As usual, Sundays cause me to write.
In today’s parable [parabolam in Latin], Matt. 11, 24-30, the word zizania is translated as cockle. Sounds like the flower called zinnia. What is a cockle? 1) Any of several weedy plants of the pink family and 2) any of various chiefly marine bivalve mollusks having a shell with convex radially ribbed valves. The latter are edible, the former are not edible, at least not the seeds - mmm - poison - murder.
Why is the parable relevant? The servants of the good man said, “Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle?” He said, “An enemy hath done this.” The servants said, “Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?” He said, “No: lest perhaps gathering up the cockle you root up the wheat also together with it. Suffer both to grow until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.”
Ah, so we must suffer the presence of cockle with the wheat until the end of the world. Then, the wheat will be gathered and brought into the Kingdom of Heaven and the cockle burned. Of course, there is a personal judgment before the end comes.
That answers the question we ask when a crime has been committed, “Is there any justice?”
In today’s parable [parabolam in Latin], Matt. 11, 24-30, the word zizania is translated as cockle. Sounds like the flower called zinnia. What is a cockle? 1) Any of several weedy plants of the pink family and 2) any of various chiefly marine bivalve mollusks having a shell with convex radially ribbed valves. The latter are edible, the former are not edible, at least not the seeds - mmm - poison - murder.
Why is the parable relevant? The servants of the good man said, “Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle?” He said, “An enemy hath done this.” The servants said, “Wilt thou that we go and gather it up?” He said, “No: lest perhaps gathering up the cockle you root up the wheat also together with it. Suffer both to grow until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.”
Ah, so we must suffer the presence of cockle with the wheat until the end of the world. Then, the wheat will be gathered and brought into the Kingdom of Heaven and the cockle burned. Of course, there is a personal judgment before the end comes.
That answers the question we ask when a crime has been committed, “Is there any justice?”
zinnia
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