Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who has ears to hear, let him hear.
All Commentaries on Matthew 13:43 Go To Matthew 13
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Cont. Faust., xviii, 7: The tares the Lord expounds to mean, not as Manichaeusinterprets, certain spurious parts inserted among the true Scriptures, but allthe children of the Evil one, that is, the imitators of the fraud of the Devil. As it follows, “The tares are the children of the evil one,” by whom He would have us understand all the wicked and impious.
Quaest. Ev., i, 10: For all weeds among corn are called tares.
It follows, “The enemy who sowed this is the Devil. ”The harvest is the end of the world. "In another place He says, speaking of the Samaritans, “Lift up your eyes, and consider the fields that they are already white for the harvest;” in which words He speaks of the harvest as being already present. How then does He here speak of it as something yet to come? Because He has used the figure of the harvest in two significations;, as He says there that it is one that soweth, and another that reapeth; but hereit is the same who both sows and reaps; indeed there He brings forward the Prophets, not to distinguish them from Himself, but from the Apostles, for Christ Himself by His Prophets sowed among the Jews and Samaritans. The figure of harvest is thus applied to two different things. Speaking of first conviction and turning to the faith, He calls that the harvest, as that in which the whole is accomplished; but when He enquires into the fruits ensuing upon the hearing the word of God, then He calls the end of the world the harvest, as here.
City of God, book xx, ch. 9: Out of that kingdom in which are no offences? The kingdom then is His kingdom which is here, namely, the Church.
Quaest. Ev., i, 10: That the tares are first separated, signifies that by tribulation the wicked shall be separated from the righteous; and this isunderstood to be performed by good Angels, because the good can discharge duties of punishment with a good spirit, as a judge, or as the Law, but the wicked cannot fulfil offices of mercy. "And they shall cast them into a furnace offire.”
