Commentary on Matthew 20:1-16

The so-called Parable of the Vineyard Laborers (Matthew 20:1–16) begins with Jesus saying, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard” (20:1). The Greek term that the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translates as “landowner” (oikodespōtes) comprises the words for “house” (oikos) and “master” (despōtes), so that “householder” is preferable. This particular householder also owns a vineyard.

For Jesus’s original hearers, this vineyard would have invoked the land of Israel. Isaiah describes God as a vintner whose plot represents “the house of Israel”—both people and land (Isaiah 5:7). Jeremiah also compares God’s people and property to a vineyard ruled by unrighteous shepherds (Jeremiah 12:10). Since the vineyard is a “stock image for Israel” in these and other prophetic texts, Gospel readers can be assured that Matthew’s “householder” represents God.¹

Jesus’s parable describes the householder hiring a series of laborers to tend his vineyard (Matthew 20:1–7). After making a morning agreement with the first group of workers for a denarius as the day’s wage, the householder employs others at the third, sixth, ninth, and 11th hours of the day—roughly 9:00 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 5 p.m., respectively. At the end of the workday, the householder pays the latecomers the denarius that he had agreed upon with the initial laborers (20:9–10).

When the first group sees that the subsequent workers receive the same amount as they do, they grumble against the householder, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (20:12). The householder responds to a disgruntled representative, “‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you” (20:13–14).

Unfortunately, much traditional interpretation identifies the grumbling group as works-focused Jews or Pharisees, and the subsequent workers as gentiles or Christians.² First, there is little reason to equate the latecomers with gentiles. Immediately before expounding this parable, Jesus tells his Jewish disciples, “At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (19:28). Thus, a contextual reading of the parable should position all of its characters as ethnic members of Israel.

Second, the hearers of the parable are the disciples, not the Pharisees. Though Jesus had been speaking to Pharisees at the outset of the previous chapter (19:3), his attention shifts to a group of children (19:13–15), a rich young man (19:16–22), and then his disciples (19:23–30).³ Therefore, the first laborers in the vineyard should represent Jesus’s original disciples, and the latecomers should be subsequent followers.

Once again, the parable’s broader context aids in its interpretation: Jesus had described the reward of “twelve thrones” for his first disciples (19:28), adding, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (19:29). The Parable of the Vineyard Laborers, then, can be read as an illustration of various people’s progressive adherence to God through Christ.

Rather than focusing on the laborers, readers might bear better theological fruit by meditating on the householder himself. Jesus’s parable offers a beautiful picture of divine love and grace for those who follow God. First, the householder makes a salary agreement—a binding relational contract—with the first workers, agreeing on payment before any of their work has even started (20:2). This picture conjures the covenantal faithfulness of God: a scenario in which human effort does not create one’s reward but rather flows from the grace of a pre-established covenant.

Next, the householder actively seeks other workers throughout the day. For instance, “About five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard’” (20:6–7). Though the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition’s references to “standing around” and “standing here idle” might imply aloofness or laziness on the part of the potential laborers, the Greek behind these phrases simply states that these people were “without work” (argōs). The generous householder (God) offers employment and purpose to all he encounters.

In presenting the householder in this way, Jesus has his Father enacting the very divine dictates expressed to Israel through Moses: “Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’” (Deuteronomy 15:10–11).⁴ Like the “generous” householder (Matthew 20:15), God searches for those in need of godly work and provides everyone with the grace of a living wage in the vineyard of the Lord.

Notes

1. Steven M. Bryan, Jesus and Israel’s Traditions of Judgement and Restoration, SNTSMS 117 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 48.
2. For a summary of this brand of interpretation, see Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 216–218.
3. Jesus will not speak with the Pharisees again until he arrives in Jerusalem after an extended journey that ends in Jerusalem (see Matt 21:45).
4. See Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, 236.