The Wedding Feast and the Man Without a Garment (4 of 26)

The ending offends people and it is supposed to.

A king throws open his son’s wedding to anyone the servants can find in the streets, good and bad alike. Then he spots a man not dressed for it, has him bound hand and foot, and throws him into the dark.

Where was the man supposed to have got a wedding garment? He was pulled off a road an hour ago.

What Is the Parable Answering?

The refusal that came before it, and it follows straight on from another parable making the same charge.

Matthew places this immediately after the tenants in the vineyard, and everyone in that audience knew what a story about a vineyard meant. This one works the same way. A king throwing a wedding party for his son was a recognisable figure, and the subject is the arrival of the kingdom and of the Messiah.

The banquet had a history before Jesus picked it up. Bailey traces it to Isa 25:6-9, where the Lord of hosts spreads a feast on his mountain for all peoples and death is swallowed up, the same text Wright reaches for at the end of his commentary. By the first century the vision had soured. The Targum of that chapter turns the meal into a shame and a plague for the nations, Enoch has the hall run with Gentile blood, and the Qumran Messianic Rule bars anyone lame, blind, deaf or dumb from the table. A king filling his hall from the roads with whoever can be found is taking a side in an old argument about who gets a seat.

The invited guests are Israel’s leadership and those who followed them. They were invited long ago. The party is ready. And they will not come.

One piece of custom makes the refusal sharper than it reads in English. Bailey describes the village banquet: the host invites, guests accept, he butchers according to the number who said yes, and on the day a servant goes round with the set phrase, “Please come, everything is ready.” That is the sentence the king sends in Matt 22:4. It is the second summons, so everyone who shrugs it off had already accepted. Bailey’s equivalent is guests seated in the living room who, when dinner is announced, say they have to mow the lawn and leave. One guest backing out spoils nothing; if they all withdraw together, “it will be clear that the guests intend to shut down the banquet.” The first group’s indifference is a coordinated snub at the king’s son’s wedding, not a scheduling problem.

Notice the escalation in their refusal. The first group simply ignores it, one going to his farm and another to his business, which is insult enough at a royal wedding. The second group seizes the servants, abuses them, and kills them, which is the standard image for what happened to the prophets.

Then the king sends troops and burns their city. In the first version of this post I said that line is widely thought to have been added later, possibly by Matthew, to point his readers to AD 70. Wright allows it and Levine states it flatly. Snodgrass and Blomberg read it the other way. Snodgrass notes that the son here is incidental and never killed, which is odd if the church were allegorising the crucifixion, and that in Josephus it is the Temple that burns, not the city; he reads the verse as the language of Israel’s own history, the prophets rejected and Jerusalem burned in 586 BC, used to warn the men in front of Jesus. Blomberg adds that refusing a royal wedding was treason and killing the messengers a known signal of revolt, so an army is what the story’s own logic calls for. Chrysostom took a third line: prophecy, fulfilled forty years after the crucifixion to show God’s long-suffering. I have kept my reading and named the split, because the warning works whichever way v. 7 is dated.^[1]

Who Are the Replacement Guests?

The people Matthew has been naming throughout his Gospel.

The servants go to the roads out of town and bring in everyone they find. Tax collectors, prostitutes, the blind and lame, the nobodies. Wright’s phrase for them is the people who thought they had been forgotten.

Luke’s telling has a detail Matthew’s lacks, and it belongs here. The master tells his servant to compel people to come in. Bailey reads that as persuasion, not force: a nobody invited to a nobleman’s table cannot believe he is wanted, and “On first exposure, grace is unbelievable.” He also records what happened when the verse was read as coercion. Augustine used it to justify forcing the Donatists back into the church, and the Inquisition used it after him. The hall fills with people who had to be talked into believing the door was open for them.

That part is heard easily and it is the part everyone wants the parable to be about. The invitation goes to the wrong parts of town and the hall fills up.

Then the ending arrives and spoils the mood, which is exactly its function.

Why Is the Man Thrown Out?

Because the wide-open invitation is not the same claim as everyone is fine as they are.

Wright puts the distinction plainly. When the blind and lame came to Jesus, he did not tell them they were all right as they were. He healed them, and they would not have accepted less. When extortioners and prostitutes came, his love reached them where they were and refused to leave them there.

Love wants the best for the person loved. That is the whole argument, and it is why an open door is compatible with a standard at the table.

The man without a garment represents someone who accepted the invitation and declined the transformation. He came to the party and brought nothing of the party with him.

What Is the Wedding Garment?

The first version of this post never said, and the church has had an answer since the second century.

Wright gives it in a sentence. God’s kingdom is one in which love and justice and truth and mercy and holiness reign unhindered, and “they are the clothes you need to wear for the wedding.” In his bigger book the man is someone who claims to belong to Jesus’ people without grasping that following Jesus means receiving the new heart, and Wright asks the scholars who call the ending secondary why they are so sure.

