Matthew 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus tells a story about a landowner who hires workers for his vineyard at different times of day and pays them all the same wage, which upsets those hired first. On the road to Jerusalem he tells the twelve disciples that he will be handed over, condemned, killed, and raised on the third day. When the mother of James and John asks for the top two places in his kingdom, Jesus says greatness among his followers means serving, and the chapter ends with him healing two blind men outside Jericho.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • The kingdom of heaven is like a man who is a householder.
   • The householder went out early in the morning.
   • The householder went out to hire laborers for his vineyard.
2. 20:2
   • The householder agreed with the laborers on a denarius for the day.
   • He sent the laborers into his vineyard.
3. 20:3
   • He went out about the third hour.
   • He saw others standing idle in the marketplace.
4. 20:4
   • He told those men to go into the vineyard as well.
   • He said he would give them whatever is right.
   • The King James adds that they went their way.
5. 20:5
   • The men went.
   • He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour.
   • He did the same thing at those hours.
6. 20:6
   • He went out about the eleventh hour.
   • He found others standing idle.
   • He asked them why they had stood there all day idle.
7. 20:7
   • They told him that no one had hired them.
   • He told them to go into the vineyard as well.
   • The King James adds that he said they would receive whatever is right.
8. 20:8
   • Evening came.
   • The lord of the vineyard spoke to his steward.
   • He told the steward to call the laborers.
   • He told the steward to pay them their wages.
   • He told the steward to begin with the last and go to the first.
9. 20:9
   • Those hired about the eleventh hour came.
   • Each of them received a denarius.
10. 20:10
    • The first hired came.
    • They supposed they would receive more.
    • They also each received a denarius.
11. 20:11
    • When they had received their pay, they grumbled against the householder.
12. 20:12
    • They said the last hired had worked only one hour.
    • They said the householder had made those men equal to themselves.
    • They said they had borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.
13. 20:13
    • The householder answered one of them.
    • He called the man friend.
    • He said he was doing the man no wrong.
    • He asked whether the man had not agreed with him for a denarius.
14. 20:14
    • He told the man to take what was his and go.
    • He said he wished to give to this last man the same as to the complaining man.
15. 20:15
    • He asked whether it was not lawful for him to do what he wished with what was his own.
    • He asked whether the man's eye was evil because he himself was good.
16. 20:16
    • The last shall be first.
    • The first shall be last.
    • The King James adds that many are called but few are chosen.
17. 20:17
    • Jesus was going up to Jerusalem.
    • He took the twelve aside privately.
    • The King James specifies that the twelve were disciples.
    • He spoke to them on the way.
18. 20:18
    • Jesus said they were going up to Jerusalem.
    • Jesus said the Son of man would be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes.
    • Jesus said they would condemn him to death.
19. 20:19
    • Jesus said they would deliver him to the Gentiles.
    • Jesus said he would be mocked.
    • Jesus said he would be scourged.
    • Jesus said he would be crucified.
    • Jesus said he would be raised on the third day.
20. 20:20
    • The mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus.
    • She came with her sons.
    • She bowed down before him.
    • She asked something of him.
21. 20:21
    • Jesus asked her what she wanted.
    • She asked him to grant that her two sons sit one at his right hand and one at his left.
    • She asked this concerning his kingdom.
22. 20:22
    • Jesus answered that they did not know what they were asking.
    • Jesus asked whether they were able to drink the cup he was about to drink.
    • The King James adds that Jesus asked whether they could be baptized with the baptism he is baptized with.
    • They said they were able.
23. 20:23
    • Jesus said they would drink his cup.
    • The King James adds that Jesus said they would be baptized with his baptism.
    • Jesus said that sitting at his right hand and at his left was not his to give.
    • Jesus said those places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by his Father.
24. 20:24
    • The ten heard about it.
    • The ten were indignant at the two brothers.
25. 20:25
    • Jesus called them to him.
    • Jesus said they knew that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them.
    • Jesus said the great ones exercise authority over them.
26. 20:26
    • Jesus said it shall not be so among them.
    • Jesus said whoever wants to become great among them shall be their servant.
27. 20:27
    • Jesus said whoever wants to be first among them shall be their slave.
28. 20:28
    • The Son of man did not come to be served.
    • The Son of man came to serve.
    • The Son of man came to give his life as a ransom for many.
29. 20:29
    • They were leaving Jericho.
    • A great crowd followed him.
30. 20:30
    • Two blind men were sitting beside the road.
    • They heard that Jesus was passing by.
    • They cried out calling him Lord.
    • They asked him to have mercy on them.
    • They called him son of David.
31. 20:31
    • The crowd rebuked them so that they would be silent.
    • They cried out all the louder.
    • They again asked the Lord, son of David, to have mercy on them.
32. 20:32
    • Jesus stopped.
    • Jesus called them.
    • Jesus asked what they wanted him to do for them.
33. 20:33
    • They called him Lord.
    • They asked that their eyes be opened.
34. 20:34
    • Jesus was moved with compassion.
    • Jesus touched their eyes.
    • Immediately they received their sight.
    • They followed him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1

"Householder" in 1611 English means the master of a household and its property, that is, an estate owner, not simply anyone who lives in a house. Matthew regularly writes "the kingdom of heaven" where Mark and Luke write "the kingdom of God"; saying "heaven" was a respectful way of referring to God without using the name.

