The Last Payment and the Lowest Place

Only Matthew has this parable. A “householder”, oikodespotes, is the master of an estate, the same figure who plants the vineyard in 21:33. Isaiah had already made the vineyard Israel (Isaiah 5:7). “Early in the morning” is dawn, the start of a working day that ran from sunrise to dark, and harvest needed extra hands fast.

The penny is a denarius, the standard day wage for a labourer. In Tobit 5:14 a hired companion is offered a drachma a day, the Greek equivalent. “Agreed” is symphoneo, the verb used of two who agree in prayer in 18:19: a bargain struck in the open.

Hours were counted from sunrise, so the third hour is about nine in the morning. “Idle” is argos, literally without work; it means unemployed, not lazy. The marketplace is where day labourers stood to be hired, as they still do in some towns.

No figure is named for this group, only “whatsoever is right”, dikaion, what is just. They go on the strength of his word. The adjective belongs to the same family as Joseph, “a just man” (1:19), and the righteousness the Sermon on the Mount demanded.

Noon and three in the afternoon. The text gives no reason why he keeps returning; it may be inferred that the harvest had to be brought in before it spoiled, but the parable does not say so. It simply records a man who goes out again and again.

The eleventh hour is about five in the afternoon, one hour before dark, and it gave English the phrase “at the eleventh hour”. The owner’s question is blunt, though not an accusation: why stand here all day with no work?

In the oldest manuscripts this last group is sent with no promise at all: “Go ye also into the vineyard.” The King James text adds a clause repeating verse 4. Either way they work the final hour with no agreed wage.

The law required a hired man to be paid the same day, before sunset, “for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it” (Deuteronomy 24:15; Leviticus 19:13). The owner keeps that law exactly. The “steward”, epitropos, is an estate manager, the title Luke gives to Chuza, Herod’s steward (Luke 8:3).

A full denarius for one hour is roughly twelve times the hourly rate. An inference, but a fair one: a twelfth of a denarius would not have fed a family that night, and a day wage was a day’s bread. The owner pays for the need, not the hours.

“Supposed” is nomizo, to reckon or assume, the verb in “Think not that I am come to destroy the law” (5:17). The Greek ends heavily: they received the denarius, each of them, they too. Nobody has lied to them; the assumption was their own.

“Murmured” is gongyzo, a sound word like the English “grumble”, the verb of Israel murmuring against Moses in the wilderness (Exodus 16:7–8 in the Greek Old Testament). “Goodman of the house” was 1611 English for head of a household, not a compliment; the owner will call himself “good” in verse 15.

“Heat” is kauson, the scorching east wind off the desert, the word the Greek Old Testament uses for the “vehement east wind” that beat on Jonah (Jonah 4:8). “Made them equal” is the real charge. They do not say the owner underpaid them, only that he levelled them.

“Friend” is hetairos, comrade. Matthew uses it three times as a form of address, always from a superior to someone in the wrong: here, to the guest without a wedding garment (22:12), and from Jesus to Judas in the garden (26:50). He answers one man, not the group.

“Take that thine is” may imply the man had refused to pick up his coin; the verb is to take up or pick up. “Go thy way” is hypage, a dismissal. “This last” is singular, one man pointed out, and “I will” introduces the owner’s will, the hinge of the next verse.

An “evil eye” in Hebrew idiom is a grudging, envious eye. Deuteronomy 15:9 warns against the eye turning evil toward a poor brother as the year of release draws near, when debts must be cancelled. Jesus used the phrase in 6:23. Here the evil eye meets the owner’s goodness, agathos.

The final clause, “many be called, but few chosen”, is absent from the oldest manuscripts here and stands securely at 22:14, closing the wedding feast parable. The King James text carries it in both places. The first half turns 19:30 around, closing the frame.

Jericho lies about 250 metres below sea level and Jerusalem about 750 above, so the road climbs about a kilometre in some twenty five kilometres. “Going up to Jerusalem” was the pilgrims’ phrase, and on this road it was literal.

