By Dwight A. Pryor
When we place a Bible passage back into its original Jewish
context, it can come to life in a dramatic new way. A good example
is Luke 15:11-32, often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
This memorable story is a favorite of Christians everywhere.
Looking at it through the Jewish eyes of Jesus first-century
audience, however, opens the parable to significant and
illuminating new insights. 1
This particular parable is especially important for us as
Christians to rightly understand. Typically we labor under
inadequate or inappropriate images of the God of Israel. We can be
almost scizo-phrenic about Him at times. We know He is a loving
Father, yet He seems so stern, demanding and distant. He is
"Jehovah," the Lawgivera kind of IRS agent in the sky who is ever
examining our conduct, looking for just one infraction so He can
throw the book at us.
This kind of thinking is neither Hebraic nor Biblical. It is the
product in part of an unfortunate schism between church and
synagogue and the resulting anti-Jewish sentiment that pervaded the
Church from the earliest centuries. More importantly, it seriously
impairs the very way you and I worship and relate to the God of
Israel. Who wants to crawl up into the lap of an IRS agent? Who
wants to practice the presence of a severe Judge who gives us an
impossible law to live up to and then punishes us even for one
infraction? Many Christians, I fear, suffer from this difficulty of
being truly intimate with our Father in Heaven. We say the right
words, but in our hearts we are uncertain and uncomfortable. A
faulty image of God can cause us to miss out on the fullness and
the joy of our salvation in His presence and power.
Jesus parable in Luke 15:11-32 can deliver us from this dilemma.
It shows us an accurate portrait of the God of Israelof Yahweh
(Lord), whom Jesus called "my Father." To His Jewish audience, this
parable is an incredible saga of a father who at every turn
surprises us by his grace. To us, it is a parable about the
prodigal or lost son. We have looked at the story through
twentieth-century Western eyes rather than first-century Jewish
eyes. The principal player in Jesus story is not the prodigal son.
The parable is driving home a point about the fatherthe father who
forgives, who is merciful and gracious. Lets examine the Jewish
background to this beloved story.
Verse 11: Jesus continues: "There was a man who had two sons. The
younger one said to his father, Father, give me my share of the
estate. So he divided his property between them."
These last two seemingly simple statements were absolute shockers
to the Jewish ear. Jesus has grabbed his audiences attention and
aroused their emotions by His provocative description of a fathers
two sons. Dr. Kenneth Bailey is the past chairman of the Biblical
Department at the Near Eastern School of Theology in Beirut. During
his many years in the Middle East, he often would ask people, "Have
you ever known a son to come to his father and demand his
inheritance?" He learned that such an act was unthinkable in that
culture. It would represent an unspeakable offense and the grossest
insult to a father.
Dr. Bailey heard of only two instances of such a thing happening.
In the first, the son was chased out of his home by an irate
father. In the second, an Oriental father previously in good
health, died within three months of his sons demand. The wife, who
told Dr. Bailey the story, believed her husband had died of a
broken heart. She said, "He died that night!" 2 Jesus listeners
understood that to demand your inheritance from a living father was
equivalent to saying, "Father, I wish you would drop dead!"
Jewish law permitted a father, under some circumstances, to settle
his estate while still living. For instance, if his wife died and
he remarried, he might choose to settle his childrens estate right
then. This was done only at a fathers initiative, however, never
at a sons request. Further, the actual disbursement of the
property would not occur until the fathers death, since he had the
legal right to the lands income as long as he lived.
In Jesus parable, therefore, the younger son has perpetrated an
unconscionable double insult upon his father. He has shamed him by
demanding his inheritancein other words, "Father, drop dead!" Then
to add insult to injury, he insists upon the immediate disposition
of his share of the settlementthereby putting his fathers future
at risk. In just two sentences, Jesus has set in motion a startling
drama that grips every Jewish heart in his audience. But what about
the other brother in this story? By reading between the lines we
can detect that he, too, has a "heart" problem. The elder brother,
by Jewish standards, should have severly chastised his younger
sibling for his disrespectful act, and then actively sought to
reconcile him to the father and the family. Instead, we are told
that he actually participates in the offense. He takes his portion
of the inheritance! So he too has failed on two counts. Like his
younger brother, he has deeply wounded his father.
Verse 13: "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he
had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth
in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe
famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he
went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent
him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with
the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him
anything."
By his utterly shocking conduct, the younger son has alienated
himself from his father, his family, and even his community. The
townspeople would have been outraged by his behavior and fully
prepared to exercise judgment upon him. Not surprisingly, then, we
read that he quickly cashes in his settlement and separates himself
from his people and his landsomething of supreme importance to
people in Biblical times. The prodigal son has severed every
relationship and all his roots, and now he descends into wasteful
living.
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