20:2

The KJV's "penny" is the Roman denarius, a silver coin that was the standard day's wage for a farm laborer or a common soldier. The translators substituted the English coin of their own day, which now makes the sum sound trivial; in the story it is a day's living for a family.

20:3

Hours were counted from sunrise, roughly six in the morning, so the "third hour" is about nine. Daylight was divided into twelve hours in every season, so an hour was longer in summer and shorter in winter.

20:5

The sixth hour is about noon and the ninth hour about three in the afternoon, counting from sunrise.

20:6

The eleventh hour is about five in the afternoon, leaving roughly one hour of work before sunset ended the working day. The English phrase "at the eleventh hour," meaning at the last possible moment, comes from this verse.

20:8

A "steward" was the estate manager who kept the owner's accounts and paid the workforce. The law required that a hired laborer be paid before nightfall on the day he worked, because he lived on that day's wage (Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:15), so paying at evening is ordinary practice rather than generosity.

20:11

"Murmured" in the KJV means grumbled or complained aloud. "Goodman of the house" was ordinary 1611 English for the master of a household: the same man called "an householder" in verse 1.

20:12

"Wrought" is the old past tense of "work." The word behind "heat" is the scorching heat of midday, also used of the burning east wind off the desert that withers crops.

20:13

The word translated "Friend" is a distant, formal way of addressing a man whose name you are not using, closer to "fellow" than to the warm word for a friend. Matthew uses it twice more, both times to someone in the wrong (22:12 and 26:50).

20:15

"Is thine eye evil" is a fixed Hebrew and Greek idiom. An "evil eye" means a grudging, stingy, envious outlook, and a "good eye" means an open-handed one. It is not about casting a curse with a look.

20:16

The closing clause "for many be called, but few chosen" is absent from the earliest manuscripts of Matthew at this point. It stands securely in Matthew 22:14, and copyists appear to have carried it over here. Translations that follow the older manuscripts end the verse with the reversal of first and last.

20:17

"Going up" is the standard idiom for travel to Jerusalem, which sits high in the hill country. One went up to Jerusalem from any direction and down from it, whatever the compass bearing.

20:18

"Son of man" is the phrase Jesus uses of himself throughout the gospels. In ordinary Hebrew and Aramaic it means simply "a human being," but it also recalls the figure "like the Son of man" given lasting rule in Daniel 7, and the phrase can carry both senses at once. The "chief priests" were the senior temple officials in Jerusalem; the "scribes" were the trained experts in the law of Moses who copied, taught and interpreted it.

20:19

"Gentiles" means everyone who is not Jewish; here it means the Roman authorities, who alone had power to carry out a death sentence. To "scourge" is to flog with a whip, in Roman practice often weighted with bone or metal, and normally administered before crucifixion. Crucifixion was a Roman public execution used mainly on slaves and rebels. "The third day" is counted inclusively, so a Friday death and a Sunday rising counts as three days.

20:20

Zebedee was a Galilean fisherman, the father of the disciples James and John (Matthew 4:21). "Worshipping him" in 1611 English means the bodily act of kneeling or bowing low before a superior; the same verb covers the respect shown to a king. The English word has narrowed since then to mean religious worship only.

20:21

The places at a ruler's right and left hand were the two highest positions of honor at his court, held by his chief officers. The request is for the top two ranks in the kingdom she expects him to establish.

20:22

In the Hebrew scriptures a "cup" is regularly the portion or fate handed to a person, most often a cup of suffering or of judgment (for example Psalm 75:8 and Isaiah 51:17). "Baptized" translates a Greek word whose plain sense is to dip, plunge or submerge, so to be baptized with a baptism here means to be plunged into an ordeal and overwhelmed by it. The clause about baptism in this verse, and its repetition in the next, is missing from the earliest manuscripts of Matthew and appears to have been copied in from the parallel passage in Mark 10:38-39.

20:25

"Exercise dominion" renders a verb meaning to lord it over someone, to hold people down by rank. "The princes of the Gentiles" are the rulers of the nations outside Israel, whose kings were the obvious working example of that kind of power.

20:26

"Minister" in 1611 English means a servant or attendant, someone who waits on others at table or otherwise; it did not yet mean a member of the clergy. The Greek word is the one that later gave the church the office of deacon.

20:27

"Servant" here translates a stronger word than the one in verse 26. It means a slave: a person owned by another, with no standing of his own.

20:28

A "ransom" was the price paid to buy a prisoner of war or a slave out of captivity, or the sum paid to spare a life that was otherwise forfeit. The word comes from everyday commerce and law rather than from religious vocabulary.

20:29

Jericho lay in the Jordan valley about fifteen miles northeast of Jerusalem, and the road from it to the city climbed more than three thousand feet. It was the last stage of the pilgrim route and was crowded at Passover.

20:30

"Son of David" is a title for the promised king descended from David. Shouting it at Jesus in a public street is a claim about who he is, not a general courtesy.

20:31

"Hold their peace" is old English for "be quiet."

20:34

"Had compassion" renders a Greek verb built on the word for the inward organs, which were thought of as the seat of deep feeling. It describes being moved in the gut, a strong physical word rather than a mild one.