Matthew 13:39

“And the enemy who sowed them is the Devil, and the harvest is the end of the world (age), and the reapers are angels.”

Like all parables not all the details can be applied. It was not of course the Devil who actually introduced men into the world. What he did from the beginning was seduce those whom God had created, turning them from being under God's Kingly Rule. He ‘sowed' false men. He tried to do it in Eden (Genesis 3), then prior to the Flood (Genesis 6:1), and has been doing it ever since. But the sad thing is that they are therefore now his workmanship, and fashioned after his image (John 8:41; Joh 8:44; 2 Corinthians 4:3; Ephesians 2:2; Ephesians 4:17; 1 John 3:8; 1 John 3:10; 1 John 5:19), and they walk in darkness not knowing where they are going (John 12:35).

But the warning comes that there will be a Harvest. This will come at the end of all things as we know them, the end of the world (or the age). Note the emphasis on Harvest (compare Matthew 3:11). For ‘the righteous' that in itself is a time for rejoicing. The rest that goes with it is the unfortunate consequence of the effects of sin and Satan. In the Old Testament the idea of harvest symbolised judgment (compare. Jeremiah 51:33; Hosea 6:11; Joel 3:13). But here in the New, as in Matthew 3:11, the emphasis is on the blessing for those who are His, even though judgment often accompanies it.

‘The end (sunteleia) of the age.' Compare Matthew 13:40; Matthew 13:49; Matthew 24:3; Matthew 28:20; Hebrews 9:26. The word sunteleia originally meant a contribution, then a joint action and finally came to mean ‘consummation'. Thus here it is the consummation of the age. (Note its use in Hebrews demonstrating that the phrase is not uniquely a Matthaean translation of Jesus' words. But even so a unique way of translating something would not necessarily indicate that the translator had actually composed the ideas contained in the translation himself). The idea here is of the period of the summing up of all things (Ephesians 1:10).