Thread by @JamesBejon

🧵 <THREAD>

What do the five parables of Luke 15–16 have to do with the book of Esther? And what happens when a thread exceeds 100 tweets?

Both valid questions.

For answers, please scroll down.

Jesus’ sermon in Luke 15–16 involves a series of five parables:

✅ the lost sheep,
✅ the lost coin,
✅ the lost son(s),
✅ the lost steward, and
✅ the rich man and Lazarus.

Each parable climaxes in an important reversal, as does Luke’s Gospel as a whole (viz. the resurrection).

Many of the parables also involve feasts and celebrations:

✅ the lost sheep is found (to the shepherd’s delight);
✅ the lost coin is found (to the woman’s delight);
✅ the lost son is welcomed home (though only to his father’s delight);

✅ the lost steward manages to secure a future for himself; and
✅ Lazarus’s many misfortunes are recompensed in the afterlife.

Most people love to read stories like these. But why? The woman doesn’t end up with any more coins than she started with, and the shepherd doesn’t end up any with any more sheep than he started with.

So why do these stories appeal to us? Is it just a quirk of the human psyche?

I don’t think so. I think we love these stories because we’re made in the image of a *God* who loves to restore--a God of Jubilees, a Shepherd whose delight is to seek and save the lost (Ezek. 34.11–16, Luke 4.18).

Lost-and-found stories thus have a natural appeal to us.

Who *doesn’t* rejoice when they find what they’ve lost?

Or, to paraphrase the first of Jesus’ parables in Luke 15–16, what kind of shepherd *wouldn’t* rejoice when he’d found his lost sheep?

Well, we’ll soon meet one (in the parable of the lost sons).

But first let’s think a bit more about feasts and celebrations.

Luke isn’t the only book in the Bible to involve lots of feasts. A well known OT book also does so: Esther.

✅ The king has a feast.
✅ The queen has a feast.
✅ Esther has a feast organised on her behalf (and later organises two of her own).
✅ And, at the climax of the book, the Jewish people inaugurate a yearly feast, which is still observed today. (Try to keep 16th March free.)

At the same time, the book of Esther describes a great reversal in the Jews’ fortunes.

Its conclusion is in fact a reversal of the state of affairs described at the close of the book of Lamentations, which it follows on from in Tiberian manuscripts.

🔹 At the end of Lamentations, the land of Israel is ‘turned over’ (הפ׳׳ך) to foreigners and the Israelites are left as orphans (5.2–3),

and then, at the outset of the book of Esther, we meet a young orphan (Esther!) who reverses (הפ׳׳ך) the Jews’ fortunes and causes foreigners to assist their cause (8.17, 9.1, 3).

🔹 At the end of Lamentations, Israel’s princes are hung from trees (5.12) and relieved of their crowns (5.16),

while, in Esther, Israel’s enemies are hung from trees and Mordecai is awarded a crown (by the king of Persia).

🔹 And, at the end of Lamentations, Israel’s joy (שׂו׳׳שׂ) turns (הפ׳׳ך) to sorrow (אבל), while, at the end of Esther, Israel’s sorrow (אבל) turns (הפ׳׳ך) to joy (שׂו׳׳שׂ) (cp. Lam. 5.15, Est. 8.16, 9.22).

P.S. In modern Hebrew, the word for ‘a latte’ is based on the verb ‘to reverse’ (הפ׳׳ך) since it consists of milk with coffee in the top rather than the other way round (coffee with milk in the top).

The book of Esther thus describes a reversal of Israel’s fortunes, which answers to Lamentations’ final plea: ‘Restore us, O YHWH, and renew us as of old!’ (5.21).

Moreover, Esther’s reversal of fortunes is effected by a whole series of mini-reversals.

✅ The man who wanted to be paraded around on horseback (Haman) has to parade his rival through the city square on horseback (to the cheers of assembled multitudes).

✅ The letters with which Haman decreed the destruction of the Jews are used to decree the death of Haman’s sons (while Haman hangs from his own gallows).

✅ And, on the day when the Jews’ enemies planned to blot them out of Persia’s chronicles, the Jews instead blotted out the memory of Amalek (Exod. 17.14) and have remembered it ever since.

Summaries of the book of Esther thus abound with chiasms.

Some of them even look quite plausible:

But what do all these considerations have to do with Luke 15–16?

Well, for a start, they shed significant light on the older brothers’ situation in Luke’s central parable (15.11–32).

Recall the experiences of Haman at the midpoint of the book of Esther (chs. 5–7).

Haman has finally rid himself of those pesky Jews--or so he thinks--when suddenly Mordecai the Jew emerges from the woodwork and rains on his parade.

The most decorated man in the kingdom he may be, yet Haman is unable to enjoy the queen’s feast for a moment unless he’s acknowledged as Mordecai’s superior (5.9–14).

Haman thus goes home and plans out how he’ll dispose of Mordecai and how he’ll celebrate once he’s done so, which makes him feel a bit better. (Nothing like the prospect of murder to lift the spirits, right?)

