Matthew 13:39 - Exposition

Th e enemy that sowed them ( ὁσπείρας ); contrast Matthew 13:37 ( ὁσπείρων τὸ καλὸν σπέρμα ) . Matthew 13:37 states what is ever true; Matthew 13:39 merely refers back to the enemy spoken of in the parable. Is the devil ( Matthew 4:1 , note). (For the thought of this and the preceding clause, see John 8:44 ; 1 John 3:8 , 1 John 3:10 .) The harvest is the end of the world; literally, as the margin of the Revised Version, the consummation of the age ( συντέλεια αἰῶνος ); when the present age shall have received its completion, and the more glorious one be ushered in (cf. Matthew 12:32 , note). And the reapers are the angels; are angels (Revised Version). But it is exactly parallel to the preceding predicate, and if the insertion of our English idiomatic "the" fails to lay the stress which the Greek has on the fact that the reapers are such beings as angels (as contrasted with human workers, Matthew 9:37 , Matthew 9:38 ), its omission adds a thought which the Greek was probably not intended to convey—that the reapers would be only some among the angels.