Jump to The gist Going deeper In the modern world The tidbit This week
Matthew 18:21–35 · Majority Standard Bible
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times! Because of this, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlements, a debtor owing ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since the man was unable to pay, the master ordered that he be sold to pay his debt, along with his wife and children and everything he owned.
Then the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Master, have patience with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ His master had compassion on him, forgave his debt, and released him.
But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay his debt.
When his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and recounted all of this to their master. Then the master summoned him and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave all your debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had on you?’
In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should repay all that was owed him. That is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother his trespasses from your heart.”
The gist
Peter offers seven and thinks he is being generous. The number he gets back may be the one a murderer once used to boast about revenge.
Going deeper
Peter’s question is not stingy. Seven is a generous figure — he has clearly thought about it, and he has picked a number that sounds complete.
And the answer he gets is the passage’s first difficulty, because the Greek can be read two ways and there is no manuscript question involved at all. Every edition consulted — Byzantine, Greek Orthodox, both Textus Receptus editions, Nestle, Westcott–Hort, Tischendorf — prints exactly the same words. This is purely a question of translation, not of text, which is worth saying in a book that spends so much time on variants.
The commentators divide. Bengel and Meyer read “seventy-seven”; Meyer’s argument is grammatical — the second word is seven, not seven times, so the sense is seventy-seven. The Expositor’s Greek Testament and the Pulpit Commentary read “seventy times seven,” the Expositor’s preferring it as “giving a number (490) practically equal to infinitude.”
But the interesting thing is what Bengel notices. He observes that the Septuagint uses the same phrase at Genesis 4:24 — which is Lamech’s boast: if Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold. The MSB’s own footnote sends the reader to the same verse.
If Bengel is right, then Peter asks about seven, and Christ answers with the number that stood in Scripture for unlimited vengeance — and turns it into the number for unlimited forgiveness. The first man in the Bible to use that figure was a killer bragging about how far he would take a grudge.
Then the parable, and the arithmetic is the argument.
Ten thousand talents. Thayer gives the Attic talent as sixty minae, or six thousand drachmae; the MSB’s own footnote reckons a single talent at “about twenty years’ wages for a laborer.” A hundred denarii. The Cambridge Bible states the denarius was “a day’s wages,” and puts the second debt at “about three months’ wages for an ordinary labourer.”
As for the ratio between them, this book will print only what a commentator actually says. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown: ”If Jewish money is intended, this debt was to the other less than one to a million.” The Pulpit Commentary calls it “not a millionth part of his own debt to his master,” and adds — attributing it to others — that the proportion “may be stated more accurately as 1 to 1,250,000.” Nineteenth-century attempts to convert the sums into pounds and dollars are wildly inconsistent with one another, and none is reproduced here.
Chrysostom needs no arithmetic. His sentence is the parable in one line:
“Do you see how great the difference between sins against man and against God? As great as between ten thousand talents, and a hundred pence, or rather even much more.”
Then two words in verse 27 that repay attention.
Had compassion is splanchnizomai, from splanchna, the inward parts — Thayer glosses it “to be moved as to one’s bowels… for the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity.” It is a physical word, and it is the word used of Christ Himself over the crowds.
And the thing forgiven is not called a debt in the ordinary sense. The Greek is daneion — a loan. Something the man had been given, and had not returned.
Then verse 28, where the tense does real work. He grabbed him and began to choke him — the Greek is an imperfect, which is why the translation reads “began to.” Not one act of violence but a process, under way, with the man’s hands round a throat while he demands a hundred days’ wages.
And Chrysostom asks the question the parable invites: why did the master hold the reckoning at all, if he meant to forgive?
“Wherefore then did He not do this, nor forgive the debt before the account? Desiring to teach him, from how many obligations He is delivering him, that in this way at least he might become more mild towards his fellow servant.”
The audit was the mercy’s teaching aid. The man was shown the size of what he owed precisely so that the hundred denarii would look like what it was.
Then verse 34, and the word for what happens to him is severe. The jailers is basanistēs, and it occurs once in the whole New Testament. Thayer defines it as “one who elicits the truth by the use of the rack, an inquisitor, torturer,” and adds that it is used here of a jailer “doubtless because the business of torturing was also assigned to him.” Strong’s gives simply “a torturer.” The MSB’s rendering — turned him over to the jailers to be tortured — keeps both halves of the word.
