The enemy sowing tares (Notes)

Saint Matthew -Chapter 13

The enemy sowing tares. J-J Tissot.

[24] Aliam parabolam proposuit illis, dicens : Simile factum est regnum caelorum homini, qui seminavit bonum semen in agro suo :
Another parable he proposed to them, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seeds in his field.

Another parable put He forth, &c. The Syriac adds, enigmatically. This means, it is done in the kingdom of Heaven in the same way that it is done in a field—when a man sows his seed, and his enemy sows tares over it. Wherefore Mark has (4:26.) So is the kingdom of God, as if a man cast seed into the earth, and while men slept, &c. For the whole parable is compared with the whole of the things signified, not part with part: for otherwise the sower would not be like to a kingdom but to a king, the King of Heaven.

[25] cum autem dormirent homines, venit inimicus ejus, et superseminavit zizania in medio tritici, et abiit.
But while men were asleep, his enemy came and over-sowed cockle among the wheat and went his way.

Whilst men slept, &c. That is to say by night, whilst men were sleeping, his enemy came unknown to everyone. He was envious of the prosperous crops of his rival, and in order to ruin them, he sowed tares among them. The expression, whilst men slept, adds to the elegance of the parable: for those who are envious are accustomed to frame such plots against those who sleep.

Symbolically, S. Jerome and S. Augustine understand this sleeping to mean negligence and carelessness on the part of bishops and pastors of the Church. Or they understand it of the death of the Apostles, on which the heretics took occasion to sow the tares of their heresies and wickednesses. Hence let pastors learn to watch over their flocks. “The life of mortals is a watch.” For as Augustine says, “To sleep more than to watch is the life of dormice rather than of men.”

[26] Cum autem crevisset herba, et fructum fecisset, tunc apparuerunt et zizania.
And when the blade was sprung up, and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle.

Tares, the Hebrew Gospel reads, הרולים charulim. i.e., nettles, thistles. The word in Greek is zizania, a word peculiar to the Gospels, unknown to Cicero and Demosthenes, and signifying every kind of worthless and noxious weed. All impurity in seed is called zizania, as S. Augustine says. Tertullian (de prescript, hæret. c. 31.) interprets zizania, to mean wild oats. “In the parable,” he says, “The Lord first sowed his good seed, and it was afterwards that the devil sowed the spurious seed of his barren crop.” Whence he gathers that the fact of heresy being later in time is a mark of falsehood. Hence too (l. de anima c. 16.) he calls the sower of tares “the nocturnal interpolator of evil seed.”

zizania then, or tares are whatsoever is injurious to the crops, or inimical to wheat, as darnel, for instance. Hear Pliny (l. 18. c. 17.) “I should reckon darnel and thistles and thorns and burrs, no less than brambles, among the diseases of the crops rather than among the pests of the ground.” Some are of opinion that zizania is a Syriac word. Other derive it from the Chaldee zyz, an appearance, a figure. For it has the appearance of nourishing corn, but is not. The Germans call zizania, droncacert, because it makes people drunk: it also gives vertigo and stupefaction to those who eat it. Hence zizania signifies mystically heretics and sinners, especially those who corrupt others by word or example, as SS. Augustine, Chrysostom, and Gregory teach. For zizania injure the wheat, and choke and kill it, because they draw away nourishment from it, and so as it were corrupt and strangle the wheat. This is Christ’s second parable of the tares, by which He tacitly rebukes the Scribes and Pharisees, His adversaries, who sowed the tares of their false accusations over the seed of the Word of God, i.e., His preaching of the Gospel, by saying that Jesus was opposed to Moses, that He had a familiar spirit, and so on; by which they inferred that Jesus was not the Messiah, but a magician and an impostor. By this means they turned away the people from Him and His Gospel, and choked and destroyed the good seeds and desires of faith and piety which Christ had scattered in their hearts. Therefore they were tares, i.e., the evil seed of the devil.

When the blade was sprung up, &c. For the first sprouts of zizania and of wheat are alike, so that one cannot be discerned from the other; but when they are grown up, they are easily distinguished.

[27] Accedentes autem servi patrisfamilias, dixerunt ei : Domine, nonne bonum semen seminasti in agro tuo? unde ergo habet zizania?
And the servants of the goodman of the house coming said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle?

Servants of the householder, &c. Lest ye root up the wheat also with them. For the tares are intertwined and interwoven among the roots of the wheat, so that if you were to pull up the former, you must root up the latter also.

[28] Et ait illis : Inimicus homo hoc fecit. Servi autem dixerunt ei : Vis, imus, et colligimus ea?
And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?

[29] Et ait : Non : ne forte colligentes zizania, eradicetis simul cum eis et triticum.
And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it.

[30] Sinite utraque crescere usque ad messem, et in tempore messis dicam messoribus : Colligite primum zizania, et alligate ea in fasciculos ad comburendum : triticum autem congregate in horreum meum.
Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.

Notes from The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 1897 by J-J Tissot

The enemy sowing tares. J-J Tissot.

''The landscape we represent in our picture is a corner of the valley of Hinnom, situated on the south of Jerusalem. This valley was looked upon with a kind of terror on account of the horrors whichit had witnessed.

It was, in fact, near here and and not far from the rocks shutting in the valley, that at one time rose up a temple sacred to Moloch, where human victims were sacrificed . The image of the god , who was seated on a throne, was of bronze, and was made in the form of a man, with the head of a bull, wearing a royal diadem. According to some accounts there was a fiery furnace in the interior of the statue, and at the time of the sacrifice, children were placed in the hands of the monster, and then, by some mechanical contrivance, hoisted into its mouth, from which they were drawn into and consumed by the fire below. The place under notice was called Tophet, a word meaning drums, because, it is said, those instruments were beaten to drown the sobs and cries of the children sacrificed to the god.''

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam