Mat 13:50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

This verse restates the verse Mat 13:42 in the same exact words. As we pointed in our discussion of the Parable of the Good Seeds and Weeds, the "furnace" is really an oven used for baking bread and bricks. Again, fire is Christ's metaphor for the intellectual realm, which is productive and the source of wealth. When the worthless (wicked=poneros=worthless), become fuel for the fire of the intellect and property, they are bound to cry and complain about their position.

As always, I am struck by how Christ never makes it clear when he is talking about life or afterlife. My feeling is that he is always talking about both. This life is just a foreshadowing of the next. People who are useless in this life complain about what the results of their life and this doesn't change with death. For Christ, the line between this life and the next just the beginning of a new age, not a complete change.

I was once fascinated by this phrase, "weeping and gnashing of teeth," which only occurs as far as I can tell, in the Greek Gospels. I have a lot of respect for traditional Christian thought because tradition exists as the judgment of generations. However, the more I read the Gospels, the traditional view of Christ as describing anger and suffering with these terms seems to hold less and less interest for me.

This phrase is used seven times in the Gospels, six times in Matthews. In each case, it the reaction that people have when they are judged as worthless. My sense is that Christ uses this phrase in same almost humorous way that that we say in English "whining and complaining" or "bitching and moaning." It is not about suffering punishment as much as is it about how the most worthless people always blame others, complain about their situation, and so on.