Matthew 13:44-52

Further Parables of the Kingdom. The treasure and the pearl (Matthew 13:44) are one, and have one point everything must be sacrificed for the highest good, the Kingdom. This urgent, intense wholeheartedness is characteristic of Jesus. The question of concealment, the conflict between individual salvation and social duty, is not to be pressed here. Yet note that, while one man attains the summum bonum, as it were, by accident, another does so by quest. For the pearl as a metaphor of spiritual treasure cf. Matthew 7:6, Revelation 21:19, and the Syriac Hymn of the Soul. The parable of the net is like that of the wheat and the tares, except that the sifting follows hard on the discovery. Not all who have heard the message of the Kingdom will be found worthy to enter it. The explanation follows the same line as that of the earlier parable. It is not altogether apposite, and is probably the evangelist's mechanical repetition of Matthew 13:40. In Matthew 13:51 f. Jesus contrasts a Christian with a Jewish scribe. He who has been instructed in the truths of the Kingdom (or possibly with a view to the Kingdom) can, like a good householder or steward, furnish from his ample store what is old (the essentials of the Law and the Prophets) and what is new (the teaching of Jesus and its development). He has an advantage over the earlier teacher, who was confined to the Torah. The verses form a general conclusion to the parables.