The parables of the kingdom: hidden, growing and certain

Matthew 13 is the third of the five great discourses of Matthew and stands near the middle of the Gospel. It comes after a run of growing opposition. In chapters 11 and 12 John the Baptist's followers question Jesus, towns that saw his miracles do not repent, and the Pharisees accuse him of casting out demons by Beelzebul and ask for a sign. Chapter 13 shows Jesus responding by teaching in parables. The scene is by the Sea of Galilee: he sits in a boat while the crowd stands on the shore. Mark 4 and Luke 8 contain the parable of the sower. The mustard seed is also in Mark 4, and the mustard seed and the leaven appear together in Luke 13:18-21. Matthew alone has the weeds, the treasure, the pearl and the net.

A parable (Greek parabole, Hebrew mashal) is a comparison, a riddle or a short story that makes a point. The Old Testament has examples: Nathan's story of the ewe lamb (2 Samuel 12) and Isaiah's song of the vineyard (Isaiah 5). Jesus draws his pictures from life in Galilee. Farmers there sowed by scattering seed over unploughed ground and then ploughing it in, so some seed falls on paths, among thorns and on shallow soil over limestone. Darnel, a weed that looks like wheat until the head forms, was a real problem. The mustard seed was proverbially tiny, and leaven was the sour dough that raised bread. Hidden treasure and pearl-dealing belonged to ordinary commerce.

The chapter ends in Nazareth, the village where Jesus grew up. Matthew's readers, a church with Jewish roots, would find in the rejection there a pattern they already knew: God's messengers are often refused by their own people. The date and authorship of the Gospel are discussed in the class on chapters 1 and 2.

Parables are not allegories in which every detail has a hidden meaning, nor are they simple illustrations. The early church often read them as full allegories. Augustine, for example, treated the Good Samaritan as a picture of the whole story of salvation. In the late nineteenth century Adolf Jülicher argued the opposite, that each parable has a single point, and many scholars since, including Joachim Jeremias, have held to that with qualifications. The current approach is that a parable has one main point, with details that support it, and that some parables carry allegorical elements. Jesus himself explains the sower and the weeds point by point (13:18-23, 36-43), so allegory in his parables is not excluded. The interpretations he gives are the controlling ones.

The parables of Matthew 13 all begin 'the kingdom of heaven is like' and describe a kingdom that is present in a hidden form and will be revealed in power. Interpreters differ on some of the details. Many hold that the mustard seed and leaven picture the kingdom's small beginnings and great end. Some, notably in the dispensationalist tradition, read the leaven as a picture of corruption, since leaven usually stands for evil in the Old Testament (Exodus 12:15) and the New (1 Corinthians 5:6-8). This class follows the first reading because the parable begins by saying that the kingdom itself is like leaven, but it notes that the second has serious defenders.

The literary structure also guides interpretation. Chapter 13 has a public part (verses 1-35), spoken to the crowds, and a private part (36-52), spoken to the disciples in the house. The movement from public to private is part of the message about who sees and hears.

13:1-9. The sower scatters seed on four kinds of ground. The path lets birds eat the seed. The rocky ground has little soil, so the seed sprouts quickly and withers in the sun. The thorns choke the plants. The good soil yields thirty, sixty or a hundredfold, a return far beyond an ordinary yield. Isaac was blessed with a hundredfold harvest in Genesis 26:12. Jesus ends with a call to anyone who has ears to listen.

13:10-17. The disciples ask why Jesus speaks to the crowds in parables. He answers that knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom has been given to them but not to others. 'Secret' (mysterion) means something once hidden and now revealed by God. Matthew then quotes Isaiah 6:9-10 in the Greek form. In Isaiah's day, God sent the prophet to a people who would hear and not understand, so that his ministry would expose and harden hearts. Mark 4:12 says the parables are 'so that' people do not understand, while Matthew 13:13 says 'because' they see without seeing. Matthew puts the weight on the hearers' response: the parable discloses to the willing and conceals from the unwilling. The disciples are blessed, since many prophets and righteous people longed to see and hear what they do.

