The Parable of the Weeds and Why God Waits (26 of 26)

The question underneath this parable is the one people actually ask, which is why God does not do something.

Tragedies happen. Tyrants force their plans on people and crush opposition and appear to get away with it. And the question keeps arriving: why is God silent, and why does he not step in.

Does the Parable of the Weeds Explain Why God Waits?

Not directly, and Wright says plainly that probably no direct answer can be given in this life.

What the parable does instead is complicate the assumption behind the question, which is that God’s rule over the world would be a straightforward thing to implement.

Wright puts the counter-question sharply. Would people actually want God ruling directly and immediately, with every thought and action weighed and instantly judged and if necessary punished against his absolute holiness?

If the price of God intervening to stop a genocide were that he also had to restrain every other evil impulse, including the ones we know about in ourselves and quietly cherish, would we pay it?

And if we want him to act on particular occasions, do we suppose he can do that when we ask and then step back for the rest of the time?

That is not a defence of inaction. It is an observation that selective intervention is not available as a policy.^[1]

Who Are the Servants?

On Wright’s reading, the revolutionary movements of the period.

The servants spot the weeds and want to go into the field immediately and pull them out. The farmer stops them, because in their zeal they will uproot wheat along with the weeds.

Wright asks whether Jesus had an eye on the groups of his own day who were only too ready to step into God’s field and pull up what looked like weeds. There were many, including some Pharisees, eager to fight pagans on one side and compromised Jews on the other.

Those servants intended to do God’s will. They were longing for God to act and were prepared to help by acting themselves.^[2]

Part of Jesus’s whole campaign is that the true kingdom does not come that way, because God himself is not like that.

In Jesus and the Victory of God Wright puts it in terms of Israel’s story. For the first hearers the field is Israel: Israel at present is like a field with wheat and weeds mixed, and a day of separation is coming. Israel thought of herself as good wheat, ripe for the great harvest, but weeds would appear among the wheat, sown by an enemy the interpretation names as the devil. Wright’s larger claim is that Jesus relocated the enemy. The real opponent was the satan, not Rome, and the satan was at work inside Israel. Pulling up weeds by force attacks the wrong target.

One honesty note. The interpretation says nothing about the servants. Chrysostom noticed that Jesus “saith not at all who the servants are,” and Snodgrass rules that since Matthew makes nothing of them, neither should we. Wright’s revolutionaries are an inference, and I hold it as one.

Why Are These Three Parables Together?

Because all three are about waiting, and waiting is the thing nobody is good at.

The farmer waits for harvest, watching the weeds grow alongside the wheat in frustration. The birds wait for a tiny seed to become a shrub. The woman waits for leaven to work through the dough until the whole loaf is mysteriously changed.

Matthew groups them, and the grouping is the argument. That is what the kingdom is like.

Jesus’s own followers did not want to wait. If the kingdom was genuinely present in what he was doing, they wanted all of it now. They were not interested in God’s timetable. They had one of their own and expected him to conform to it.

Whose Patience Is the Parable About?

Both, and the second is easier to miss.

There is the patience required of the servants, who have to wait and watch a field they would rather clear.

And there is the patience of God, which is the note Wright puts at the heart of it. God does not enjoy the sight of a field full of weeds. He also does not relish declaring harvest early and destroying wheat along with them.

Read that way the delay is not indifference and it is not weakness. It is a decision about cost, made by someone who can see both outcomes and prefers the one that spares the wheat.

Does the Parable Say Judgment Never Comes?

No, and the explanation Jesus gives afterward is explicit about it.

There is a harvest. There is a separation. The parable is about timing rather than about whether.

That distinction is what keeps it from becoming either of the two easy readings. It is not a promise that everything will work out without a reckoning, and it is not a licence for anyone to conduct the reckoning early on God’s behalf.

Wright reads the explanation against Daniel, the favourite book of Jesus’s contemporaries because it seemed to promise Israel’s victory over the nations. The son of man is Dan 7, the fiery furnace is Dan 3, the righteous shining like the sun is Dan 12:3. What they hoped for would come, and God’s judgment might not be as straightforward as they thought. Inside a deliberately simple story of wheat and weeds, it was not as obvious as they had thought who were the weeds and who were the wheat, and the judgment was being delegated to the son of man. Wright adds that the Middle Eastern sun is not a glow on the horizon. When it comes up, people hide from it.

What Does This Say to Zeal?

That the instinct to clear the field is not evil and is not therefore safe.

The servants are not villains in the story. They notice a real problem, they care about it, and they propose to fix it. Everything about their reaction is understandable.

The farmer’s refusal is not a judgment on their motive. It is a judgment on their ability to tell wheat from weeds while both are growing, and on what their intervention would cost the crop.

The plant makes the refusal concrete. The weed is almost certainly darnel, a rye grass with poisonous black seeds that looks like wheat while green and is easily told apart only at maturity, by which point, the ESV Study Bible notes, its roots are intertwined with the wheat’s. The servants cannot yet tell which is which, and where they could, pulling one up brings the other with it.

Anyone who has watched a movement destroy the thing it was defending will recognise the shape of it.

Should the Church Pull Up the Weeds?

Two answers from the early church set the terms.

