Tuesday, September 07, 2010
The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner, who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. When he had agreed with the laborers to pay them a shilling for the day, he sent them into his vineyard.
He went out again, about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace. He told them, 'You also; go to the vineyard, and I'll pay you whatever is right.' And they went to work. And he went out yet again about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise.
About the eleventh hour he went out again and found others standing. He said to them, 'Why are you standing here all day idle?' They replied, 'Because nobody has hired us.' So he told them, 'You also, go to the vineyard'.
When evening fell, the lord of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the laborers and pay them their wages, from the last to the first.'
When those who had been hired at the eleventh hour came out, each of them received a shilling. So when the first-hired came out, they supposed that they would receive more; but they also received a shilling each. After they had been paid, they complained about the landowner, saying, 'The men hired last worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us, who worked the entire day in the scorching heat.'
But he answered, 'Friend, I haven't done any wrong to you. Didn't you agree to a shilling with me? Take that which is yours and go on your way. It is my will to give to these last ones the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do whatever I want with what I own? Or do you think ill of me, because I am good?'
So the last shall be first, and the first last.
The invention of accurate clocks came surprisingly late in history. The Romans were amazingly advanced in some ways; the sewage system in Londonium (circa 300 AD) was far better than that of London in 1800. But the pendulum clock did not appear until 1657, and clocks accurate enough for ships to determine their latitude came 100 years later.
Agricultural peoples, like the Hebrews in today's passage, generally divided the day into two segments. The daytime would have started around 7 a.m. and ended around 7 p.m. So, the third hour would have started about 9:00; the sixth, 12:00 noon; the ninth, 3:00; and the famous "eleventh hour" would have run from 5:00 to 6:00. Then (as now) farmers went to bed early and got up at daybreak, especially since they didn't have electric lights (much less television!).
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