Why does the master of the house fear that the servants would root out the wheat together with the weeds?
The question Shall we pull it out?
was not foolish, since it was customary to weed out darnel, sometimes even repeatedly, but the master says that the weeds should be left standing, for the servants may not be able to tell the young darnel from the young wheat, and also, due to the weeds’ sheer abundance, their roots will be intertwined with the wheat’s roots, so the master fears that in pulling out the darnel, they will also uproot the good grain.
In Matthew 13:28b the servants ask their real dilemma: Shall we pull it out?
This was not a foolish question, since it was customary to weed out darnel—sometimes even repeatedly.
Yet the master maintains that the darnel should be left standing. On the one hand, the servants will not always be able to distinguish the young darnel from the young wheat, while on the other hand, because of its sheer abundance, the roots of the weed will have become intertwined with those of the wheat. The master therefore fears that in pulling out the darnel, they will also uproot the good grain.1
26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.