The parable of the workers in the vineyard
One hour's work, a day's wage — and the complaint the story wants to provoke.
A landowner goes out at dawn to hire workers for his vineyard and agrees with them on a denarius for the day. He goes back to the marketplace mid-morning, at noon, mid-afternoon and an hour before sunset, and hires more each time.
At the end of the day he has them paid starting with the last. Everyone gets a denarius. It is the parable that most annoys first-time readers, and it is built to.
The story, step by step
- Matthew 20:1–2The first, hired at dawn for a denarius
- Matthew 20:3–7More hired through the day, down to the last hour
- Matthew 20:8–10Pay starts with the last, and everyone gets a denarius
- Matthew 20:11–12The first grumble: "you have made them equal to us"
- Matthew 20:13–15The landowner's answer
- Matthew 20:16The last will be first, and the first last
The line the story turns on
Isn't it lawful for me to do what I want to with what I own? Or is your eye evil, because I am good?
An "evil eye", in the idiom of the time, was envy — looking at what someone else got and feeling robbed. The first workers were not cheated: they got exactly what they agreed to. What bothers them is not their own pay but the generosity to others. The landowner asks whether his goodness has become an offence.
What it means
Just before, Peter had said: "Behold, we have left everything, and followed you. What then will we have?" (Matthew 19:27). The story is partly an answer to that. In the kingdom Jesus describes, nobody negotiates their wage by the hour they arrived.
Anyone who identifies with the dawn workers feels the unfairness in their bones, and that is where the parable does its work. It does not ask you to find equal pay fair. It asks you to notice what happens inside when grace given to someone else feels like something taken from you. And the last-hour workers had not been idle out of laziness: "Because no one has hired us" (Matthew 20:7).
One parable a day, with the question around it
Walking with Jesus has a collection called The Parables of Jesus that takes them one a day — each with the question he was answering, a short reflection, a prayer, and one thing to carry into the day.
It is a one-time purchase, about five minutes a morning, and it never asks you to catch up on days you missed.
Questions people ask
- Where is the parable of the workers in the vineyard in the Bible?
- Matthew 20:1–16. Only Matthew records it, straight after Peter asks what those who left everything will receive (Matthew 19:27–30).
- What is the meaning of the parable of the workers in the vineyard?
- That in God's kingdom the reward depends on the generosity of the one paying, not on the length of service of the one paid. The parable also exposes the envy that rises when kindness to someone else feels like injustice to us.
- What does "the last will be first" mean?
- In the parable it is literal: pay begins with the last ones hired. In Jesus' teaching the phrase appears more than once, to say that the kingdom's order of importance does not follow order of arrival, merit or rank.