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The Workers in the Vineyard: A Denarius at Evening · Behind the Bible Verse: The Stories and History Behind Scripture

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  This is a story about a full day's wage, and about the workers who were angry to
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  see someone else receive it.
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  Behind the Bible Verse. This is made with the assistance of AI.
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  Our reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter twenty, verses one to sixteen, in
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  the World English Bible, British Edition. Jesus is the speaker.
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  He has just been talking with his disciples, and this story is how he goes
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  on.
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  “For the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who was the master of a household, who
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  went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.
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  When he had agreed with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his
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  vineyard. He went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the
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  marketplace. He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I
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  will give you.’ So they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and the
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  ninth hour, and did likewise. About the eleventh hour he went out and found others
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  standing idle. He said to them, ‘Why do you stand here all day idle?’
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  “They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’
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  “He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and you will receive whatever is
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  right.’
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  “When evening had come, the lord of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the
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  labourers and pay them their wages, beginning from the last to the first.’
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  “When those who were hired at about the eleventh hour came, they each received a
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  denarius. When the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and
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  they likewise each received a denarius. When they received it, they murmured
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  against the master of the household, saying, ‘These last have spent one hour,
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  and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the
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  scorching heat!’
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  “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong.
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  Didn’t you agree with me for a denarius? Take that which is yours, and go your way.
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  It is my desire to give to this last just as much as to you.
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  Isn’t it lawful for me to do what I want to with what I own?
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  Or is your eye evil, because I am good?’ So the last will be first, and the first
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  last. For many are called, but few are chosen.”
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  So that's the story. A vineyard, a day's wage, and a complaint at sunset.
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  It is one of the stories people argue with. If you felt the first workers had a
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  point, you heard it the way the story expects. It doesn't make them villains
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  before it lets them speak. It lets them say the thing, and then it answers them.
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  A little of what comes just before will help. At the end of the previous chapter,
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  Peter says, "Behold, we have left everything and followed you.
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  What then will we have?" Jesus tells the twelve that they will sit on thrones,
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  judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he gets specific about the cost.
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  Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife,
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  or children, or lands, for his name's sake, will receive a hundred times, and
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  will inherit eternal life. That is a lavish answer to "what then will we have?"
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  Then he says, "But many will be last who are first, and first who are last."
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  And then, without a change of speaker, he tells this story.
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  It ends on the same idea. "So the last will be first, and the first last."
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  The parable is his comment on that sentence, and on Peter's question about
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  what the loyal ones will get.
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  The lavish answer and the parable belong together.
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  The disciples have just been told they will be given much.
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  Then they hear about a coin given just as freely to someone who arrived later.
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  If you have started to measure what your faithfulness should earn, the story asks
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  what you do when the same gift lands on a person who wasn't there for the heat.
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  Now the working day, because the hours are easy to miss.
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  This translation's notes measure time from sunrise.
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  The third hour is about nine in the morning. The sixth and the ninth are noon
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  and three in the afternoon. The eleventh hour is about five in the evening.
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  The master goes out at dawn and hires labourers for a denarius a day.
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  A note on that coin says a denarius was a silver Roman coin, a common wage for a day
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  of farm labour. Not a fortune. A fair, ordinary agreement.
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  He finds them standing in the marketplace, which is where a day labourer went to be
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  seen and hired. If you weren't hired, you didn't eat.
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  The story's "standing idle" is not a joke about laziness.
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  At the eleventh hour they say the quiet part: "Because no one has hired us."
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  He sends that last group in with no named wage. "Whatever is right," he says, the
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  same loose promise he gave at mid-morning. The first group is the only one with a set
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  price. That will matter when they complain. They are not arguing about a
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  broken contract. They are arguing about a contract that was kept.
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  Evening comes. The law of Moses says a hired worker's wages are to be given on
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  the same day, and the sun is not to go down on them.
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  You can hear that world behind the manager calling them in at the end of the day.
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  And the master adds a strange instruction. Pay them beginning from the last to the
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  first. He wants the all-day workers to see what the latecomers receive.
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  If he had paid the first group first and sent them home, there would have been no
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  scene. The scene is the point.
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  The eleventh-hour workers each get a denarius. A full day, for about an hour.
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  The first workers, watching, suppose they will receive more.
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  They get a denarius too. And they murmur. "These last have spent one hour, and you
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  have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching
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  heat." Equal. That is the word that stings. Not "you underpaid us."