“We go up” includes the twelve in the journey. “Condemn” is katakrino, the verb used when Judas “saw that he was condemned” (27:3). This third prediction is the first to state that the religious court itself will pass the death sentence.

Mark and Luke say the Gentiles will kill him (Mark 10:34; Luke 18:33). Matthew alone names crucifixion in advance, and crucifixion was a Roman punishment, which is why “the Gentiles” must do it. Matthew keeps “the third day”; Mark’s wording is “after three days”.

Comparing 27:56 with Mark 15:40 suggests her name was Salome, and she will be one of the women watching at the cross. In Mark 10:35 the sons make the request themselves; Matthew puts it in their mother’s mouth. “Worshipping” is again proskyneo, a petitioner’s prostration.

“What wilt thou?” is the question he will put to the blind men in verse 32. The right and left of a king were the seats of highest honour; Bathsheba sat at Solomon’s right hand (1 Kings 2:19). The next time Matthew places two men at Jesus’ right and left, they are thieves on crosses (27:38).

“Ye know not” is plural: he answers the sons. The cup was the prophets’ image for the wrath God gives the nations to drink (Isaiah 51:17; Jeremiah 25:15), and in Gethsemane Jesus will pray “let this cup pass from me” (26:39). The baptism clause is absent from the best manuscripts of Matthew and comes from Mark 10:38.

The prediction came true for James first: Herod Agrippa killed him with the sword around AD 44 (Acts 12:2), the first of the twelve to die for Jesus. “Prepared of my Father” anticipates the kingdom “prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (25:34).

“Moved with indignation” is aganakteo, the verb used of the chief priests at the children’s hosannas (21:15) and of the disciples at the waste of ointment in Bethany (26:8). The ten are angry at the two for asking first, which is the same ambition from the other side.

“Princes” are archontes, rulers. “Exercise dominion” is katakyrieuo, to lord it down over; the prefix makes the rule heavy. First Peter 5:3 uses the same verb when it tells elders not to act “as being lords over God’s heritage”.

The best manuscripts read a present tense: “it is not so among you”, a statement of what the community is, not only a command. “Minister” is diakonos, the servant who waits at table, the word that later became the title deacon.

“Servant” is doulos, slave, a step lower than diakonos in verse 26. The two lines climb and descend together: great becomes table servant, first becomes slave. “Chief” is protos, first, the word of 20:16, so the parable’s last and first reappear as a rule for the twelve.

“Ransom” is lytron, the price paid to free a captive or slave, or to redeem a forfeited life (Exodus 21:30). “For many” is anti pollon, in place of many, which echoes Isaiah 53:11–12, where the servant justifies many and bears “the sin of many”. This is the only ransom saying in Matthew.

Mark also sets the healing as Jesus leaves Jericho; Luke sets it as he approaches (Luke 18:35). The Jericho of Jesus’ day stood about two kilometres from the ruins of the Old Testament city, and some have resolved the difference by placing the men between the two. From here the road climbs to Jerusalem.

Mark names one blind man, Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46). Matthew often has two where Mark has one: two demoniacs at Gadara (8:28), and two blind men earlier in 9:27, who used the same cry. “Son of David” in Matthew comes repeatedly from the blind, the sick and the outsider.

“Hold their peace” is siopao, the verb used when Jesus “held his peace” before the high priest (26:63). The crowd demands silence of the blind men that Jesus will later keep for himself. “Cried the more” is louder, not longer: the verb is the same, the volume greater.

In 9:28 Jesus asked two blind men, “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” Here he asks what they want, though their blindness is obvious. A crowd of pilgrims is moving up the road, and he stops it for two men sitting at the edge.

“That our eyes may be opened” is the language of Isaiah 35:5, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened”, and of the servant sent “to open the blind eyes” (Isaiah 42:7). Jesus pointed John’s messengers to exactly this sign in 11:5.

Matthew alone has the touch; in Mark and Luke the healing comes by a word. It is the last of four times Matthew says Jesus “had compassion”. Their following is literal and immediate: the next verse is the approach to Bethphage and the Mount of Olives.