Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (also called the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard or the Parable of the Generous Employer) is a parable of Jesus which appears in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.

Painting of the parable, by Patrick Paearz de Wet, mid-17th century

In Matthew 20:1–16, Jesus says that any "laborer" who accepts the invitation to the work in the vineyard (said by Jesus to represent the Kingdom of Heaven), no matter how late in the day, will receive an equal reward with those who have been faithful the longest.

Text

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”...

— Matthew 20:1–16, New International Version

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Interpretation

The word translated "penny" in the King James Version of this parable is the denarius, a silver coin which was the usual day's wage for a laborer.[1] The hours here are measured starting at about 6:00 AM, so that the eleventh hour is between about 4:00 and 5:00 PM.[2] The workers are poor men working as temporary farmhands during the harvest season,[2] and the employer realizes that they would all need a full day's pay to feed their families.[1][2] The payment at evening follows guidelines in the Hebrew Bible:[1]

You must not keep back the wages of a man who is poor and needy, whether a fellow-countryman or an alien living in your country in one of your settlements. Pay him his wages on the same day before sunset, for he is poor and he relies on them: otherwise he may appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. Deuteronomy 24:14-15 Revised English Bible

This parable stresses God's unmerited grace, rather than any sense of "earning" God's favour.[1][2] In this way it resembles the Parable of the Prodigal Son.[1]

The parable has often been interpreted to mean that even those who are converted late in life earn equal rewards along with those converted early. The parable can also be interpreted as showing that the people hired early in the day felt envious and jealous of the other workers even though they would have been satisfied had they not known about the group hired later. An alternative interpretation identifies the early laborers as Jews, some of whom resent the late-comers (Gentiles) being welcomed as equals in God's Kingdom.[3] However, Arland J. Hultgren writes:

Painting of the parable by Rembrandt, showing the workers being paid that evening (1637)

While interpreting and applying this parable, the question inevitably arises: Who are the eleventh-hour workers in our day? We might want to name them, such as deathbed converts or persons who are typically despised by those who are longtime veterans and more fervent in their religious commitment. But it is best not to narrow the field too quickly. At a deeper level, we are all the eleventh-hour workers; to change the metaphor, we are all honored guests of God in the kingdom. It is not really necessary to decide who the eleventh-hour workers are. The point of the parable—both at the level of Jesus and the level of Matthew's Gospel—is that God saves by grace, not by our worthiness. That applies to all of us.[4]

Some commentators have used the parable to justify the principle of a "living wage",[5] though generally conceding that this is not the main point of the parable.[5] An example is John Ruskin, who quotes the parable in the title of his book Unto This Last. Ruskin does not discuss the religious meaning of the parable but rather its social and economic implications.

See also

References
  1. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, Eerdmans, 2007, ISBN 0-8028-2501-X, pp. 746–52.
  2. Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Eerdmans, 1999, ISBN 0-8028-3821-9, pp. 481–84.
  3. Both interpretations are discussed in Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706).
  4. Arland J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary, Eerdmans, 2002, ISBN 0-8028-6077-X, p. 43.
  5. William Sloane Coffin, The collected sermons of William Sloane Coffin: the Riverside years, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, ISBN 0-664-23244-2, p. 109.
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