So far we’ve looked at the seven parables that make up the ‘parables discourse’ in Matthew 13. But guess what? The conclusion of that discourse as a whole includes another parable, and it’s the oddest of the bunch. So today, we’ll be looking at that parable through the lens of the discourse as a whole. This will help us see where we’ve been as we wrap up this section of the series and move on to a different set of parables over the coming weeks.
Text
The discourse ends with this strange interaction:
[13.51] ‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered him, “Yes!” [13.52] And he said to them, “For this reason every scribe trained for the Kingdom of Heaven is like the master of a household who takes out from his treasure both the new and the old.’ [53] And when Jesus finished these parables, he left that place. (Matthew 13.51-53)
Experience
Reading this passage is jarring. First, it just jumps into Jesus’ question without any preamble — often there’s two introductory words ‘(e.g., And Jesus spoke, saying…’) so the lack of any here is very noticeable. I also have to wonder what is meant by the disciples ‘yes’, since both Jesus’ reply at the Gospels themselves seem to suggest that they don’t actually understand him. Then there’s the mini parable itself; honestly, almost every word here seems to need to be unpacked before we can start to put a meaning together. And I have to wonder why Matthew decided to end the discourse with these strange words, when the Parable of the Net worked so well as a conclusion.
Encounter
One thing that really sets this passage apart from the parables we’ve looked at so far is that it’s the interaction between Jesus and his disciples that seems the most important, rather than the parable itself.
Unlike the parables of the kingdom, which compared God’s Kingdom to something, here it is ‘every scribe trained for the kingdom’ being compared. Who might such a figure be? And in what he is he like ‘someone who is the master of a household’?
Explore
Strangeness abounds here, so we’ve got some big questions to answer:
- How does Jesus’ question to the disciples relate to the parable the follows?
- What do the details of the story add to our understanding?
- How does this interaction close off the parables discourse?
The Question of Understanding
After wrapping up his parables discourse with the Parable of the Net, Jesus asks his disciples a deceptively simple question: Do you understand? This question picks up on a prominent theme from the start of the discourse: Jesus ended the Parable of the Sower by saying, “Let anyone with ears hear” — effectively ‘Anyone with two good ears had better use them and listen up!’ When the disciples asked him why he switched to teaching in parables, Jesus answered by calling back to Isaiah’s chilling commission to speak words Judah’s leaders will be incapable of understanding. Parables help those with insight to understand, but they have an “obstructive function” for those who don’t (McCracken 95). Jesus mentions understanding three times in his aside with the disciples (13.13-15), but the theme is then absent for the main body of Jesus’ discourse. Here it returns after Jesus has concluded his teaching.
At this point it might be helpful to differentiate between Jesus’ parables discourse and Matthew’s parables discourse (McCracken 92). Jesus’s discourse offers a hopeful, initially public, message of a generous and gracious God who simultaneously withholds judgment and is working mysteriously and imperceptibly towards justice. But Matthew situates these parables into a larger conversation centered on the question of understanding and misunderstanding (McCracken 95; Capon).
The disciples answer with a humorously simple, “Yes.” But Jesus’ next words, and the testimony of the Gospels as a whole, suggest that they really don’t (Capon). In v.43, at the end of his explanation of the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat, he even repeats to his disciples those ominous words uttered previously to the crowds, “Let anyone with ears hear!” And the parable he launches into probably wouldn’t help them (McCracken 105).
Narrative Details
‘Dia touto’
Nothing about the parable that follows is straightforward, including the simple words Jesus uses to transition into it: Dia touto is a common expression meaning, ‘on account of this,’ and so often ‘because of this’, or ‘therefore’. The problem is that such translations don’t seem to fit the context here. We need something that, as Capon puts it, “is a consequence of both their professed comprehension and their actual incomprehension at the same time” (Capon). Perhaps something like “Since you say you’re with me about all this…”, or even “Oooookay then…” (Capon).
Scribes
In first century Judaism, a ‘scribe’ was primarily someone trained in the Law; in the Gospels scribes are generally treated as a faction aligned with the Pharisees and therefore in general opposition to Jesus (Capon; SBL; Walton & Keener).
What ties scribes to this discourse is the theme of understanding: it was their job to interpret the Law for the people, just as Jesus is putting the disciples in the role of interpreting his words — for themselves now certainly, but also in their future role as leaders and teachers (McCracken 100). Where the scribes are trained in the Law, the disciples are to be trained in the ways of God’s Kingdom (which is not opposed to the Law, but also goes beyond it) (Case-Winters).