The early readers say the same thing in their own vocabulary. Irenaeus, around AD 180: after our calling we ought to be “adorned with works of righteousness, so that the Spirit of God may rest upon us; for this is the wedding garment,” and the king who calls the unworthy also examines them. Tertullian calls it “the raiment of good works” and notices that a man bound hand and foot has a body, which he takes as evidence for bodily resurrection. Augustine preached a whole sermon on the question at Carthage and rejects the candidates one by one: not baptism, which he sees in the good and the bad alike; not the altar, since many eat and drink judgment on themselves; not fasting, not church attendance, not miracles. His answer is Paul’s, “charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned,” sharpened to “faith which worketh by love.” Stephen, who rebuked his hearers and then prayed for them while they stoned him, is his example of a guest with the garment on. Asking God as a favour that your enemy might die, he says, is not the wedding garment.

There is a second answer that sits alongside the first. Snodgrass lists salvation, grounded in Isa 61:10 where the Lord clothes his people in “garments of salvation” and “the robe of righteousness,” among the identifications people have made, and the ESV Study Bible calls it imputed righteousness, the robe God supplies rather than the one you sew. The nearest thing in the Gospels is the best robe the father orders for the prodigal in Luke 15:22, which Bailey reads as the father’s own robe, put on the son so the village will receive him. On that reading the garment is given and the fault is refusing it; on the patristic reading the garment is a life and the fault is arriving without one. Both agree on what the parable is pressing: the invitation was free and it still asked something of the person who accepted it.^[2]

Is the Ending Arbitrary?

Inside the story it looks arbitrary, and Wright grants that.

The usual answer is that a host of that rank would have provided garments at the door, so refusing to wear one is a deliberate act rather than an oversight. That reading is old and it is plausible and it is not stated in the text. The ESV Study Bible finds some ancient evidence for it in Gen 45:22 and Est 6:8-9. Snodgrass is blunter: “there is insufficient basis for the idea that garments were provided to guests at feasts.” Matthew never says the poor were invited or that anyone came straight in off the street; that is Luke’s parable and should not be imported. Matthew’s story assumes the man had time to come dressed, and all that was expected was a clean garment, since dirty clothes showed contempt for the king. Blomberg lands in the same place.

What can be said without any assumption about provided robes is that the man is speechless when challenged. He is addressed as friend and asked how he got in, and he has no answer. Someone with a legitimate excuse has one.^[3]

What About Many Are Called But Few Are Chosen?

It is the closing line and it is not a statistic.

Read as a percentage it turns the parable into an arithmetic of the saved, which is not what the story has been doing. The invitation in the parable is aggressively wide. Servants are sent to round up everyone they find.^[4]

The line is a warning attached to a wide invitation rather than a limit placed on it. Being in the hall is not the same as being at the table, and the difference is whether the invitation changed anything.

Why Does This Parable Bother People?

Because it holds two things most treatments separate.

One is the door thrown open to people who had no claim on it, which is the part modern readers love. The other is that the party has a character, and someone who wants the party without its character is at the wrong event.

Wright notes what is really being resisted when people dislike the parable. It is the idea that actions have consequences and that moral choices matter, that life is not a chess game where the pieces go back in the box.

Bailey puts the same point as a question at the end of his Luke chapter. If grace is free, is it not also cheap? Matthew answers with the garment scene, the banquet free and acceptance carrying responsibilities; Luke answers by setting the cost of discipleship between the banquet and the lost sheep.

The mystery of forgiveness is not the claim that nothing matters because it all works out. That is a different claim entirely, and this parable exists partly to refuse it.

Part of a series working through the parables. See also the parable of the talents.

Footnotes4

1. Verse 7 is the verse that ties the parable most directly to AD 70, which is why its date matters. I stated the later-addition view as the majority in the first version of this post. Of the commentators I used, Levine holds it, Wright allows it, Chrysostom reads the verse as fulfilled prophecy, and Snodgrass and Blomberg treat it as a stock prophetic picture of a city's destruction drawn from Israel's own past. A reader who discovers the question elsewhere, having been given one confident answer here, has reason to wonder what else was smoothed, so the disagreement is stated in the body.
2. Snodgrass declines to pick: "Precise identification is both impossible and inappropriate." What matters to him is that the man made no preparation for the feast he chose to attend, and if he stands for anyone he stands for all the unrighteous who have made no preparation for God's judgment. Chrysostom holds both halves together in one sentence, that the calling was of grace, and that keeping the clean garment clean "is of the diligence of them that are called." The four early definitions in the body are not four different garments; they are one garment described by people who had not read each other.
3. The speechlessness of the man is the detail that does the most work with the least attention. He is not defiant and he does not explain. Anyone dragged in from the street against expectation would have had something to say, and the silence is the story's way of indicating that he knew what was being asked.
4. Blomberg supplies the grammar for reading the line this way. In Semitic idiom "many" and "few" most likely mean "all" and "not all"; the called are the invited, the chosen are those who come on the invitation's terms. The ESV Study Bible reads the verse instead as general and effective calling, with the chosen as the elect, and that is the reading most people bring to it. The idiom fits a parable that has just shown a king inviting everyone he could reach.

