The Unforgiving Servant: Forgiven Everything, Forgiving Nothing

Short answer: In Matthew 18:21–35, a servant owes his king an amount so large the parable does not expect you to picture repaying it — ten thousand talents. Unable to pay, he begs for time; the king cancels the entire debt instead. On his way out, the same servant finds a fellow servant who owes him a hundred denarii — a real but comparatively small sum — and has him thrown in prison over it. When the king hears, he reverses the pardon and hands the man over "to the tormentors."

Jesus tells this in direct answer to a question from Peter: "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?" Peter's number was generous by the standards of the day. Jesus answers, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven" (18:21–22) — and then tells this story.

A debt built to be impossible

Ten thousand talents is not a realistic sum for one man to owe, and that appears to be deliberate. A single talent was already a very large unit of money — the parable of the talents uses one talent as a fortune for an individual servant to manage. Ten thousand of them is the largest number the Greek language of the period commonly used ("ten thousand," myrias, is where the English word myriad comes from) attached to the largest common unit of currency. Commentators generally read the figure as intentionally absurd: a debt calibrated to be unpayable by any private individual, not a realistic royal accounts problem.

Against that, the second debt — a hundred denarii, roughly a few months' wages for a labourer — is a real and not-trivial sum, but it is not remotely close to the first. The parable does not need the second debt to be small to make its point. It needs it to be proportionate to an ordinary human debt, in contrast to a first debt that is not.

"Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all"

Both servants say almost exactly the same thing when confronted. The first, facing an impossible debt, begs the king: "Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all" (18:26). The second, facing a real but payable one, says nearly the same words to his fellow servant a few verses later (18:29). The king treats the plea as grounds to cancel the whole debt. The servant he forgave does not extend the same treatment, even though the words asking for it were identical.

What the king reverses, and why

The king's reaction, once he hears what happened, is not simply anger at cruelty in the abstract. Matthew has him name it directly: "O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?" (18:32–33). The debt is reinstated, and the man is delivered to the tormentors "till he should pay all that was due" — a debt the parable has already established he could never pay, which is part of what makes the ending as severe as it is.

The closing line

"So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses" (18:35). Jesus attaches the parable directly to Peter's opening question about limits on forgiveness, and the closing line makes the application explicit rather than leaving it to the reader — one of the more direct interpretive keys Jesus gives for any of his parables. The "from your hearts" qualifier is often noted as ruling out forgiveness offered only as a formality.

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Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (public domain). Verse references are given so you can read any translation alongside.

Sources and further reading

• Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Eerdmans, 2008) — on the scale of ten thousand talents as deliberate hyperbole and its relation to the smaller second debt.
• Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (SCM Press, rev. ed. 1972) — on first-century debt, imprisonment for debt, and the economic realism of the second servant's hundred denarii.