13:18-23. Jesus explains the sower. The seed is the word of the kingdom. The path stands for hearing without understanding, when the evil one snatches the word. The rocky ground is joy without root, which falls away under trouble or persecution. The thorns are the worries of the age and the deceitfulness of wealth. The good soil hears, understands and bears fruit. The question the parable raises is not about the seed but about the hearer. Scholars debate whether the first three soils describe people who were never saved or who lose salvation, and the parable is told in terms of fruit, not of eternal status.

13:24-30, 36-43. An enemy sows weeds, probably darnel, among the wheat. The servants want to pull them up, and the owner says to wait until the harvest, since pulling the weeds would uproot the wheat. In the explanation, the sower is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed are the sons of the kingdom, the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the harvest is the end of the age, with angels as reapers. The weeds are thrown into the fire, and the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father's kingdom, echoing Daniel 12:3. The point is patience: until the end, the kingdom coexists with evil, and judgment is God's work.

13:31-35. The mustard seed is small and becomes a large plant in which the birds nest. The image echoes Ezekiel 17:23 and Daniel 4:12, where a great tree shelters the birds, a picture of a kingdom that gives refuge to the nations. The leaven mixed into three measures of flour, a large amount (compare Genesis 18:6), works through the whole batch. Matthew then notes that Jesus spoke to the crowds only in parables, fulfilling Psalm 78:2, in which the psalmist speaks of opening his mouth in parables.

13:44-52. The treasure and the pearl show the kingdom's worth: a man sells all he has for the treasure, a merchant for the pearl. The net gathers fish of every kind, and the sorting at the end repeats the lesson of the weeds. The closing saying describes a scribe trained for the kingdom, who brings out of his storeroom what is new and what is old. This is the disciple who reads the Old Testament in light of Jesus.

13:53-58. In Nazareth, Jesus teaches in the synagogue and the people are astonished. They ask where this man got such wisdom, and name his mother, brothers and sisters. They are offended at him (skandalizo). Jesus says a prophet is not without honour except in his own country, and he does few miracles there because of their unbelief.

The chapter teaches that the kingdom of God has come in an unexpected form. The Old Testament promised a kingdom of power, and Jesus announces that it has arrived quietly, like seed in the soil, to be revealed in glory at the end. This is the 'already and not yet' of the New Testament: the kingdom is present in Jesus' ministry and will come fully at his return.

It also teaches the responsibility of those who hear. The word comes to all, and the response differs. Isaiah 6, John 12:37-41 and Romans 11:7-10 all link the divine sovereignty that opens eyes with the human refusal that closes them, and the Bible holds both without resolving them. The chapter teaches too that God is patient with evil and that judgment is his: the weeds are not to be uprooted by the disciples. Many Christians have applied the parable to the church as a mixed community, while the interpretation in the chapter itself says the field is the world (13:38). Augustine used the weeds against the Donatists who wanted a pure church, and others have noted that Jesus speaks about the world.

It teaches the supreme worth of the kingdom. The treasure and the pearl are worth everything, and the cost is joyful. And it teaches that unbelief limits the experience of God's work: the lack of miracles at Nazareth is tied to unbelief.

Matthew presents Jesus here as the fulfilment of Scripture and as the Son of Man. He says the parables fulfil Isaiah 6:9-10 and Psalm 78:2 (13:14-15, 35). In John 12:37-41, the apostle says Isaiah saw Jesus' glory when he wrote about hardened hearts, so the pattern of Isaiah's rejected ministry is carried by Jesus himself.

Jesus names himself as the sower, the Son of Man who owns the field and sends the angels at the harvest (13:37, 41). 'Son of Man' is the title from Daniel 7:13-14, where a figure like a son of man receives an everlasting kingdom. The righteous who shine like the sun echo Daniel 12:3. In the parable of the weeds, the kingdom of the Son of Man and the kingdom of the Father are spoken of together (13:41, 43), a claim that Jesus shares in the rule of God.

The rejection at Nazareth is a quiet echo of a pattern. The carpenter's son is despised by the people who know his family. This is what Isaiah said of the servant: he was despised and rejected (Isaiah 53:3). The people who stumbled over Jesus' ordinary origin are those who did not see that God had come in humility. The same Jesus who is the sower is the one who will gather the harvest.