Chrysostom reads the sentence as unending, and says so by glossing the clause about repayment:
“‘For He delivered him over till he should pay that which was due,’ that is, for ever; for he will never repay.”
And then the closing verse, where two small things are worth having.
The Greek reads from your hearts — plural — where the MSB prints the singular. And the Byzantine text, with the Greek Orthodox text and both Textus Receptus editions, includes his trespasses at the end, which the critical editions omit. The MSB prints it and footnotes the omission. Worth noting: the Chrysostom translation quotes the verse with those words — his text read what this book prints.
His comment on the phrase is the one to end on: not merely to forgive with the lips, but from the heart.
In the modern world
The parable’s argument is not that forgiving is nice. It is that refusing to forgive requires you to hold two incompatible accounts at once, and the disproportion is the whole point.
Which means the useful question is not should I forgive this but what am I claiming when I don’t. The servant in the parable is not a monster; he is a man who has correctly identified that he is owed a hundred denarii. He is right about the debt. He is simply standing in the wrong place while he collects it — three minutes after having ten thousand talents written off.
Then Chrysostom’s observation about the order of events, which is the pastorally useful one. The man was made to look at his own account first. That is not cruelty; it is the only thing that would have made the hundred denarii look small. And it suggests where to start when forgiveness is not coming: not by trying harder to feel forgiving, but by looking honestly at what has been forgiven you. The parable’s own remedy is a reckoning, not an effort of will.
And then the difficult part, which sermons often soften and this book will not. The man’s punishment is restored. The forgiveness he had received is revoked, and the last verse applies it directly: That is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive.
That is the same condition as the Lord’s Prayer, printed here ten weeks ago, and the same one as the standing to pray in Mark. It appears too often to be an accident.
Finally, from your heart — or, in the Greek, from your hearts. Which rules out the most common modern settlement, which is to decide not to pursue the matter while keeping the ledger open. The servant in the parable never assaulted anybody a second time; he simply declined to release what he was owed. That was the whole of his offence.
The tidbit
The enormous sum the master writes off is not called a debt in the Greek. It is called a loan — something the servant had been handed and had not given back. The parable’s picture of sin is not primarily of a fine incurred but of a gift not returned.
This week
The master calls in the debt before he cancels it, and Chrysostom says the audit was the point — the man had to see the size of his own account before a hundred denarii could look like a hundred denarii. So the week does the two reckonings in that order, your own first, because the disproportion is the whole mechanism and it does not work in reverse.
On the first day, do the reckoning in the order the parable uses, because the order is the mechanism.
First, your own account. Write down — actually write — three things you have been forgiven. Not sins in general. Three specific ones, with names and dates where you can manage it, including at least one that somebody else had to absorb.
Then, and only then, name the hundred denarii. The thing owed to you that you have not released. Most people have one and can produce it instantly.
Then, this week, release it. That does not always mean a conversation, and it never means pretending the debt was not real — the parable is emphatic that both debts were genuine. It means stopping the collection. No further mention of it, to them or to anyone else, and no revisiting it in your head at three in the morning.
It might look like this. Your own account, written out: the year I was impossible to live with, and she stayed. What I did with the money in 2011, which my brother covered and has never once raised. The thing I said to my daughter, which she appears to have forgotten. Then the hundred denarii, which arrives instantly and in exact figures: he still owes me eight hundred dollars from the truck.
Chrysostom’s test is the one to use: not with the lips, but from the heart.
