What Does Matthew 13:40 Mean in the King James?
As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The KJV’s “end of this world” carries the sense of an age reaching its completion, when the gathered tares meet the fire.
THE MEANING
This verse places before you the stark image of tares gathered and burned; the destruction is not softened. The judgment arrives at the completion of the age, after a season of growing together. The age has a boundary, and the mixture does not last forever.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is harmful can remain mixed with the good forever without ever meeting judgment.
THE ROOT
συντέλεια
sunteleia
GROWS FROM
τέλος
telos
Completion, goal, or outcome toward which something reaches.
The phrase συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος (sunteleia tou aiōnos) carries the sense “completion of the age”: τέλος (telos) names completion or goal, and αἰών (aiōn) means age or era. English “end” can sound like a bare stop, while the Greek places the tares’ burning at the age’s consummation.
ALSO GROWS
teleō: Bring to completion; finish.
τελέω
This verb shows telos as reaching the completion of an action; here the age reaches its completion.
teleioō: Bring to completion; make complete.
τελειόω
This branch carries the sense of something arriving at its full measure, illuminating the age’s completion in the verse.
THE PATTERN
At the appointed completion, what is gathered for judgment is decisively consumed or removed.
For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.THE THREAD
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.Verse 39 names the harvest as συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος (sunteleia tou aiōnos), “the completion of the age,” and identifies the reapers as angels. Verse 40 carries that same completion into the tares’ burning, placing the fire within the harvest’s sorting.
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