“Sowing” is a common image in the prophets for Israel ’s return from exile. But Matthew 13:38 says that the field is not the land but the “world.” So, I think the sowing is the scattering of the seed of Israel at the time of the exile. Israel is scattered to the four corners of the earth, and begins to grow. All over the Mediterranean , wheat is growing, the wheat of the sons of the kingdom.
But at the same time, there are rotten figs among the ripe figs, tares among the wheat. At the same time that Israel is scattered to the corners of the earth, the devil scatters weed seed among them. This is why Israel is such a mixed people, and why there is so much opposition to Jesus during His lifetime. This is why you have some Jews in the intertestamental period who remain faithful to Yahweh and His Torah, and many Jews who compromise, adopting Greek customs and culture and ways of thinking. Israel is the wheat of the world, but there are tares among the wheat.
Now, to the wheat among the Jews of the first century, it might look as if the Lord is doing nothing, as if He’s tolerating the weeds among the wheat, the weeds that provoke the nations to blasphemy (Romans 2). The tares have been growing and prospering, threatening to take over the wheat field, and the owner of the field has not removed them – no herbicides, no harvest of tares.
Now is the judgment of this world; now is the prince of this world cast out – along with the weeds that he sowed. The Lord left the wheat and weeds to grow up side-by-side until the harvest comes, that is, until Jesus comes. Now Jesus and His apostles are going to be separating the wheat from the tares, gathering the wheat and leaving the weeds to be burned in fire.
Jesus’ quotation from Daniel 12:3 (in Matthew 13:43 ) supports this. Daniel predicts a “time of distress,” which is followed by a “resurrection” and glorification of “those who have insight” and “those who lead the many to righteousness” (Daniel 12:1-3; see Jordan ’s commentary on this passage). This is the same sequence of Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24, which is about the destruction of Jerusalem (cf. 24:9, 21, 31, 34-35).
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