Chrysostom, in his forty-sixth homily on Matthew, took the weeds to be the heretics, sown beside the truth and looking somewhat like wheat, and then drew the line the parable drew for him. The farmer forbids the servants “to hinder wars from arising, and blood and slaughter. For it is not right to put a heretic to death, since an implacable war would be brought into the world.” Two reasons: the wheat would be hurt, and of the very tares it is likely that many may change and become wheat. He allows the church to check heretics and stop their mouths. What he refuses is killing them.

Augustine used it against the Donatists, who had split from the church in North Africa to keep it pure of those who had caved under persecution. He walks through the interpretation line by line and asks: “Is Africa the world? Is this present time the harvest? Is Donatus the reaper?” The sower had scattered seed not in Africa only but everywhere, so the whole world was to bear with the tares until the harvest. In another sermon he puts it in the Lord’s mouth: you see evil Christians among the good and want to root them up, so be quiet, it is not the time of harvest. We are but men, and the reapers are the angels. That is the charter for the church as a mixed body, and against purifying it by force.

Snodgrass calls both uses a misapplication. Verse 38 says the field is the world, as the Donatists themselves pointed out. The parable is not about the mixed character of the church but about righteous and sinners coexisting in the world even when the kingdom is present, and he calls any suggestion that the church need not be a pure community heresy. Boice dissents from the other side. Since verse 41 has the angels weeding everything that causes sin out of his kingdom, he thinks the question is actually irrelevant: either way the servants cannot tell the plants apart, and even in valid church discipline we must be extremely careful not to damage some for whom Christ died.

I keep the text’s own word, which is world. But the instinct behind the church reading came from somewhere, and Chrysostom’s reason is still the best one: many of the tares may yet become wheat.

Part of a series working through the parables. See also the mustard seed and the yeast, which Matthew groups with this one, and the parable of the sower.

Footnotes2

1. The counter-question about selective intervention is the most useful thing in this treatment, because it takes the objection seriously rather than deflecting it. Anyone asking why God does not stop a particular evil is implicitly proposing a policy, and the parable asks what that policy would look like applied evenly.
2. That the servants intended to do God's will is the detail that gives the parable its edge. A story about wicked men wanting to burn the field would teach nothing. A story about earnest men wanting to help, and being told to stand down because they cannot tell the difference yet, is considerably harder to hear.

Sources

N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One: Chapters 1-15 (SPCK, 2002), on Matt 13:24-35 and Matt 13:36-43. Supports the reframing of the why-does-God-not-act question, the reading of the servants as the revolutionary movements of the period, the grouping of the three parables around waiting, the identification of divine patience as the heart of the parable, and, from the section on the explanation, the Daniel background (Dan 7, Dan 3, Dan 12:3), "it wasn't as obvious as they had thought who were the weeds," and the threatening Middle Eastern sun. Supplied in full.

N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), ch. 5 (the list of warning sayings: "Israel at present is like a field with wheat and weeds mixed") and ch. 10, "The Enemy Relocated: Israel and the Satan." Supports the field as Israel for the first hearers, "Israel thought of herself as good wheat, ripe for the great harvest," and the real enemy as the satan, not Rome, at work inside Israel. In print, and in Logos.

John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, NPNF1 vol. 10 (1888), Homily 46 on Matt 13:24-30 and Homily 47 on Matt 13:36-43. Supports the weeds as heretics, "it is not right to put a heretic to death, since an implacable war would be brought into the world," the two reasons for restraint, the permission to check heretics but not kill them, and the observation that Jesus "saith not at all who the servants are." Free in full at ccel.org.

Augustine, Sermons on New Testament Lessons, NPNF1 vol. 6 (1888), Sermon 23 on Matt 13:19 ("ye see evil Christians among the good... be quiet, it is not the time of harvest"; "We are but men, the reapers are the angels") and Sermon 38 on Matt 20:30, sections 21-23 ("Is Africa the world? Is this present time the harvest? Is Donatus the reaper?"). Supports the anti-Donatist use of the parable. Free in full at ccel.org.

Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), "The Wheat and the Weeds." Supports the history of the parable's use (Callistus, Augustine and the Donatists, the later debate over killing heretics), the ruling that "the parable is not about the mixed character of the church," the "such ideas are heresy" line on church purity, and "since Matthew makes nothing of either kyrios or the servants in the interpretation, neither should we." In print, and in Logos.

James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus (Chicago: Moody, 1983), ch. 2, "The Work of the Enemy." Supports the dissent that the world-versus-church question is "actually irrelevant" because of Matt 13:41, and the caution about church discipline damaging "some for whom Christ died." In my Logos library.

ESV Study Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), notes on Matt 13:25-30 and Matt 13:38. Supports the identification of the weeds as darnel, poisonous, resembling wheat in early growth, with roots intertwined with the wheat's, and the reading of the field as the world rather than the church. In my Logos library.

The biblical texts cited: Matt 13:24-43, Ps 78:2, Dan 3, Dan 7, and Dan 12:3.

Where the sourcing stops: the identification of the servants with specific first-century movements is Wright's inference from the setting rather than something the parable states, and Chrysostom, Snodgrass and Blomberg all note that the interpretation leaves the servants unassigned. The reading of the field as Israel for the first hearers is Wright's; Matthew's text says the world. Whether the parable may be applied to the church at all is the live disagreement between Snodgrass and Boice, and this post keeps the text's word while recording both. The explanation Jesus gives in verses 36-43 is allegorical in a way most parables are not, and its relationship to the parable itself raises the same critical questions as the interpretation of the Sower.