The Workers in the Vineyard: A Full Day's Wage for One Hour

Short answer: In Matthew 20:1–16, a landowner hires day labourers at dawn for an agreed wage of one denarius, then hires more at 9am, noon, 3pm, and 5pm — the last group with no wage discussed at all, just a promise: "whatsoever is right I will give you." At the end of the day he pays everyone the same denarius, starting with the last hired. The workers who started at dawn grumble. The owner's answer is not an apology.

"Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?" — "penny" here is the King James rendering of denarius, the standard day's wage. It is worth reading twice: he is not disputing that the early workers were treated fairly. He is telling them they were.

Where it sits

This parable comes right after Peter asks Jesus a pointed question: "we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?" (Matthew 19:27). Jesus answers with a promise of reward, then a warning — "many that are first shall be last; and the last first" (19:30). The vineyard parable is the illustration of that saying, and Matthew closes it by repeating the line in reverse: "so the last shall be first, and the first last" (20:16). The parable sits inside its own frame.

The eleventh hour

The owner goes back to the marketplace five times over one day, finding men still standing idle even at 5pm, an hour before the workday ends. "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" he asks them. "Because no man hath hired us," they answer.

That last hiring, "about the eleventh hour" in the King James text, is where the English phrase at the eleventh hour comes from — meaning the last possible moment. It is easy to read past as a time-stamp; in the parable it is doing real work, since those workers get paid a full day's wage for roughly one hour's labour.

Day labour in this period was precarious work. Standing unhired in the marketplace was not a lifestyle choice — a man not hired that day generally went without that day's wage entirely, in an economy with no reserve to fall back on. The owner's repeated trips back to the marketplace, gathering up whoever is still there, is part of what the parable is describing, not incidental colour.

What the grumblers actually agreed to

Only the first group has a wage negotiation on the page — verse 2 says they agreed on a denarius. Everyone hired after that is simply told to go and work, with the vaguer promise of "whatsoever is right." That distinction matters to how the ending lands: the first workers are not shortchanged against their contract. Their complaint is that the owner was generous to people who had no contract to be generous under.

"Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" — the "evil eye" language in the Greek carries the sense of envy or resentment at another's good fortune, a fairly common idiom in the period. The owner's closing question names the grumbling for what it is.

The reading it's usually given

Most treatments of this parable read the landowner as standing for God, and the point as being about grace rather than wages — that God's generosity to those who come "late" (however that is applied: late converts, marginal or excluded people, gentile believers, however the interpreter frames it) is not a wrong done to those who came early. The parable does not correct the early workers' facts. It corrects what they think fairness requires.

A secondary reading treats the economic detail as the point in its own right, rather than as background for an allegory — a parable that takes real notice of unemployed labourers standing in a marketplace with no work, and an employer who keeps going back for them rather than closing the hiring after one round.

The two readings are not really in competition. The parable can be making a claim about God's generosity while also, on the way there, describing actual first-century day labour with some accuracy.

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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) — full treatment of the "agreed" vs. "whatsoever is right" distinction and the Matthew 19:30/20:16 frame.
• Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress Press) — on day-labour conditions and the marketplace hiring pattern in the ancient economy.