By Dwight A. Pryor
When we place a Bible passage back into its original Jewish context, it can come to life in a dramatic new way. A good example is Luke 15:11-32, often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This memorable story is a favorite of Christians everywhere. Looking at it through the Jewish eyes of JesusÂ’ first-century audience, however, opens the parable to significant and illuminating new insights. 1
This particular parable is especially important for us as Christians to rightly understand. Typically we labor under inadequate or inappropriate images of the God of Israel. We can be almost scizo-phrenic about Him at times. We know He is a loving Father, yet He seems so stern, demanding and distant. He is "Jehovah," the Lawgiver–a kind of IRS agent in the sky who is ever examining our conduct, looking for just one infraction so He can throw the book at us.
This kind of thinking is neither Hebraic nor Biblical. It is the product in part of an unfortunate schism between church and synagogue and the resulting anti-Jewish sentiment that pervaded the Church from the earliest centuries. More importantly, it seriously impairs the very way you and I worship and relate to the God of Israel. Who wants to crawl up into the lap of an IRS agent? Who wants to practice the presence of a severe Judge who gives us an impossible law to live up to and then punishes us even for one infraction? Many Christians, I fear, suffer from this difficulty of being truly intimate with our Father in Heaven. We say the right words, but in our hearts we are uncertain and uncomfortable. A faulty image of God can cause us to miss out on the fullness and the joy of our salvation in His presence and power.
Jesus’ parable in Luke 15:11-32 can deliver us from this dilemma. It shows us an accurate portrait of the God of Israel–of Yahweh (Lord), whom Jesus called "my Father." To His Jewish audience, this parable is an incredible saga of a father who at every turn surprises us by his grace. To us, it is a parable about the prodigal or lost son. We have looked at the story through twentieth-century Western eyes rather than first-century Jewish eyes. The principal player in Jesus’ story is not the prodigal son. The parable is driving home a point about the father–the father who forgives, who is merciful and gracious. Let’s examine the Jewish background to this beloved story.
Verse 11: Jesus continues: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them."
These last two seemingly simple statements were absolute shockers to the Jewish ear. Jesus has grabbed his audienceÂ’s attention and aroused their emotions by His provocative description of a fatherÂ’s two sons. Dr. Kenneth Bailey is the past chairman of the Biblical Department at the Near Eastern School of Theology in Beirut. During his many years in the Middle East, he often would ask people, "Have you ever known a son to come to his father and demand his inheritance?" He learned that such an act was unthinkable in that culture. It would represent an unspeakable offense and the grossest insult to a father.
Dr. Bailey heard of only two instances of such a thing happening. In the first, the son was chased out of his home by an irate father. In the second, an Oriental father previously in good health, died within three months of his sonÂ’s demand. The wife, who told Dr. Bailey the story, believed her husband had died of a broken heart. She said, "He died that night!" 2 JesusÂ’ listeners understood that to demand your inheritance from a living father was equivalent to saying, "Father, I wish you would drop dead!"
Jewish law permitted a father, under some circumstances, to settle his estate while still living. For instance, if his wife died and he remarried, he might choose to settle his childrenÂ’s estate right then. This was done only at a fatherÂ’s initiative, however, never at a sonÂ’s request. Further, the actual disbursement of the property would not occur until the fatherÂ’s death, since he had the legal right to the landÂ’s income as long as he lived.
In Jesus’ parable, therefore, the younger son has perpetrated an unconscionable double insult upon his father. He has shamed him by demanding his inheritance–in other words, "Father, drop dead!" Then to add insult to injury, he insists upon the immediate disposition of his share of the settlement–thereby putting his father’s future at risk. In just two sentences, Jesus has set in motion a startling drama that grips every Jewish heart in his audience. But what about the other brother in this story? By reading between the lines we can detect that he, too, has a "heart" problem. The elder brother, by Jewish standards, should have severly chastised his younger sibling for his disrespectful act, and then actively sought to reconcile him to the father and the family. Instead, we are told that he actually participates in the offense. He takes his portion of the inheritance! So he too has failed on two counts. Like his younger brother, he has deeply wounded his father.
Verse 13: "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything."
By his utterly shocking conduct, the younger son has alienated himself from his father, his family, and even his community. The townspeople would have been outraged by his behavior and fully prepared to exercise judgment upon him. Not surprisingly, then, we read that he quickly cashes in his settlement and separates himself from his people and his land–something of supreme importance to people in Biblical times. The prodigal son has severed every relationship and all his roots, and now he descends into wasteful living.
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