Sources

N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part Two: Chapters 16-28 (SPCK, 2002), on Matt 22:1-14. Supports the reading of the invited guests as Israel's leadership, the identification of the replacement guests with those Matthew names throughout, the possible later addition of the burning of the city, the argument that an open invitation is not the same as leaving people unchanged, and the definition of the garment as love, justice, truth, mercy and holiness. Supplied in full.

N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), chapter 7, note 168. Supports the reading of the man without the garment as one who has not received the new heart, and Wright's question to those who call the ending secondary. In print, and in Logos.

Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008), chapter 24, "The Great Banquet." Supports the Isaiah 25 background and its reinterpretation in the Targum, 1 Enoch and the Qumran Messianic Rule; the two-stage invitation and the phrase "everything is ready"; the collusion of the guests; and the reading of "compel" as persuasion, with the Augustine and Inquisition history. In print, and in Logos.

Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, combined ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), Through Peasant Eyes chapter 6, closing paragraph. Supports the observation that Matthew answers the cheap-grace question with the garment scene and Luke with the cost of discipleship. In print, and in Logos.

Kenneth E. Bailey, Jacob and the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003), chapter 13, on the best robe. Supports the reading of the robe in Luke 15:22 as the father's own, put on the son to guarantee his acceptance. In my Logos library.

Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), "The Wedding Banquet and the Feast." Supports the case against reading v. 7 as AD 70 (the son incidental and not killed; Josephus has the Temple burned, not the city; the language of 586 BC), the denial that hosts supplied garments, the warning against importing Luke's street guests into Matthew, and the word count that separates the two banquet parables. In print, and in Logos.

Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012), section 7.5 on Matthew 22:1-14. Supports refusal as treason and violence as a signal of revolt, the AD 70 allusion as not close enough to be convincing, the note that Matthew's second guests are not said to be poor or hurried, and the Semitic reading of "many" and "few" as "all" and "not all." In print, and in Logos.

Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York: HarperOne, 2014), introduction. Supports her reading of v. 7 as a Matthean reflection of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. In print, and in Logos.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.36.6, in ANF vol. 1. Supports the definition of the garment as works of righteousness on which the Spirit rests, and the king who calls the unworthy and examines the called. Free in full at ccel.org.

Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 35, in ANF vol. 3. Supports the garment as "the raiment of good works" and the bound body as evidence for bodily resurrection. Free in full at ccel.org.

Augustine, Sermons on New Testament Lessons, NPNF1 vol. 6 (1888), Sermon 40 on Matt 22:2, delivered at Carthage against the Donatists. Supports the two feasts, the elimination of baptism, the altar, fasting and miracles as the garment, the definition as charity out of a pure heart and faith working by love, and the Stephen illustration. Free in full at ccel.org.

John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 69, NPNF1 vol. 10 (1888). Supports the reading of v. 7 as prophecy of Vespasian and Titus fulfilled after forty years, and "the garment is life and practice." Free in full at ccel.org.

ESV Study Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), notes on Matt 22:7, 22:11 and 22:14. Supports the Genesis 45 and Esther 6 evidence for provided garments, the imputed-righteousness reading of the garment, and the general and effective calling reading of v. 14. In print, and in Logos.

The biblical texts cited: Matt 21:33-46, Matt 22:1-14, Matt 11:20-24, Luke 14:15-24, Luke 15:22, Isa 25:6-9, Isa 61:10, Gen 45:22, Est 6:8-9, and Rev 21:4.

Where the sourcing stops: the tradition that the host provided wedding garments at the door is old and widely repeated and is not stated in the text; the ESV notes find some ancient evidence for it and Snodgrass finds none sufficient, and I have flagged it as an assumption rather than leaning on it. Whether v. 7 reflects AD 70, prophesies it, or borrows the language of 586 BC is divided three ways among the commentators named above. Whether Luke 14:15-24 is a version of the same parable or a different one Jesus told on another occasion is not settled; Snodgrass counts only twelve identical words out of Matthew's 223 and treats them as two similar stories rather than two versions of one. Jeremias's reading of the prodigal's robe as the key to the garment is usually cited through Bailey; it is not in the edition of Bailey I worked from, so I have not used it.