Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
Estates, tenants and day laborers
Wealthy owners, often living in town, let their land to tenant farmers for a share of the crop or hired day laborers in the marketplace and paid them a denarius at sundown.
The men stood on the corner at dawn, hoping a truck would stop and someone would point at them. Much farmland belonged to rich owners who lived somewhere else. Some let it to tenant farmers, who paid part of each harvest as rent. Others hired day laborers, who waited in the marketplace to be picked, worked from sunrise, and were paid that evening, because one day's pay fed a family for one day.
Much of the rural empire belonged to wealthy landowners who lived in leisure, usually far off in cities. Tenant farmers worked their estates. Most were free peasants, as in Egypt, but some were slaves, as in Italy (Keener). Most Galileans worked the land. Many owned plots, but many landless peasants worked on larger estates. Tenants paid at harvest, either a share or a set amount. A share was usually at least a quarter and sometimes half. A new vineyard took about four years to turn a profit. Landowners held the legal and social power, and a few reportedly kept squads of hired killers for troublesome tenants. Such disputes were not uncommon. Blomberg, citing the papyri, writes that in them "possession was more than nine-tenths of the law of ownership". Sharecropping was old. A census of Harran under the Assyrian king Sargon II (722 to 705 BC) lists almost all tenant farmers (Podany). One, Se'-idri, tended 5,000 vines for a landowner and paid him a share of the crop, so a bad year meant a lower rent. Day laborers included tenants with small plots, sons who had inherited no land and men who had lost theirs. They waited in the marketplace, and work began around sunrise. A denarius was the usual day's wage. The law required paying them the same day, since the wage barely covered a day's needs (Deuteronomy 24:14-15). Bailey has watched jobless men wait each morning by the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, hoping to be hired. Beyond the land, a rich class of merchants and shipowners grew in harbor cities such as Ephesus.
An analogy: an owner who lives in the capital and rents out the family farm, and a hiring hall where workers wait each morning to be picked. Everyone in farm country knows both arrangements, and who holds the power in each.
Landowners, tenants and day laborers were familiar figures, so a story about a vineyard owner, as in Matthew 20:1-16 or Mark 12:1-9, could set God in the owner's place and the hearers among the workers. James 5:4 hears the withheld wages of field workers crying out against the rich.
Not a modern employer and employee. There was no contract, no union and no safety net. A laborer still unhired at noon would have nothing to take home that night.
Two points. First, why does the owner in Matthew 20 keep hiring through the day? Keener reads harvest urgency, with the crop to be brought in before dark. Bailey reads compassion for men who would otherwise go home with nothing. Blomberg allows the harvest setting but calls the owner's repeated failure to calculate his needs extraordinary. He calls deliberate overhiring just as unusual. Second, how should the owners and tenants be read? Some recent readings, following William Herzog, make the owners oppressive landlords and the tenants their victims. Blomberg rejects this, and reports Craig Evans's evidence that some tenants were comparatively well off.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/matthew-21-23-46\/","n":"Matthew 21:23-46, By what authority, two sons and the tenants","s":"The chief priests and elders demand to know Jesus' authority. He answers with a question about John, then with two parables: a son who says no and goes, and tenants who kill the owner's son.","r":"Matthew 21:23-46"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-12-13-21\/","n":"Luke 12:13-21, Bigger barns","s":"A man asks Jesus to make his brother divide the inheritance. Jesus refuses, warns against greed, and tells of a rich farmer who plans bigger barns for his surplus and dies that night.","r":"Luke 12:13-21"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-13-1-9\/","n":"Luke 13:1-9, Pilate's victims, the tower and the fig tree","s":"People tell Jesus about Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices. He answers with a tower that fell in Siloam, a call to repent, and a fig tree given one more year.","r":"Luke 13:1-9"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-16-1-13\/","n":"Luke 16:1-13, The dishonest manager","s":"A rich man's manager, about to be dismissed for wasting his master's property, calls in the master's debtors and cuts their bills. The master praises his shrewdness.","r":"Luke 16:1-13"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/luke-20-9-19\/","n":"Luke 20:9-19, The tenants who killed the heir","s":"Jesus tells of a vineyard owner whose tenants beat his servants and kill his beloved son to take the inheritance. The leaders realize he has told it against them.","r":"Luke 20:9-19"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/1timothy-6-11-21\/","n":"1 Timothy 6:11-21, Fight the good fight, the King of kings, the rich, and the deposit","s":"Timothy, as a man of God, is to flee greed and fight the good fight of the faith, keeping his charge until the appearing of the Lord, the King of kings; the rich are to be generous, and Timothy is to guard what has been entrusted to him.","r":"1 Timothy 6:11-21"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/james-1-1-18\/","n":"James 1:1-18, To the twelve tribes scattered","s":"James greets the twelve tribes scattered among the nations, tells them to count their trials as joy and to ask God for wisdom, warns that the rich will wither like a wildflower, and insists that God tempts no one but gives every good gift from above, as the Father of lights.","r":"James 1:1-18"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/james-4-13-5-6\/","n":"James 4:13-5:6, Merchants, landowners and the wages that cry out","s":"James rebukes traders who plan a year of business without God, then turns on rich landowners whose hoarded wealth is rotting, whose withheld wages cry out to the Lord of hosts, and who have fattened themselves for a day of slaughter and condemned the righteous one.","r":"James 4:13-5:6"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/gods-of-the-bible\/yahweh-tzevaot\/","n":"Yahweh Tzevaot","s":"A battle title: the God of armies, meaning heavenly ones rather than Israel's soldiers.","r":"1 Samuel 1:3"}
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 20:1, 20:2, 20:6-7, 20:8, 21:33-46, 21:34 and 21:35-37
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 20:1, 20:8, 21:33-34 and 21:34
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Matthew 20:2-15 and 21:33
- Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, ch. 28, The Parable of the Compassionate Employer, and ch. 32, The Parable of the Noble Vineyard Owner and His Son
- Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 7.2 The Laborers in the Vineyard, and 7.8 The Wicked Tenants
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on 1 Timothy 6:17-18
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on 1 Timothy 6:17
- Amanda H. Podany, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East, ch. 19, Adad-guppi's Early Life, and Se'-idri and His Family: Tenant Vineyard Gardeners