The next day, however, Haman gets a surprise.

He’s told the king wants to bestow a great honour on someone, which he naturally assumes means him. After all, who else could the king possibly want to honour?

It turns out, however, that the king does want to honour someone other than him, and that the ‘someone’ in question is none other than *Mordecai*--the man he’d deemed as good as dead.

The robes *he* should have worn are to be given to a foreigner--a man who doesn’t even obey the laws of the land (3.8)!

The fame and recognition *he* deserves is to be enjoyed by a Jew!

Worse still, Haman is expected to parade Mordecai through the city square on horseback and to rejoice in Mordecai’s exaltation!!

The parallels between the experiences of Haman and those of the older brother (in Luke’s parable) aren’t hard to see.

The older brother has little love for his younger brother. While the shepherd in our first parable heads off in search of his lost sheep, the older brother does nothing to find his lost brother. And why should he? His brother has shown no respect for the family business...

...or for the laws of the land. The older brother isn’t actually too displeased by the disappearance of his younger brother, since what’s left of his father’s estate is now *his* to enjoy. He alone will benefit from all his hard work. Or so he thinks.

Yet suddenly, like Haman, the older brother gets a surprise.

His long-lost brother returns, and his father gives his brother what should have been reserved for him: the robes, the recognition, the fatted calf, the whole works.

Worse still, his father expects him to be happy about it--which, like Haman, he is unable to do. The only character in the parable who’s less happy than him is the fattened calf.

The connection between Jesus’ parable and the book Esther is underlined in more specific ways.

✅ Just as the father’s commands his servants ‘Quick, get the best robe!’, so the king commands Haman ‘Quick, get the royal robe!’ (Est. 6.10, Luke 15.22), and

✅ And, just as Mordecai ultimately receives not only a robe but a ring, so too does the younger brother.

So, how might Jesus’ parable have gone down with its hearers?

Well, many of the Pharisees would no doubt have realised its significance (cp. 16.14): the older brother wasn’t an incidental character added just to make the plot work; he depicted them, the Pharisees and scribes.

Like the older brother, the Pharisees had no love for Israel’s lost ‘sinners’. They’d only just been grumbling about Jesus’ engagement with such folk (15.2), and not for the first time (5.30, 7.34, 39).

To put the point in Ezekiel’s terms, the Pharisees had no time for the lost or the lame; they’d entered the shepherd business for what they could get out of it: fat and wool (Ezek. 34.3ff., Luke 16.14).

That was why it had been necessary for YHWH to send another shepherd--a Good Shepherd--, which YHWH did in fulfilment of his declaration to Ezekiel:

‘Since my shepherds have not gone to search for my lost sheep,...behold, I myself will seek them out’ (34.8ff. w. Luke 19.10).

The Pharisees would thus have felt decidedly uncomfortable as they listened to Jesus’ parable.

At first, they’d probably have been quite happy to be identified with the older brother: the younger brother had wandered astray, while the older brother, like them, had remained steadfast.

They wouldn’t, however, have been so happy when the older brother’s situation took a Haman-esque turn.

And they wouldn’t have liked the text’s other allusions either. The older brother’s actions don’t only resemble those of Haman;

they also resemble those of Esau--Haman’s ancestor and Jacob’s older brother (Gen. 36.12, 1 Sam. 15.8)--, who comes in from the field one day to find half his inheritance gone, just like the older brother (Gen. 27.30, Deut. 21.17).

Were the Pharisees about to lose their inheritance too?

Either way, they had a difficult decision to make: to identify with the sinners who’d wandered away from God or to identify with God’s enemies.

And things weren’t about to get any easier for the them, as we’ll now see.

Recall Luke 15–16’s series of parables:

✅ the lost sheep,
✅ the lost coin,
✅ the lost son(s),
✅ the lost steward, and
✅ the rich man and Lazarus.

As we’ve noted, all five parables involve a reversal (the sheep is found, the son is welcomed back, etc.)

As the series unfolds, however, the reversals become more complex.

When the lost sheep is found, it rejoins the rest of the flock, and, when the lost coin is found, it’s put back with the rest of the coins. Fine.

When the lost *son* returns, however, life becomes a lot more difficult for his brother. When the steward secures a future for himself, he does so at the expense of his master’s business.

And, when Lazarus’s misfortunes in life are recompensed, the rich man is judged for his unfaithfulness.

These reversals reflect the imagery employed elsewhere in Luke and related texts.

God won’t just satisfy the hungry; he’ll also send the rich away empty-handed (1.52ff., 6.24ff.).

God won’t just raise up the valleys; he’ll also flatten the mountains (3.5, 14.11, 18.14).

And God won’t just restore the sheep who’ve gone astray; he’ll also destroy the (fat and stubborn) shepherds who’ve let them do so (Ezek. 34.16).

