in parables, saying that Jesus’ teaching fulfills what he calls the “prophecy” of Psalm 78. The quotation in verse 35 is from the opening of Psalm 78. The “parable” or “dark saying” of Psalm 78 is not prophecy but history: “which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us” (v. 3). Psalm 78 describes the exodus, Israel’s rebellion in the wilderness, the Lord’s provision of water, manna, and meat in the desert, the incident at Shiloh when the Philistines captured the ark. It’s about Yahweh’s wonders for Israel, Israel’s forgetfulness of Yahweh, and Yahweh’s work in Egypt and the wilderness. But it ends with Yahweh awakening from sleep, driving His enemies away, building His sanctuary, and choosing David to shepherd Israel. The Psalm is about Yahweh’s intervention in the history of rebellious Israel and His goodness in giving them a faithful shepherd. Matthew’s quotation of Psalm 78 suggests that the “parables” Jesus is telling are the hidden things of Israel’s history, the secret that Yahweh will justify and deliver Israel not for their own obedience but for the sake of His own name. The secret that Yahweh will not leave Israel bereft but will justify the ungodly. David the good shepherd comes at the end of the prophetic Psalm 78, not at the beginning
With this in mind, let’s look back at the parable of the sower. If Jesus is talking about the history of Israel, which comes to the climax in Jesus, what is He saying? Several prophets use sowing to describe Israel’s return to the land after exile, but verse 38 says that the field is not the land but the “world.” So, I think the sowing is the scattering of the seed of Israel at the time of the exile. Israel is scattered to the four corners of the earth and begins to grow. All over the Mediterranean, wheat is growing, the wheat of the sons of the kingdom. From the Babylonian exile until the time of Jesus, wheat is growing throughout the world, and Israel is the bread of God to the nations, manna scattered to the Gentiles. At the same time, there are rotten figs among the ripe figs, tares among the wheat. At the same time that Israel is scattered to the corners of the earth, the devil scatters weed seed among them. This is why Israel is such a mixed people, and why there is so much opposition to Jesus during His lifetime. This is why some Jews in the intertestamental period remain faithful to Yahweh and His Torah, while many Jews compromise, adopting Greek customs and culture and ways of thinking. Israel is the wheat of the world, but there are tares among the wheat.
To the wheat among the Jews of the first century, it might look as if the Lord is doing nothing, as if He’s tolerating the weeds among the wheat, the weeds that make the nations blaspheme (Romans 2). The tares have been growing and prospering, threatening to take over the wheat field, and the owner of the field has not removed them – no herbicides, no weeding, no effort to deal with the wicked in Israel. The Lord left the wheat and weeds to grow up side-by-side until the harvest, that is, until Jesus comes. Now Jesus and His apostles are going to be separating the wheat from the tares, gathering the wheat and leaving the weeds to be burned in fire. Now is the judgment of this world; now is the prince of this world cast out – along with the weeds that he sowed. At the end of the age, the Son of Man will send His angels into the world to gather the wheat and to burn the chaff. There is a judgment coming on the wheat field, Israel scattered throughout the world, and this judgment is going to separate wheat and tares.
It is starting already, as Jesus and His disciples go into a field white with harvest. Jesus’ quotation from Daniel 12:3 (in Matthew 13:43) supports this. Daniel predicts a “time of distress,” which is followed by a “resurrection” and glorification of “those who have insight” and “those who lead the many to righteousness” (Daniel 12:1-3). This is usually taken as a prediction of the end of the world, but the “time of distress” refers to the same “time of tribulation” that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 24, which Jesus says will happen before the end of this generation. Daniel predicts the same sequence of Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24, which is about the destruction of Jerusalem (cf. 24:9, 21, 31, 34-35). Of course, the church is a mixed community, including both faithful sons and traitors. But Jesus’ specific focus is on the events surrounding the end of the Old Covenant order. That’s the “end of the age” that He’s talking about. The separating of tares and wheat takes place then, when the righteous will shine like the sun.
Can we say the same about the other two parables in this section of Matthew 13? Is the mustard seed planted at the time of the exile or the return from exile? Is the leaven placed within the lump at the time of Jesus, or Pentecost, or earlier? The planting of the mustard seed might refer to the return from exile, but it might also refer to the diaspora, Israel’s “sowing” and “scattering” among the Gentiles. The reference to birds in the “tree” might refer to that. And the fact that the man sows the mustard seed in his “field” points in the same direction. In the parable of the wheat and tares, the field is the “world,” and this is plausibly the same field. Israel is the tiny mustard seed planted among the nations, in the Lord’s garden. Yahweh planted the mustard seed of Israel, but as it comes to fruition, Jesus says it becomes a “tree.”
Now, that’s not strictly true. The mustard seed produces a bush, a shrub – a large shrub to be sure (8-10 feet high), but a shrub, not a tree. What’s Jesus up to then? Is He ignorant of botany? Had He never seen a tree larger than a mustard shrub? That’s unlikely, since there are tremendous cedars around Israel. We can defend Jesus’ botanical knowledge by pointing out that He says it’s larger than the “herbs” (Greek lachanon). But He calls it a “tree” (Greek, dendron), too, and that’s not accurate botanically.
