Matthew 20:8 - Exposition

When even was come. According to Mosaic Law ( Deuteronomy 24:15 ), a hired labourer was to be paid his wages at sunset, i . e . at the twelfth hour. Steward . The lord himself is said to have hired the labourers, but he commits the payment of them to his steward, as his representative, to whom such matters of detail were entrusted. From the last. Those last hired were first to receive their hire ( το Ì ν μισθο ì ν ) , that which it had been agreed to pay them, in one case "a penny," in the others "that which was just." Why the last are rewarded first is one of the difficulties of the parable. To say that this is done because in their one hour's work they did more than all the rest, is a solution which is supported by nothing in the story itself. It should, in the primary interpretation, rather be conceived as depending on the lord's good pleasure.