Scripture: Matthew 18:21–35, Majority Standard Bible (Byzantine Majority Text). The MSB’s own section heading “The Unforgiving Servant” begins at verse 21, carries the cross-reference “(Romans 12:14–21)”, and runs to the end of the chapter — a complete printed unit. Peter’s question at verse 21 is self-contained; Christ’s reply opens at verse 22 and the closing mark falls at the end of verse 35, with the speech of the characters inside the parable in single quotation marks. All marks above are the MSB’s own. biblehub.com/msb/matthew/18.htm
Verse 22 is not a textual question. Every edition consulted — the Robinson–Pierpont Byzantine Majority Text, the Greek Orthodox Church text, both editions of the Textus Receptus, Nestle 1904, Westcott–Hort and Tischendorf — prints hebdomēkontakis hepta, differing only in accentuation and elision. The MSB renders it “seventy-seven times” and footnotes “Or seventy times seven; see Genesis 4:24 LXX.” Bengel’s Gnomon and Meyer argue for “seventy-seven,” Meyer on the ground that the second word is seven and not seven times; the Expositor’s Greek Testament and the Pulpit Commentary argue for “seventy times seven.” The observation that the Septuagint uses the same phrase of Lamech at Genesis 4:24 is Bengel’s, reported by the Expositor’s Greek Testament as Bengel’s, and echoed by the MSB’s own footnote; Gill and Barnes cite the verse without comment. The Septuagint itself was not consulted for this entry. biblehub.com/text/matthew/18-22.htm biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/18-22.htm
Text at verse 35. The Byzantine Majority Text, the Greek Orthodox Church text and both Textus Receptus editions read ta paraptōmata autōn, “his trespasses,” which Nestle, Westcott–Hort and Tischendorf omit; the MSB prints it and footnotes the omission. The same editions read epouranios where the critical text reads ouranios, a difference the MSB does not footnote. The NPNF translation of Chrysostom’s homily quotes the verse with “their trespasses,” so his text carried the Byzantine reading. The Greek of that verse reads “from your hearts,” plural, where the MSB prints the singular. biblehub.com/text/matthew/18-35.htm
The sums. Thayer gives the Attic talent as sixty minae or six thousand drachmae; the MSB’s own footnote at verse 24 reckons a talent at “about twenty years’ wages for a laborer,” which is the MSB editors’ equivalence and is cited as theirs. That a denarius was a day’s wage is stated by the Cambridge Bible at verse 28 — not by the public-domain lexicons consulted, which do not say so — and the Cambridge Bible also gives the second debt as “about three months’ wages for an ordinary labourer.” On the ratio between the two debts, only the figures quoted above are printed, from Jamieson-Fausset-Brown and the Pulpit Commentary, each with its own hedge; no ratio has been calculated for this entry, and the nineteenth-century conversions of the talents into pounds or dollars, which differ wildly among themselves, are not reproduced. biblehub.com/greek/5007.htm biblehub.com/greek/1220.htm biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/18-24.htm biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/18-28.htm
Greek, as printed in the interlinear and the lexical pages. At verse 27 “had compassion” is splanchnistheis, an aorist passive participle of splanchnizomai (Strong’s 4697), which HELPS derives from splanchna, “the inward parts,” and Thayer glosses “to be moved as to one’s bowels… for the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity”; the thing forgiven is daneion (1156), a loan, not opheilēma. At verse 28 “began to choke” is epnigen, from pnigō (4155), an imperfect — which is what licenses the English “began to”; Vincent’s Word Studies glosses the verb “throttled.” At verse 34 “the jailers” is basanistais, from basanistēs (930), of which the concordance lists one New Testament occurrence; Thayer defines it as “one who elicits the truth by the use of the rack, an inquisitor, torturer,” and notes that it is used here of a jailer “doubtless because the business of torturing was also assigned to him.” The MSB’s “jailers to be tortured” preserves both senses. biblehub.com/greek/4697.htm biblehub.com/greek/930.htm biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/18-28.htm
St John Chrysostom, Homily 61 on Matthew. Public domain (NPNF Series 1, Vol. 10). Its printed lemma is “Matt. XVIII. 21,” and the boundary is confirmed — Homily 62 opens at Matthew 19:1 — so the whole parable falls within it; the homily runs past its lemma to expound verse 35, and its latter portion is a general exhortation against revengefulness from which nothing is quoted above. Chrysostom does not comment on the word for the torturers, and nothing on that subject is attributed to him; what is quoted is his gloss on the clause about repayment. www.newadvent.org/fathers/200161.htm www.newadvent.org/fathers/200162.htm
No claim is made above about ancient debt slavery or the sale of a debtor’s family, neither being addressed by any commentator on the pages consulted. Meyer notes at verse 28 that creditors were permitted under Roman law to drag debtors before a judge by the throat; that remark concerns the choking only, and is not extended above.
Fifty-one more like it
If one week changed how you read that passage, Follow Me has fifty-one others, each given the same treatment.