God not of the Jews nor of the Gentiles only, but our Father; the God Who not only
pays, but freely gives of His own, and in Whose Wisdom and by Whose Grace it may
be, that, even as the first shall be last, so the last shall be first.
13. Rom. xi.
14. Rom. ii.; iii. 28-31; ix. 18-24.
15. Rom. xi. 11-18.
16. The clause which follows in our A.V. is spurious.
17. St. Matt. xix. 30.
Another point still remains to be noticed. If anywhere, we expect in these Parables,
addressed to the people, forms of teaching and speaking with which they were familiar -
in other words, Jewish parallels. But we equally expect that the teaching of Christ, while
conveyed under illustrations with which the Jews were familiar, would be entirely
different in spirit. And such we find it notably in the present instances. To begin with,
according to Jewish Law, if a man engaged a labourer without any definite bargain, but
on the statement that he would be paid as one or another of the labourers in t he place,
he was, according to some, only bound to pay the lowest wages in the place; but,
according to the majority, the average between the lowest and the highest.18 19 Again,
as regards the letter of the Parable itself, we have a remarkable parallel in a funeral
oration on a Rabbi, who died at the early age of twenty-eight. The text chosen was: 'The
sleep of a labouring man is sweet,'20 and this was illustrated by a Parable of a king who
had a vineyard, and engaged many labourers to work in it. One of them was
distinguished above the rest by his ability. So the king took him by the hand, and walked
up and down with him. At even, when the labourers were paid, this one received the
same wages as the others, just as if he had wrought the whole day. Upon this the
others murmured, because he who had wrought only two hours had received the same
as they who had laboured the whole day, when the king replied: 'Why murmur ye? This
labourer has by his skill wrought as much in two hours as you during the whole day.'21
This in reference to the great merits of the deceased young Rabbi.
18. Badha Mets. 87 a, towards the end.
19. Some interesting illustrations of secondary importance, and therefore not here
introduced, may be found at the close of Badha Mets. 83 a and the beginning of b.
20. Eccl. v. 12.
21. Midr. on Eccl. v. 11; Jer. Ber. ii. 8.
But it will be observed that, with all its similarity of form, the moral of the Jewish Parable
is in exactly the opposite direction from the teaching of Christ. The same spirit of work
and pay breathes in another Parable, which is intended to illustrate the idea that God
had not revealed the reward attaching to each commandment, in order that men might
not neglect those which brought less return. A king - so the Parable runs - had a
garden, for which he hired labourers without telling them what their wages would be. In
the evening he called them, and, having ascertained from each under what tree he had
been working, he paid them according to the value of the trees on which they had been
engaged. And when they said that he ought to have told them, which trees would bring
the labourers most pay, the king replied that thereby a great part of his garden would
have been neglected. So had God in like manner only revealed the reward of the