Parable of the Unforgiving Servant


The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant is a parable of Jesus which appears in the Gospel of Matthew. According to it is important to forgive others as we are forgiven by God, as illustrated by the negative example of the unforgiving servant.

Narrative

The parable is told as an answer to a question by Peter about forgiveness:
shows the moment when the king scolds the servant.
The lines before the parable itself are similar to.
The talent in this parable was worth about 6,000 denarii, so that one debt is 600,000 times as large as the other. More significantly, 10,000 was the highest Greek numeral, and a talent the largest unit of currency, so that 10,000 talents was the largest easily described debt. The setting is the court of some king in another country, where the "servants" could rank as highly as provincial governors.

Historical context

There is no precedent in the scriptures of the Bible for a debtor paying debts from prison. However, there is a very relevant aspect of Roman law that may have been the cultural reference this parable is built around considering the Judeans of Jesus day were ruled by Rome. In the Roman Constitution known as the , there is a detailed set of laws on debtors that shows a great deal of similarity to the scenario in the parable. A debtor who does not pay can be taken to court and put in chains and forced into a number of arrangements whereby they work off the debt through servitude. Also it states that others can come and pay the debt on their behalf, thus releasing them from prison. A debt that cannot be paid resulted in slavery to the creditor or sale on the slave market.

Depictions

There have been numerous depictions of this parable in art, including: