The parable of the net in Matthew 13:47-50 is often interpreted as inclusively allowing both good and bad into the kingdom. However, this analysis suggests the opposite: it emphasizes divine judgment where both good and bad are caught together. The parable is compared to Habakkuk’s vision, where Israel is unjust, and God sends a foreign army to punish both wicked and righteous alike. Jesus’ parable reflects this: Israel faces indiscriminate destruction by Rome, but angels will later separate the wicked from the righteous. The righteous, the oppressed and faithful, will ultimately survive and inherit God’s future kingdom.
Jesus’ parable of the net in Matthew 13:47-50 is commonly read as a parable of indiscriminate inclusion: both good and bad people may come into the kingdom. For example, Hagner writes with respect to the phrase “fish of every kind”:
The exaggerated inclusiveness of this phrase may be an intentional reflection of the universality of the invitation to accept the good news of the kingdom. … Among those who respond are many who will not persevere in their initial commitment…; there will be those who do not live up to the standards of the Church.1
I will argue here that this gets Jesus’ meaning back to front. The problem is not that the bad are unavoidably included in the kingdom for the time being, but that the good are unavoidably caught up in the catastrophe of divine judgment. Habakkuk has his own parable of the net, and I think that Jesus (and Paul, for that matter) should be understood in the light of the prophet’s darker application.
Habakkuk has complained that there is no justice in Israel. He sees only violence, destruction, iniquity, and strife; the Law is paralysed; the wicked oppress the righteous, justice is perverted; and YHWH does nothing (Hab. 1:1-4).
The response he is given is that YHWH is indeed about to do something. Unrighteous Israel will be punished by a ferocious Babylonian invading force:
Look, you despisers, and watch! And marvel at marvellous things, and be annihilated! For I am working a work in your days that you would not believe if someone should tell it. For behold I am rousing [the Chaldeans,] the fighters, the bitter and swift nation that goes over the breadths of the earth to possess dwellings not his own. (1:5-6 LXX)
This is not unalloyed good news for Habakkuk. He recognises that YHWH has appointed the Chaldean to be an instrument of judgment, and that he himself, as a prophet, was formed to “scrutinise” or “expose” this act of discipline or correction (paideian) (1:12). But how can a holy and righteous God look upon such suffering? Will he not protest when “the ungodly swallows up the righteous person”?
Then we have the parable. The Jews are mere fish, crawling things; the idolatrous, invading Chaldean comes with a monstrous and inescapable net:
And will you make the people as the fish of the sea and as crawling things which do not have a leader? [The Chaldean] pulled up the whole lot on a hook and dragged him [the righteous person] in a casting net and gathered (synēgagen) him in his nets (sagēnais). Because of this, he will be glad and his heart will rejoice. Because of this he will sacrifice to his net (sagēnēi) and burn incense to his casting net, because by them he made fat his portion and his foods choice. Therefore, he will cast his casting net and will never spare killing nations. (1:12-17* LXX).
For Habakkuk, the net is an image of indiscriminate destruction. It’s what mighty empires do. The Chaldean pulls in the whole population—the wicked and the righteous together.
The prophet is given the solution to this acute predicament and is told to write it down, for the day of judgment will surely come:
Behold, a presumptuous one, his soul is not upright in him; and a righteous person by his faithfulness lives. (2:4* MT)
If he shrinks back, my soul is not pleased in him; but the righteous person will live because of my faithfulness. (2:4* LXX)
The exegetical difficulties don’t matter too much for our purposes here. Paul constructs his own version of Habakkuk’s axiom to express the solution to the problem that he addresses at the beginning of his letter to the household churches in Rome. How will people be saved when the judgment of God against Jew and Greek comes?
For I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and to the Greek. For the righteousness of God in it is unveiled from faith for faith, as it is written, “The one righteous through faith shall live.” (Rom 1:16-17*)
But that’s another story. Here is Jesus’ parable:
Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a net (sagēnēi) thrown into the sea, and it gathered (synagagousēi) from every kind [of fish]; which when it was full, drawing it on the shore and sitting, they collected the good into containers, but the bad they threw away. So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come out and will separate out the wicked from the midst of the righteous and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 13:47-50*)
This version presupposes the same sort of indiscriminate judgment of Israel. In effect, a Roman net will be used to drag ashore both the “wicked” Jews who make up the current wicked and adulterous generation and the “righteous” Jews whom they oppress.
The intervention of the angels at the sorting of the fish ensures that the wicked will be destroyed and the righteous will live and be preserved for the age of God’s rule to come. These are the angels sent out by the Son of Man to “gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers” (13:41). The whole Son of Man story in the Synoptic Gospels plays out in the forty years between Jesus’ prophetic-messianic ministry and the catastrophe of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the armies of Rome.
The “righteous” are not believers in Jesus, in the first place. They are the “poor in spirit,” those who mourn over the wretched state of God’s people, the meek, those who desire righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted and oppressed because they seek to live righteous lives—these will be blessed, along with the persecuted disciples, when YHWH establishes his kingdom (5:5-12). They are the righteous Jews who will “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” when Israel is restored (13:43; cf. Dan. 12:2-3).
Jesus’ parable, therefore, rather closely matches Habakkuk’s parable, in context, form, and meaning. There is no justice in Israel, the wicked oppress the righteous; YHWH will raise up a murderous invading army, which will haul in the wicked and the righteous together in its net; but he will ensure that the righteous person will live.
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D.A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (2000), 399.
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