The Ten Virgins: What the Oil Was For

Short answer: In Matthew 25:1–13, ten young women wait with lamps for a bridegroom. Five bring extra oil; five do not. The bridegroom is delayed, all ten fall asleep, and when the cry goes up at midnight the five without oil have to go and buy some. While they are gone the door is shut, and they are told "I know you not." Jesus ends with "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour."

It sits in a long stretch of Matthew — chapters 24 and 25 — where Jesus answers the disciples' question about when these things will be and what the sign will be (Matthew 24:3). The ten virgins are one of several parables in that answer; the talents and the judgement of the nations follow immediately after.

A wedding you would have recognised

A first-century Judean wedding did not run to a published schedule. The bridegroom came for his bride and the wedding party processed to the celebration, and the waiting could run late into the night.

Why this bridegroom is delayed, the parable never says. You will find confident explanations — last-minute haggling over the marriage settlement is a popular one — but they are reconstructions, and scholars disagree about them and even about where the ten are waiting. The story needs only one thing to be true, and it was: a wedding could start much later than expected.

Wise and foolish

"And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." (Matthew 25:2–4)

All ten have lamps. All ten are lit. The difference is a flask, and it does not matter at all until the wait runs long.

"While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept."

All of them — including the wise. This parable is often preached as though the point were staying awake. Notice that all ten sleep, and none is criticised for it — whatever "watch" means at the end, it cannot mean simply not sleeping. The difference between the two groups is the flask.

Midnight

The cry goes up, and the five discover the problem at the worst possible moment: their lamps are "gone out."

They ask the others for oil, and the answer sounds harsh: "Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves."

The reason given is supply, not principle — there may simply not be enough to go round. But the effect is the hinge of the story: at midnight, with the procession arriving, there is no longer time.

While they are away, the bridegroom arrives. Those who are ready go in, "and the door was shut."

"I do not know you"

They come back and call through the door: "Lord, Lord, open to us." The answer is "Verily I say unto you, I know you not."

Readers have long heard an echo of Matthew 7:21–23, where people who prophesied and cast out devils in Jesus' name are told "I never knew you." The wording is not identical, but the pattern — the repeated "Lord, Lord," and the refusal — is the same, and both passages sit at the end of a long teaching block.

It is a heavy ending, and Matthew does not soften it. The word he uses for the five is foolish, which in this Gospel is not a gentle term.

What the oil is

Interpreters have offered many answers — good works, faith, grace, the Holy Spirit — and these are serious readings with long histories across Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions, not idle speculation. The judgement of the nations a few paragraphs later, with its hungry and thirsty and imprisoned, gives the good-works reading real footing.

The parable itself does not name it. What it shows is a resource some brought in advance and some did not — and that going to fetch it at midnight meant not being there when the door opened.

The point Jesus draws

"Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour." (Matthew 25:13)

Which is a curious conclusion to a story in which everyone falls asleep — unless watch means something closer to be ready, in a way that a long delay does not undo.

The five who missed it brought a lamp, like everyone else, and no more than that. Matthew does not tell us why. He tells us what he calls them, and in this Gospel foolish is not a light word.

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Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (public domain).

Sources and further reading

• On first-century Judean wedding practice and how much of the usual reconstruction is secure: the IVP New Testament Commentary on Matthew 25 (biblegateway.com), and the detailed social-historical study of Matthew 25:1–13 in New Testament Studies (Cambridge).
• On the ten virgins in interpretive history, including the good-works reading: USCCB commentary notes to Matthew (bible.usccb.org).