This passage contains the next instances of the word fire, as listed here. Before we get to the actual use of the word fire, it is important to set the stage, which occurs in vv. 24-30:

[24] He offered to them another parable, saying: the Kingdom of Heaven is like a person who sows fine seed in his field. [25] But while this person was sleeping his enemy came and sowed weeds in the middle of the grain and departed. [26] And when the grass grew and made fruit, then the weeds also appeared. [27] And the slaves of the master of the house came and said to him “Lord, did you not sow fine seed in the field? From where therefore does it have weeds?” [28] And he said to them “A person who is an enemy did this.” But the slaves say to him “Do you wish therefore that departing we would gather together these?” [29] But he said, “No, lest while gathering the weeds you uproot among them the grain. [30] Permit both to grow until the threshing, and in the season of harvest I shall say to the reapers ‘gather first the weeds and bind these into sheaves and burn them, but the wheat gather together into my granary.“

Jesus then proceeds to tell people that that Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed or yeast, and then we turn our attention to the next passage, vv. 36-43:

[36] Then leaving the crowds he came into the house. And his disciples came to him saying: Thoroughly explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. [37] And replying he said, the sower of good seed is the Son of Man, [38] the field is the cosmos, the good seeds, these are the sons of the Kingdom: and the weeds are the sons of wickedness, [39] and the enemy who sows them is the Slanderer, and the harvest is the culmination of the age, and the reapers are the angels. [40] Just as, therefore, the weeds are gathered and burned up in fire, thus shall be the fulfillment of the age. [41] The Son of man shall send his angels, and they will gather from his Kingdom all the stumbling blocks and the doers of lawlessness [42] and they shall cast them into a furnace of fire: in that place there will be a wailing and gnashing of teeth. [43] Then the righteous shall shine as the sun in the Kingdom of their father. Whoever has ears, listen. 

One thing that is quite interesting about both these passages is that they seem to lack parallels in the other Gospels, which indicates that this is a preoccupation peculiar to Matthew. This is mostly bog-standard apocalyptic language, although there are a few things of note.  One of them is this idea “the field is the cosmos.” The Greek word here is literally κόσμος cosmos, which refers to the whole world or universe, although its root is a verb that means “to order” and so the implication of the word is sort of the “order of things” or “the whole of ordered things” in opposition to formless chaos. Here I think the important implication is that this is all occurring in the world, rather than on some supernatural plane.  

Also worth digging into in a little bit more detail is the phrase “fulfillment of the age,” συντέλεια αἰῶνος synteleia aiōnos.  The word συντέλεια synteleia is compound of the prefix συν syn, which means “together with”, and the word τέλος telos, which mean the completion or fulfillment of something, a finished state (because of either perfection or death), but also refers to the fulfillment of the obligation to pay taxes. Combined, συντέλεια synteleia retains this sense of fulfillment or completion, but also has the sense of “a joint payment into a commercial venture” and things of that nature.  The word αἰῶνος aiōnos, from which our word aeon is descended, is another interesting word, because it means: a period of time, a lifetime, an age, generation, an eternity.  Within the context here what is obviously being referenced is the completion of one age in some apocalyptic manner, and ushering in the new age of the Kingdom of Heaven.  

Here, it is important to emphasize that many of the passages from the New Testament that are variously interpreted as evidence for Hell as a place of eternal punishment, the rapture, and many of the more punitive/apocalyptic mainstays of conservative Christian theology are actually referring to this basic pattern of “one age has ended, the age of the Kingdom of Heaven will replace it.” For the most part, early Christians expected this transition to happen within their lifetime. For example, the implication of 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18 is that Paul is correcting a perception that Christians who die prior to the Second Coming will not have the eternal life of Christians because they have died prior to the fulfillment of the age.  For Matthew, it is clearly the case that the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple either is the beginning of the fulfillment of the age, or presages the imminent fulfillment of the age.  

The other point that is worth emphasizing here is the sense in which the Kingdom of Heaven is clearly viewed as a replacement for worldly Kingdoms. Even in this passage, which has only a brief reference to the “Kingdom of their father,” hints at this.  “…they shall cast them into a furnace of fire” in vv. 42, for example, actually is quoting Daniel 3:6. We will look at this passage and its implications in more detail in the next post.