Verse 6
6. Hundred measures This is the Hebrew bath, containing nearly nine gallons.
Oil The tenants paid not in money, but in the products of their estate.
Take thy bill The account which is to be receipted,
Sit down Said by way of picturing the transaction.
Quickly In order that the whole may be done before detection.
Write fifty So that they must pay but half the real due, and he will give the receipt in full of all demands.
[We have throughout given the interpretation of the parable which has for ages been generally adopted. This interpretation makes this lowering of the tenants debt a dishonest transaction on the steward’s part; and yet it follows in the next verse that he was commended for it; and from the whole parable, that a bad man is held up as, in one respect, a model.
But Van Oosterzee furnishes another explication which removes these last particulars. The key to the whole parable, which he gives, is briefly this: The steward had overcharged the tenants and pocketed the surplus; and so this marking the tenants at a lower figure really is a righting of the matter. The unjust steward therefore is commended for only the right part of his conduct.
Yet the principle still remains that the good may learn many things of the bad, in the way of example; and we therefore (while accepting Van Oosterzee’s modification) conclude to change nothing we have said on that point.] 7. To another The parable narrates the case of two as specimens of the whole.
Be the first to react on this!
