The parable of the tares. Matthew only. The parable of the sower dealt with the first reception of the gospel; this deals with the after-development.
The aim of this parable is to prevent over-sanguine expectations as to the purity of the society of believers, and to hinder rash attempts to purify it by merely external processes. Archbishop Benson ('Dict. of Christian Biogr.,' 1:745) calls attention to the fact that the first extant exposition of this parable is in Cyprian's successful appeal to the Novatianists not to separate from the Church.
The aim of the somewhat similar parable in Mark 4:26-29 is to show the slowness and gradualness of the growth of the kingdom of heaven, and also the certainty of its consummation. So many words and phrases in the two parables are identical, that the possibility of one being derived from the other, either by omission or addition, must be acknowledged, but the definiteness of the aim in each points rather to their being originally two distinct parables.
The divisions of the parable are—