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  You made them equal to us.
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  Picture the payout, because the master has staged it.
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  The last group is paid first, in front of everyone.
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  A denarius in the hand of a man who arrived at about five in the evening.
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  Then the next group, and the next, the same coin, while the morning crew is still
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  standing there doing the sum. By the time their own denarius arrives, they have
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  watched the idea of a rate fall apart. There is no higher rate.
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  There is a gift that ignores the clock. The bargain they made at dawn is honoured
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  to the coin. What fails is the private sum they added later: more hours, more pay.
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  Day labour was a hard living, and this story knows it.
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  You stood in the marketplace and hoped to be seen.
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  A denarius was the ordinary bargain for a full day in the sun, not a bonus.
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  The men hired at dawn have a right to that coin, and they receive it.
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  The story's oddity is not a stingy master. He is, if anything, free with his own
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  money, and set on who gets to go home paid. The last group said no one had hired
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  them. By evening that is no longer true, and they have a day's wage for about an
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  hour's work. The complaint comes from the people for whom the day went exactly as
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  agreed.
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  It's a very recognisable anger. Not at being cheated.
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  At someone else being lifted up to where you are, without having carried what you
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  carried. The heat of the day is real. The story doesn't deny it.
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  The master doesn't say the morning was easy.
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  He answers one of them, and he calls him friend. "I am doing you no wrong.
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  Didn't you agree with me for a denarius? Take that which is yours, and go your way.
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  It is my desire to give to this last just as much as to you.
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  Isn't it lawful for me to do what I want to with what I own?
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  Or is your eye evil, because I am good?"
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  "Is your eye evil" needs a gloss, and I'll mark it as a reading rather than a
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  certainty. In the Hebrew Bible, an evil eye is a way of talking about a grudging,
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  envious spirit, the opposite of a generous one. Many readers hear that idiom under
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  the Greek of this sentence. The master is not accusing the man of witchcraft.
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  He is asking whether generosity, shown to someone else, has started to look like an
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  injury.
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  Sit with the order of his points, because he doesn't begin with a lecture.
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  First, you were not wronged. The wage you agreed is in your hand.
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  Second, the extra given to the others was desire, not a debt.
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  He wanted to give it. Third, a question that leaves the worker, and the listener,
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  to answer. Is the good I did the reason your eye turned sour?
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  Then the line that opened the conversation comes back.
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  The last will be first, and the first last. And this translation adds, "For many
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  are called, but few are chosen." I won't hang a doctrine on that last sentence.
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  It's here, in the text we're reading, and it has been taken in hard ways.
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  The story in front of it is not a threat about being thrown out.
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  It is a landowner paying everyone, including the people who only arrived at
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  five.
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  Listeners have heard this parable in more than one key, and the keys don't cancel
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  each other. Many Christians read the all-day workers as people who have served
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  God a long time, and the latecomers as people who arrive late and are welcomed
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  just the same. Some hear a sharper edge, aimed at anyone who keeps score of their
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  own faithfulness. Readers standing in the Jewish world of the story may simply hear
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  a vineyard, a marketplace, and a question about what an owner owes.
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  Jesus tells it to disciples who have just asked what they will have for leaving
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  everything. The story doesn't scold them for asking.
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  It shows them a payment that refuses to be a ranking.
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  Notice who never speaks. The eleventh-hour workers don't boast, and they don't
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  apologise. They take the denarius and the story lets them go.
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  All the talk is between the master and the people who worked through the heat.
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  The parable is less about the latecomers' feelings than about what the early workers
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  do with someone else's good fortune.
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  It is also, plainly, about the master. He keeps going out.
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  Dawn, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, and again when the day is almost gone.
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  He doesn't need the last hour's labour in any way the story bothers to explain.
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  He hires them because they are standing there, and because no one else has.
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  Then he pays them as if the day had been theirs. You can call that unfair.
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  The all-day workers do. The story's name for it is good.
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  None of this tells you what to believe about God. It tells you what this
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  particular story does with a complaint. The complaint is allowed to be honest.
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  The answer doesn't pretend the hours were the same.
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  It says the wage was never only a measure of the hours.
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  So here's a question to sit with, and there's no right answer to it.
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  When someone else is given the same as you, and you carried the hotter part of
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  the day, what do you feel you are owed?
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  Thanks for listening to Behind the Bible Verse. Scripture readings are from the
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  World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain.
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  Every episode is checked against the text and the historical record.