At this point (and we haven’t even got to the comparison yet), we have something like “Okay, you say you understand; so now I’ll tell you something: every careful listener to what I’ve been teaching you about the kingdom of heaven is like …” (Capon).
Master of a Household
The Greek word here, oikodespotes, could refer either to an estate owner/lord (though here the simpler despotes would be more common), or to the person entrusted to manage that household. Either way, it’s someone who has control and authority over all of the resources of a significant estate (Capon). We previously saw an oikodespotes in the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat, where he stood in for the apocalyptic Son of Man coming with authority to judge the world. Here Jesus is saying that understanding is like the authority that someone like that might wield.
Treasures Old and New
Here we have another word found in one of the previous parables. Where before, the treasure was hidden and needing to be bought, now it is fully in one’s possession and able to be brought out into the open. From this treasure, one brings out both what is old and what is new — both the precious heirlooms and the recent acquisitions.
In this case, the old is most certainly the Law and the whole of the Jewish religious heritage. After all, Jesus did not “come to abolish the Law or the prophets … but to fulfill” them (Matthew 5.17). But to this heritage is added the newness of the Gospel: the presence of the God’s Kingdom, at work mysteriously in the here and now, and turning what many thought about the Law on its head (Case-Winters; Capon; Nuechterlein Proper 12A). In this way, for the disciples, it’s less a question of pulling out the old and the new than it is of pulling out the old in the new and the new in the old: “old things that are perpetually springing up and new things that turn out to have been around since before the foundation of the world” (Capon).
Literary Context
So with all this in mind, how does this interaction fit in with, and conclude, the discourse as a whole? At this point, let’s expand the diagram we’ve been using to include the entirety of Matthew’s discourse:
| Content | Themes |
|---|---|
| INTRODUCTION
BODY CONCLUSION
|
INTRODUCTION
BODY
CONCLUSION
|
This diagram helps visualize the way Matthew positions Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom within a larger narrative around understanding (McCracken 92). While the Parable of the Net tied the themes of the parables of the Kingdom together nicely, this concluding section calls our attention back to the question of understanding and parables’ simultaneous ability to enlighten and confound.
Challenge
Subversion of First-Century Expectations
If the disciples expected to be affirmed by Jesus in their eager claim to have understood him, they were sadly mistaken. The passage leaves readers feeling uncertain about them and wondering if they really have understood (McCraken 95). From their position of privilege in the introduction (”To you it has been given to know the secrets…” (13.11)), by 13.43 Jesus is now uttering the same words to them about having ears to hear as he had to the crowds after the Parable of the Sower. He then utters three rapid-fire parables and asks them if they’ve understood. They say yes, but Jesus is not convinced. How the mighty have fallen!
There is also an implied criticism of the Law in Jesus’ teaching here, or rather, how the Law was commonly interpreted and applied. The scribes of the Law have failed to understand; what is needed is scribes trained in the Kingdom of Heaven, who can bring forth the old and the new together in wonder and celebration of God’s grace.
Contemporary Challenge
As much as this passage places the disciples on the hot seat, it places us there too. How well have we understood Jesus’ words? The parable, to say nothing of rest of the Gospel narrative, suggests that the disciples were too quick to affirm that they understood. We would do well to exercise more humility and recognize that we are always in the process of understanding the mysterious ways God’s Kingdom is at work around us.
Normally this section offers up critiques from historically marginalized voices in the Church: women, colonized and enslaved peoples, the poor, queer folk, and so on. While we may not always agree with these critiques, they offer to us the same kind of opportunity Jesus does here: Have we as the Church truly understood what Jesus was saying? Our collective Christian middling history again suggests we shouldn’t be too quick to think we have.
Expand & Summary
As we leave Matthew’s parables discourse, it’s worth asking how our interpretation of it has encouraged our growth in faithfulness and love.
The discourse begins with a warning: parables can work by enlightening, but they can also work by confounding. We may be fertile ground in which God’s message can grow, but we can just as easily be so hardened that it can bounce right off of us, or we can accept it only until it gets hard, or our existing commitments to things like money and status can keep it from growing and thriving in us. And the discourse ends with a confrontation: Have we truly understood? Are we the ‘good soil’ we think we are?
Intellectual humility is one of the most important things in the life of faith (and life in general). The moment we think we have God figured out is the moment we can be certain we haven’t. God’s ways are always mysterious, always subversive — they may even be found in things and people we think are wicked, shameful, and gross. So we need the humility to set our judgments aside, to welcome everything and everyone with God’s indiscriminate love, and let God figure it all out in the end.
Such an attitude is nothing other than revolutionary. This is the power of the Gospel and is the power of parables.
* For full references, please see the series bibliography.
Matthew Root 
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