The contrast between reality and Jesus’ words is deliberate. By calling the mustard shrub a tree, He evokes a couple of Old Testament passages. Ezekiel 17 is an allegory of exile and return, a “riddle” or “parable” that the Lord gives Ezekiel to tell the people of Israel. An eagle takes away the top of a cedar and takes it to another city, a city of traders, and the sprig of the cedar grows like a “low, spreading vine” beside the waters. Another eagle comes, and the vine turns its roots toward the new eagle, and in so doing pulls itself up from the soil and the waters and then withers. The Lord reveals this as an allegory of Babylonian exile. The first eagle is Babylon, which takes the king and high born from the land and plants them in a good land beside abundant water. The second eagle is Egypt, to which many in Judah are inclined. Babylon will bring prosperity, but Egypt is going to wither Judah. At the end of the story, the Lord promises to take a sprig from a cedar and plant it on the high mountain of Israel. Those who remain in Babylon, who seek the peace of the city, will be replanted in the land. The tree is going to become “a stately cedar, and birds of every kind will nest under it; they will nest in the shade of its branches” (v. 23). Daniel 4 also is a riddle about a tree, a tree where the birds of the air find refuge. Nebuchadnezzar is that tree. He is cut down, humbled, and driven from the world of men to become an animal for a time.
All this is evoked by Jesus’ reference to the mustard bush as a “tree” in which “birds of the air find nest.” But what is most striking is the contrast between the plants. Ezekiel speaks of a cedar that spreads throughout the land; Nebuchadnezzar’s tree is “great in height” (4:10). By contrast, the mustard bush is pathetically small; to say that birds of the air find refuge in the branches of the bush – just like they do in a cedar or an imperial tree – sounds laughable. As David Garland says, it’s a “parody of itself.”
But that is Jesus’ point. Israel was planted in the field of the world. It was a tiny seed, and when it grew up, it became – TA DA – a bush!! Even Jews looking at the “bush” of Israel were tempted to despise it. We’re supposed to be the great cedar! We’re supposed to be the tallest mountain of them all! Jews looking at the pathetic little bush are tempted to put their fortunes with the high and mighty cedars – to adopt the ways of Babylon and Egypt, of Greece and Rome. They at least look like trees! Yet Israel is, despite appearances, the tree in which the birds of the air nest. It truly is the tree where the nations find refuge. It’s the tree where the beasts of the field find shade. It’s the tree from which all living things eat (Daniel 4).
When Israel rebuilt the temple after the exile, it seemed to be far less than the temple of Solomon, and many of the Jews mourned the decline. But it was not a decline. Appearances deceived, and the smaller second temple was truly the house of prayer for all nations, just as the pathetic mustard “tree” – which is only a tree in quotation marks – is truly the imperial tree of all the earth. This is why the kingdom is a mystery. This is why some people can’t understand. What should look like a cedar looks like a mustard bush! The hidden meaning of Israel’s history, the meaning that Jesus brings to fruition and completion, is that the really central tree in the world is not the great, spreading imperial tree of Rome, but the small, despised, bushy-tree of Israel. That really is where the nations have found and are going to find refuge. In dealing with Israel, Jesus is working at the center of the world.
The leaven parable has a similar twist. Leaven isn’t always a symbol of corruption and evil influence. Israel ate leavened bread at Pentecost. But leaven is often a symbol of some evil to be avoided and rejected. In the feast of unleavened bread, Israel was to put away old leaven. The feast of unleavened bread was a new start, a new beginning; but the leaven that was put away was a symbol of the leaven of Egypt, evil influences that had permeated Israel and needed to be plucked out. No leaven was ever put on the altar, and Jesus in the gospels warns of the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees. God uses despised things to overturn things that are honored. He uses the “unclean” and the apparently “corrupting” to leaven the lump of Israel. His prophets were like leaven – considered unclean and dangerous, and really overturning things by their influence. Jesus Himself is seen as a dangerously corrupting man, and He is corrupting Israel, if you’re a Pharisee. He’s spending all His time with tax gatherers and sinners. How can anyone build a kingdom from that?
Yet Yahweh does. Israel is being leavened from the time of the exile on by the prophets and others who are considered corrupting, but who are preparing the lump of dough to become bread. But the dough becomes bread only when it’s put into the oven. The goal is not just leavened dough, but bread. Israel is going to be bread for the world, but only after it has been thoroughly permeated by the “corruption” of the prophets and Jesus, and then tossed into the oven of the great tribulation.
These parables are allegories of Israel’s history first of all, but they also show us patterns of God’s work throughout the ages. As we absorb these parables, as they transform our hearts and imaginations, we begin to see similar patterns throughout the history of the church. One of the things we learn from all this is the centrality of faith. In these parables faith takes two forms. Faith means patience. Yahweh did not tear out the tares from Israel before the harvest; He planted a tiny seed and waited for it to grow. A lump of dough is not leavened immediately. God’s kingdom comes slowly, and if we are going to keep in step with the King, we need to be patient.
Faith means that we don’t trust our senses. It looks as if the owner of the field is going to tolerate weeds forever; but He’s not. There is a harvest. It looks as if the “tree” of the kingdom is pretty tiny compared to the empires and nations of the world. That’s false. The mustard bush is the central tree of the world. It looks as if corruption is working its way through the lump, but that apparent corruption is God’s way of leavening the whole lump of dough, preparing it for baking. Jesus shows us that the ways of God’s kingdom are not the ways of the kingdoms of this world. God’s kingdom comes slowly, silently, imperceptibly, and even when it comes it doesn’t necessarily overwhelm us with its grandeur. That’s not the kind of kingdom we expect, but it’s the kind of kingdom we should expect from a King who brings His kingdom through a cross.
Peter J. Leithart is President of Trinity House.