What the Waiting Reveals

“To meet” is the word for a civic delegation going out to greet an arriving dignitary and escort him back in, used of believers meeting the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Outdoors and on the move, the “lamps” were probably torches, the word John uses for the arresting party’s torches (John 18:3).

“Wise” is phronimos, the man who built on the rock (7:24) and the faithful and wise servant (24:45); “foolish” is moros, the builder on sand (7:26). In the oldest manuscripts the foolish are listed first. The two kinds of builder at the end of the Sermon on the Mount become two kinds of bridesmaid.

A torch of oil soaked rags burned for only a short while before it had to be dipped again, according to studies of wedding customs in the region. Setting out without a supply was fine for a short walk and useless for a long wait. The foolish have lamps; what they lack is what keeps a lamp going.

“Vessels” is angeia, flasks or jars, the word used for the vessels into which fishermen gather the good fish (13:48). The difference between the two groups is one small container, packed before anyone knew how long the night would be.

Two verbs: nystazo, to nod, the first drooping of the head, and then katheudo, to sleep, the word used of the disciples in Gethsemane (26:40, 43). The tenses move from dozing off to being asleep. No one is blamed for it.

Midnight was the hour the LORD passed through Egypt (Exodus 12:29). Jerome reports a Jewish tradition that the Messiah would come at midnight on Passover night, as the destroyer had; this chapter is spoken two days before Passover (26:2). “Cry” is krauge, a shout.

“Trimmed” is kosmeo, to put in order or adorn: trimming wicks, or re-dipping torches. It is the verb of the house “swept, and garnished” in 12:44 and of the prophets’ tombs that the scribes “garnish” in 23:29. Everyone gets up and does the same thing; only then does the difference show.

“Are gone out” is present tense in Greek: our lamps are going out. They had been lit, and are now guttering. The verb is sbennymi, the one Isaiah uses of the servant who will not quench the smoking flax (Isaiah 42:3, quoted in 12:20).

The advice to go and buy at midnight reads oddly as a picture of village life; dealers would have to be woken. The parable is not concerned with how they would find oil, only that they must now go and the bridegroom will not wait.

“The door was shut” is kleio, the verb of 23:13, “ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men”. It also recalls the ark, which follows the days of Noah in 24:37–39: “and the LORD shut him in” (Genesis 7:16).

“Open to us” turns around the promise of 7:7, “knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” They do knock, and it is not opened. They call him “Lord, Lord”, the double address that was not enough in 7:21.

“I know you not” is ouk oida hymas. Peter will use the same two words about Jesus in the high priest’s courtyard: “I know not the man” (26:72, 74). In 7:23 the rejected hear “I never knew you”. To be unknown by the host is to be a stranger at the door.

In the oldest manuscripts the verse ends at “the day nor the hour”; “wherein the Son of man cometh” is a later addition that makes the application explicit. The command “Watch” repeats 24:42 and returns once more in Gethsemane.

The Greek begins simply “For as a man”; the King James supplies “the kingdom of heaven is” in italics. In the Roman world slaves often ran business for their masters, trading with a fund called a peculium. The master going abroad leaves his capital in their hands.

A talent was first a weight, perhaps twenty six to thirty six kilograms, and then that weight of silver. The English sense of natural ability comes from this parable, through medieval readers. “Several ability” is 1611 English for each man’s own ability.

In the oldest manuscripts “straightway” belongs to this verse, not the last: “straightway he that had received the five talents went and traded”. The master’s departure is not what is hurried; the servant’s start is. “Traded” is ergazomai, to work with it.

Legal interest in the Roman provinces was commonly capped at twelve percent a year, so doubling a sum meant bold trade or long years. The second servant’s return is the same rate as the first’s: two into four, five into ten.

Burying was the approved way to keep money safe. The Talmud rules that a man who buries money left with him is not liable if it is stolen (Bava Metzia 42a). In Luke’s version the servant wraps it in a napkin (Luke 19:20), which the same rulings treat as negligent. This servant was careful.

This is the third delay in a row: the evil servant says “My lord delayeth” (24:48), the bridegroom tarries (25:5), and the master returns “after a long time”. In each the delay is what tests the servants, not the arrival.

The servant names what he was given before what he gained: “thou deliveredst unto me five talents”. The capital and the profit alike are handed back to their owner. “Behold” presents the full sum on the spot.

“Well done” is a single word, eu, Good! “The joy of thy lord” may carry a second sense: the Aramaic word for joy could also mean a feast, so the servant may be invited into the master’s celebration, the banquet of the previous parable.

In Luke’s parallel the servant who gained five pounds is told to rule five cities, while the one who gained ten rules ten (Luke 19:17–19). Matthew’s second servant brings a smaller total and, in the next verse, gets exactly the same words as the first.

The master calls this servant “good”, agathos, the adjective the landowner applied to himself in 20:15, “because I am good”. The praise matches verse 21 word for word, and in the Greek the two servants’ reports match too, apart from the numbers.

