Matthew 13:39
New International Version
and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

New Living Translation
The enemy who planted the weeds among the wheat is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, and the harvesters are the angels.

English Standard Version
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

Berean Standard Bible
and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

Berean Literal Bible
and the enemy having sown them is the devil; and the harvest is the consummation of the age; and the harvesters are angels.

King James Bible
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

New King James Version
The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

New American Standard Bible
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.

NASB 1995
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.

NASB 1977
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.

Legacy Standard Bible
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.

Amplified Bible
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.

Christian Standard Bible
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
and the enemy who sowed them is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

American Standard Version
and the enemy that sowed them is the devil: and the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are angels.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
The enemy who sowed them is Satan, but the harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are the Angels.

Contemporary English Version
and the one who scattered them is the devil. The harvest is the end of time, and angels are the ones who bring in the harvest.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And the enemy that sowed them, is the devil. But the harvest is the end of the world. And the reapers are the angels.

English Revised Version
and the enemy that sowed them is the devil: and the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are angels.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
The enemy who planted them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world. The workers are angels.

Good News Translation
and the enemy who sowed the weeds is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvest workers are angels.

International Standard Version
The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

Literal Standard Version
and the enemy who sowed them is the Devil, and the harvest is [the] full end of the age, and the reapers are messengers.

Majority Standard Bible
and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

New American Bible
and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

NET Bible
and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

New Revised Standard Version
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

New Heart English Bible
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

Webster's Bible Translation
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

Weymouth New Testament
The enemy who sows the darnel is *the Devil*; the harvest is the Close of the Age; the reapers are the angels.

World English Bible
The enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

Young's Literal Translation
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is a full end of the age, and the reapers are messengers.

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
The Parable of the Weeds Explained
38The field is the world, and the good seed represents the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. 40As the weeds are collected and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of the age.…

Cross References
Matthew 12:32
Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the one to come.

Matthew 13:22
The seed sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Matthew 13:40
As the weeds are collected and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of the age.

Matthew 13:49
So will it be at the end of the age: The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous,

Matthew 24:3
While Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?"

Matthew 28:20
and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

1 Corinthians 10:11
Now these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.


Treasury of Scripture

The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

enemy.

Matthew 13:25,28
But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way…

2 Corinthians 2:17
For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.

2 Corinthians 11:3,13-15
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ…

harvest.

Matthew 13:49
So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,

Matthew 24:3
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

Joel 3:13
Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great.

reaper.

Matthew 25:31
When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

Daniel 7:10
A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

2 Thessalonians 1:7-10
And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, …

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Matthew 13
1. The parable of the sower and the seed;
18. the explanation of it.
24. The parable of the weeds;
31. of the mustard seed;
33. of the leaven;
36. explanation of the parable of the weeds.
44. The parable of the hidden treasure;
45. of the pearl;
47. of the drag net cast into the sea.
53. Jesus is a prophet without honor in his own country.














(39) The enemy that sowed them is the devil.--Here, as in the parable of the Sower, there is the most distinct recognition of a personal power of evil, the enemy of God thwarting His work. It will be noticed that our Lord, as if training His disciples gradually in the art of the interpreter, gives rather the heads of an explanation of the parable than one that enters fully into details; and it is therefore open to us, as it was to them, to pause and ask what was taught by that which seems almost the most striking and most important part of the parable. Who were the servants? What was meant by their question, and the answer of the householder? The answers under these heads supply, it will be seen, a solution of 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 one of apparent security. Men cease to watch. Errors grow up and develop into heresies, carelessness passes into license, and offences 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 from evil by extirpating the doers of the evil. But the householder in the parable is at once more patient and more discerning than they. To seek for the ideal of a perfect Church in that way may lead to worse evils than those it attempts to remedy. True wisdom is found, for the most part, in what might seem the policy of indifference, "Let both grow together until the harvest." That is the broad, salient lesson of the parable. At first it may seem at variance with what enters into our primary conceptions, alike of ecclesiastical discipline and of the duty of civil rulers. Is it not the work of both to root out the tares, to punish evil-doers? The solution of the difficulty is found, as it were, in reading "between the lines" of the parable. Doubtless, evil is to be checked and punished alike in the Church and in civil society, but it is not the work of the rulers of either to extirpate the doers. Below the surface there lies the latent truth that, by a spiritual transmutation which was not possible in the natural framework of the parable, the tares may become the wheat. There is no absolute line of demarcation separating one from the other till the time of harvest. What the parable condemns, therefore, is the over-hasty endeavour to attain an ideal perfection, the zeal of the founders of religious orders, 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 which that identification suggests.

The harvest is the end of the world.--Strictly speaking, the end of the age--i.e., of the period that precedes the "coming" of the Son of Man as Judge, which is to usher in the "world," or the "age," to come.

The reapers are the angels.--What will be the actual work of the ministry of angels in the final judgment it is not easy to define, but their presence is implied in all our Lord's greater prophetic utterances about it (Matthew 25:31). That ministry had been brought prominently before men in the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Daniel, in which 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 brought into new distinctness in connection with a final judgment. Our Lord's teaching does but expand the hints of the "thousand times ten thousand" that ministered before the Ancient of Days when the books were opened (Daniel 7:9-10), and of Michael the prince as connected with the resurrection of "many that sleep in the dust of the earth" (Daniel 12:1-2).

Verse 39. - The enemy that sowed them (ὁ σπείρας); contrast ver. 37 (ὁ σπείρων τὸ καλὸν σπέρμα). Ver. 37 states what is ever true; ver. 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, 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, 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.

Parallel Commentaries ...


Greek
and
δὲ (de)
Conjunction
Strong's 1161: A primary particle; but, and, etc.

the
(ho)
Article - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

enemy
ἐχθρὸς (echthros)
Adjective - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 2190: Hated, hostile; subst: an enemy. From a primary echtho; hateful; usually as a noun, an adversary.

who sows
σπείρας (speiras)
Verb - Aorist Participle Active - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 4687: To sow, spread, scatter. Probably strengthened from spao; to scatter, i.e. Sow.

them
αὐτά (auta)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Accusative Neuter 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 846: He, she, it, they, them, same. From the particle au; the reflexive pronoun self, used of the third person, and of the other persons.

is
ἐστιν (estin)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 1510: I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

the
(ho)
Article - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

devil.
διάβολος (diabolos)
Adjective - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 1228: From diaballo; a traducer; specially, Satan.

The
(ho)
Article - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

harvest
θερισμὸς (therismos)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Singular
Strong's 2326: Reaping, harvest; met: the harvest, crop. From therizo; reaping, i.e. The crop.

is
ἐστιν (estin)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 1510: I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

[the] end
συντέλεια (synteleia)
Noun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 4930: A completion, consummation, end. From sunteleo; entire completion, i.e. Consummation.

of the age,
αἰῶνός (aiōnos)
Noun - Genitive Masculine Singular
Strong's 165: From the same as aei; properly, an age; by extension, perpetuity; by implication, the world; specially a Messianic period.

and
δὲ (de)
Conjunction
Strong's 1161: A primary particle; but, and, etc.

[the] harvesters
θερισταὶ (theristai)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Plural
Strong's 2327: A reaper, harvester. From therizo; a harvester.

are
εἰσιν (eisin)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 1510: I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

angels.
ἄγγελοί (angeloi)
Noun - Nominative Masculine Plural
Strong's 32: From aggello; a messenger; especially an 'angel'; by implication, a pastor.


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NT Gospels: Matthew 13:39 The enemy who sowed them (Matt. Mat Mt)
Matthew 13:38
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