Question

Analyze the words of the Lord Jesus found in Matthew 20:1-16 and Matthew 25:14-30. How do these parables apply to economics?

Answer 1

The Parable of the Talents (also the Parable of the Minas) is one of the parables of Jesus, which appears in two of the synoptic, canonical gospels of the New Testament:

The "Parable of the Talents", in Matthew 25:14–30 tells of a master who was leaving his house to travel, and, before leaving, entrusted his property to his servants. According to the abilities of each man, one servant received five talents, the second had received two, and the third received only one. The property entrusted to the three servants was worth 8 talents, where a talent was a significant amount of money. Upon returning home, after a long absence, the master asks his three servants for an account of the talents he entrusted to them. The first and the second servants explain that they each put their talents to work, and have doubled the value of the property with which they were entrusted; each servant was rewarded:

The third servant, however, had merely hidden his talent, had buried it in the ground, and was punished by his master:Then the one who had received the one talent came and said, 'Sir, I knew that you were a hard man, harvesting where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.' But his master answered, 'Evil and lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I didn't sow and gather where I didn't scatter? Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received my money back with interest! Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten. For the one who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless slave into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

The third servant in Matthew's version was condemned as "wicked and lazy", for he should have deposited the talent he received with the bankers (Greek: τραπεζιταις, trapezitais, literally, table or counter-keepers, just as bankers were originally those who sat at their bancum, or bench). The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges notes that this was "the very least the slave could have done, [as] to make money in this way required no personal exertion or intelligence", and Johann Bengel commented that the labour of digging a hole and burying the talent was greater than the labour involved in going to the bankers.