“Hard” is skleros, harsh, from the family of “hardness of your hearts” in 19:8. “Strawed” means scattered, used of winnowing: to gather where you have not winnowed is to take grain off another man’s threshing floor. He accuses his master of living on other people’s harvests.

“There thou hast that is thine” echoes the landowner in 20:14, “Take that thine is, and go thy way.” The servant uses the formula of a fair settlement, as though handing back the talent closes the account.

“Slothful” is okneros, shrinking back, hesitant, the word the Greek Old Testament uses for the sluggard: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard” (Proverbs 6:6). The master’s repetition of the charge can be read as a question: “You knew that about me, did you?”

The “exchangers” are trapezitai, men at tables, trapeza, the word for the moneychangers’ tables overturned in 21:12. In 1611 “usury” meant any interest, not only excessive interest; the Greek is tokos, literally offspring, money that breeds money.

In Luke the bystanders protest, “Lord, he hath ten pounds” (Luke 19:25). Matthew records no objection. The one talent goes to the servant who made the most of five, which reads as policy, not favouritism: capital goes to the one who uses it.

The saying first appeared in 13:12, where it was about understanding the parables of the kingdom: to him that has, more shall be given. Now it closes a parable about money, and the principle is the same in both places.

“Unprofitable” is achreios, literally useless, without use. A servant given something to use and returning it untouched has become the one thing a servant cannot be. Luke puts the same word in the mouths of servants who have done everything: “We are unprofitable servants” (Luke 17:10).

“All the holy angels with him” recalls Zechariah 14:5, “the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.” “The throne of his glory” is the phrase of 19:28, and the Parables of Enoch, a Jewish work of about this period, seat a Son of Man on “the throne of his glory” as judge (1 Enoch 62:5).

“All nations” is the phrase of the final command, “teach all nations” (28:19). Flocks in the region grazed mixed by day and were separated at evening, since goats need warmer shelter at night. Ezekiel 34:17 already had God judging “between the rams and the he goats”.

The right hand is the side of favour: Jacob set his right hand on the younger Ephraim for the greater blessing (Genesis 48:14). “Goats” here is eriphia, a diminutive, kids. Nothing in the text says the goats are worse animals; the separation is the shepherd’s choice.

This is the one place in his teaching where Jesus calls himself “the King”. “Come” is deute, the word of 11:28, “Come unto me, all ye that labour”, and of the wedding invitation in 22:4. “Inherit” is the language of sons receiving an estate.

“An hungred” is old English for hungry, from Old English ofhyngrod. Isaiah 58:7 gives the nearest list: deal your bread to the hungry, bring the outcast poor to your house, and when you see the naked, cover him. “Took me in” is synago, to gather in, the verb of hospitality.

Prisons did not feed their prisoners; food came from family and friends. The Talmud grounds visiting the sick in imitating God, who appeared to Abraham after his circumcision (Sotah 14a). “Visited” is episkeptomai, to look in on and care for, the verb used of God visiting his people.

The list of six needs is now spoken for the second of four times (verses 35–36, 37–39, 42–43, 44), each round shorter than the last. The righteous call him “Lord” and ask sincerely; they do not remember any of it.

“Stranger” is xenos, a foreigner or someone far from home. Two chapters later the chief priests use Judas’s returned silver to buy the potter’s field “to bury strangers in” (27:7), the same word.

Matthew’s own pages hold one such visit: John the Baptist, in prison, was reached by his disciples, who carried his question to Jesus and Jesus’ answer back to him (11:2–4). The righteous here ask when they ever did the same for the king.

“Inasmuch as” means to the extent that. “The least” is elachistos, the superlative Matthew used of Bethlehem, “not the least among the princes of Juda” (2:6), and of the “least commandments” (5:19). The smallest of the brothers stands in for the king himself.

The blessed are “blessed of my Father” (verse 34); the cursed are not said to be cursed of anyone. The kingdom was prepared “for you”; the fire was prepared “for the devil and his angels”, not for them. The asymmetry is in the grammar.

The first two needs, food and drink, are the most basic, and elsewhere in the book the smallest version of them was enough to earn a reward: “a cup of cold water” to a little one (10:42). Here even those are missing.

The negative list runs faster. “Sick, and in prison” are joined, and one verb, “visited me not”, covers both. Six needs are compressed into five clauses, as if the neglect took fewer words to describe than the care.

The second group gathers the whole list under one verb, diakoneo, to serve or minister: when did we not minister to thee? It is the verb Jesus used of his own mission in 20:28, “not to be ministered unto, but to minister”.

The negative answer drops “my brethren” and says only “one of the least of these”. The sentence is shorter, but the identification is the same: what was not done to them was not done to him.

The verse follows the pattern of Daniel 12:2, “some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”. These are the last words of the last of the five discourses; the next verse is the formula that closes them all, “when Jesus had finished all these sayings” (26:1).