Jesus’ final parable thus reveals the seriousness of the Pharisees’ plight.

At the end of the third parable, the older brother’s final state isn’t described because the Pharisees’ final state isn’t yet decided. It depends on how they respond to Jesus’ challenge.

Jesus’ fifth parable then picks up where his third parable left off: it reveals what the consequences of the Pharisees’ inaction will be.

If the older brother won’t rejoice with his father (Abraham) in the present life, then he won’t rejoice with Abraham in the afterlife either.

While the poor are welcomed into the presence of Abraham, the Pharisees will be shut out (14.21–24).

Also important to note is the way in which Jesus’ fifth parable picks up on his third parable’s allusions to Esther.

It begins with a rich man clothed in purple and fine linen who feasts on a daily basis.

Jesus’ choice of imagery is significant.

The rich man is Haman--a man whose loyalties lie with Persia, who delights in the kingdom’s luxuries like purple and fine linen, and who feasts with Persia’s VIPs on a daily basis (Est. 1.3–6).

Meanwhile, there’s a Jewish man at the gate (Lazarus) who corresponds to the Jewish man at the gate in Susa: Mordecai (Est. 4.1ff.).

While Mordecai lies at the palace gate, Haman feasts with the king (Est. 3.14ff., 4.3).

And, in much the same way, while the rich man feasts in his house, Lazarus lies at his gate, unfed.

Another significant detail of Jesus’ parable is its order of events.

Unlike its predecessors, Jesus’ final parable doesn’t *end* with a feast; it *begins* with one.

Why? Because although, like Haman, the rich man has enjoyed many good things in life, he will not experience good things in the afterlife.

He will instead find his and Lazarus’s fortunes reversed.

Lazarus will be seated at a great man’s right hand, as Mordecai is at the conclusion of Esther,

while the rich man will find himself on the wrong side of justice (like Haman) and will only be able to beg for mercy.

Jesus’ fifth parable is thus intended to warn Pharisees of the future which awaits them unless they radically change their ways.

Their lives are like the life of the rich man.

They are far more concerned about their riches than about the poor (16.14), and are no strangers to feasts, fine robes, and VIPs (Luke 20.46).

As John has warned them, however, the axe is at their roots, and the mere confession ‘Abraham is our father’ will not save them from the flames (3.8–9), as the rich man’s cry illustrates (‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me...!’: 16.24–25).

Jesus’ parable is thus a call to repentance--a call for the Pharisees to live as true children of Abraham and to recognise the Lazaruses of the world as their brethren.

The rich man, however, has a different family on his mind. He’s not worried about the unfed Lazaruses in Israel, but about his five brothers in his father’s house.

So who are these five brothers?

Well, in Jesus’ day, the high priest was a man of significant wealth named Caiaphas, and Caiaphas is known to have had five brothers-in-law (who later served as high priests).

Furthermore, like the rich man in the parable, Caiaphas would often have been clothed in purple and linen (cp. Exod. 28).

So it doesn’t seem implausible to take the rich man’s five brothers to refer to Caiaphas’s brothers (and hence to subsequent high priests in Israel)--men who were unresponsive to Jesus’ message even after someone rose from the dead, just as Jesus said they would be (16.31).

Other details in the vicinity can be interpreted in a related way:

for instance, the eighteen-year period for which the disabled woman is bound by Satan can be taken to allude to Caiaphas’s eighteen-year tenure as high priest (13.11–17).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caiaphas

Either way, the rich man’s request for a message to be sent to his brothers depicts the Pharisees’ stubbornness.

The Pharisees didn’t need to be sent a message from the grave; they needed to obey the message they’d already been sent (care for the poor is commanded throughout the Torah),

which is the whole point of Jesus’ statements in between his fourth and fifth parable.

The kingdom of God had come, which meant life was about to be turned upside down (or, more precisely, the right way up).

Though they were exalted among men, they were far from exalted in God’s eyes (16.15).

They had used God’s word to serve their own ends (e.g., to justify their greed and easy divorces: 16.14, 18),

but, in and through Jesus’ parables, God’s word would now be used to expose their sin, which they would refuse to repent of.

The old order in Israel was thus doomed.

Yet, rather than allow Israel to perish, Jesus took the sadness and the sorrows entailed in his parables on himself, so Israel might live again.

Like Lazarus, he was led outside the gate.

Like the rich man in his earthly life, he was clothed in a purple robe (in mockery of his kingship).

Like the rich man in the afterlife, he thirsted.

And, like Haman, he was a hung on a tree.

And then came the reversal of all reversals--the resurrection--, in the light of which Jesus now calls us to live.

THE END.

jamesbejon.substack.com/p/parables-pro…

For further resources on Luke 15–16’s parables, I highly recommend @shaw_davidm’s article (below)

elegantlydishevelled.substack.com/p/lost-and-fou…

...and @DrPJWilliams remarkable resources, which have helpfully been collected together by @AJWTheology here:

thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/t…