The Parable of the Net

Posted on by stufffromthestuff

The final true parable Jesus tells in the Matthew 13 discourse is the Parable of the Net, which will be the focus of today’s study.

As with all of these studies, if you don’t have time to read through the whole thing, feel free to scroll down to the summary and conclusions at the bottom.

Text

This story is found only the Matthew among the canonical Gospels and goes like this:

[13.47] “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet thrown into the sea and collects every kind of thing. [48] When it was full, they dragged it to shore and sat down, and sorted what was good into a container, but tossed what was rotten overboard. [49] So will it be at the completion of the age: The angels will come and separate the wicked from the midst of the righteous [50] and will throw them into the furnace of fire; and there there will wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13.47-50)

Experience

The most glaring thing I noticed about this parable is how it seems to act as a doublet of the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat. It too focuses on the impartiality of the Kingdom of God as it gathers creation to itself until such time as God acts to separate out the bad from the good. If anything, the Parable of the Net is even bigger in scope than its doublet, as the dragnet pulls up all kinds of things. This image of the kingdom of God gathering up everything indiscriminately is pretty powerful.

It also includes a mini version of Jesus’ explanation of that parable, even repeating some of its language.

But I also noticed some similarities with the start of chapter 13, where Jesus preaches the Parable of the Sower from a boat on the sea. I wonder what other similarities there may be and whether it’s intentional.

Encounter

Again, we have Jesus telling the story and his disciples listening to it.

Curiously, the Parable of the Net has no obvious characters at all, with the fishermen having to be inferred behind plural verb forms. The focus here is clearly on what’s in the net and not on the fishermen.

Explore

The same questions have arisen here as throughout the series so far, but the literary piece seems even more important with all the connections with different parables:

  • How does this parable fit into the structure of the discourse?
  • What do the details in the story add to our understanding of it?

Because I think the literary pieces will take a bit more time, I’ll tackle it last.

Narrative Details

There are different words for fishing net in Greek, and the one used here refers explicitly to a dragnet. These are dragged through the water behind a boat, bringing in anything it its path (Capon; France 542).* This is a powerful image since the alternative, a drop net, was dropped around a school of desired fish. When given a choice of image, Jesus chose the indiscriminate one: like the dragnet, the Kingdom of Heaven shows no partiality (Case-Winters; SBL).

There were at least twenty species of fish in the Lake of Galilee, most of which — but not all — were ‘clean’ under the Law of Moses (France 542). But the image in the parable goes further. While our translations tend to say that it pulls up “all kinds of fish,” the Greek does not refer to fish at all, saying, that it gathers “from every kind.” So we’re not just talking about fish here, but of all kinds of diverse creatures that might get dragged up from the lake (Case-Winters; Capon; Nuechterlein Proper 12A). What a wonderful image for “the unlikely swirl of people” that were attracted to Jesus’ message, then and today (Case-Winters)! But even more than that, we could interpret this as bringing the other-than-human creation into the vision of the Kingdom; it is “the presence of all the variety in the world to the mystery of the kingdom” (Capon).

But focusing in on the human aspect, the point is that no one is summarily excluded from the Kingdom of God; no one is rejected because they look or identify a certain way. While there is a ‘last judgment’, the good will be sorted from the bad based on the quality of the fruit their lives has produced and nothing more or less. And for this reason:

neither the [dragnet] as it makes its way through the sea, nor the kingdom as it makes its way through the world, can be said to reject anything. … Therefore, neither the [dragnet] while still in the sea, nor the kingdom while still in this world has any business setting itself up in the judging business. And neither, a fortiori, does the church. (Capon)

Again, there is a judgment, but it is God’s judgment, not ours, and a judgment grounded in the the establishment of justice, of “vindication not vindictiveness” (Capon).

Literary Context

We’ve previously seen that the Matthew 13 parables discourse is the third of the five major teaching sections in that Gospel, and therefore central to the Gospel’s message. The discourse itself contains seven parables (seven being a symbolic number of perfection in the Biblical tradition). Of these, the Parable of the Net is the last, and it shows some interesting connections to the rest of the discourse.

The first of these is what we’ve been referring to as a chiastic sequence organized around the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat:

Weeds and Wheat

Mustard Seed and Leaven

Explanation of Weeds and Wheat

Treasure in a Field and Pearl

Net

The Parable of the Net completes this sequence by being a doublet of the Parable of the Weeds. Not only does this parable repeat its theme of the nonjudgmental work of God’s Kingdom on this side of the last judgment, but also includes an explanation (13.50) that quotes the explanation of that parable verbatim (13.42) (Hagner 118).

But the parable also has some similarities to the introduction of the discourse (which includes some stage-setting, the Parable of the Sower, and Jesus’ discussion of teaching in parables). Here are some of the repeated elements (Wilson 451):

  • the sea (13.1, 13.47)
  • boat (13.2, (implied 13.47-48))
  • sitting (13.2, 13.48)
  • shore (13.1, 13.48)
  • gathering (13.2, 13.49)

In addition, the indiscriminate gathering of the dragnet patterns well with the indiscriminate scattering of the sower (Case-Winters).

While the parables discourse still has three verses to go, which we’ll look at next time, it makes sense that this last of the ‘real’ parables in the discourse calls back to those at the start.

Challenge & Expand

These sections are very similar to those for the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat, so please see that for a fuller discussion. But it should be noted that this parable goes even further than that one did, since where in that story difference is forborne, here it is actively sought out.

We’re in a terrifying moment where diversity is under attack like at no other time in almost a century. With our Lord and Saviour, we must stand up and insist that nonjudgmentalism is the way of God’s Kingdom.

Summary & Conclusions

Jesus finishes up his parables discourse by telling a parable that repeats, and even moves beyond, the message of the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat: that God’s Kingdom gathers all kinds of people (and more) indiscriminately. Goodness does not look like what we think it does or want it to, and neither does evil. It’s for God alone to sort out. For us, our duty is simply to be drawn in by God’s Kingdom love.

Next time we’ll look at how Matthew ends this discourse and use that opportunity to check in with where we’ve been in the series so far.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.