The last chapter of what is usually called Second Isaiah, and its closing invitation — the one beginning"All you who are thirsty, come to the water!" and ending with the word that goes out and does not return empty. Today's verses sit in the middle of that.
What happens
"Seek Yahweh while he may be found, call him while he is near. Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked man his thoughts; let him turn to Yahweh for mercy, to our Theos, who is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Yahweh. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts."
What to notice
"My thoughts are not your thoughts" is one of the most quoted sentences in Isaiah and one of the most regularly wrenched out of position — normally deployed to explain suffering, as a closing of the file. Read the previous verse and the subject changes completely."Let him turn to Yahweh for mercy, to our Theos, who is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts." The ki attaches the unlikeness to the pardon. What makes his thinking incomparable to ours, in this passage, is that he forgives on a scale we would not. And the Hebrew is stronger than "generous in forgiving": ki yarbeh lisloach, "for he will multiply to pardon" — rabah, the verb for increasing in number. Not abundance as a character trait, but doing it again, past the point at which the arithmetic would have stopped. So the vertical image that follows is not a warning that his reasons are hidden. It is a statement about the size of the gap between how much he pardons and how much we would.
The lectionary has selected precisely the verses that answer the parable's complaint. Tov Yahweh la-kol — Yahweh is good to all — and qarov Yahweh le-khol qore'av, near to all who call. Twice in three stanzas the word is kol, all. And Psalm 145:8 is the Sinai self-description again, Exodus 34:6, appearing for the fourth time in this month's psalms. The psalm's answer to a day about fairness is not to argue about desert. It is to keep saying all.
Paul is in prison, writing to a church he loves, and genuinely does not know how the case will end. This paragraph is him thinking out loud about the two possible outcomes, and it is one of the most personal passages he ever wrote.
What happens
"Messiah will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me life is Messiah, and death is gain. If I go on living in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. And I do not know which I shall choose. I am caught between the two. I long to depart this life and be with Messiah, for that is far better. Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit. Only, conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Messiah."
What to notice
Synechomai ek tōn dyo — "I am pressed from the two sides."Synechō is a squeezing word: what a crowd does around a person, what a besieging army does to a city. He is not weighing options at leisure; he is describing being compressed between them. And analysai, "to depart," is worth having literally: to loose — to weigh anchor, or strike a tent and break camp. Paul's word for dying is the word for untying a boat. Then the resolution, which is not one. He states his preference — "far better" — and sets it aside for a reason that has nothing to do with what he wants: "that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for you."The decision is made on somebody else's account, and the man making it does not pretend to be indifferent. The last line uses a word chosen for its audience: politeuesthe, "conduct yourselves as citizens" — Philippi was a Roman colony whose people prized their citizenship, and Paul returns to it at Philippians 3:20.
Directly after Peter's question. The rich young man has walked away, and Peter has said "We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?" (Matthew 19:27). The parable is the answer, and the saying "the last will be first and the first will be last" brackets it on both sides — Matthew 19:30 and Matthew 20:16.
What happens
A landowner hires labourers at dawn, agreeing on the usual daily wage. He goes out again at nine, noon, three, and five, finding others standing idle — "because no one has hired us" — and sends them in. At evening he tells his foreman to pay them, "beginning with the last and ending with the first." Those hired at five receive a full day's wage; the first assume they will get more, and receive the same. They grumble: "These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day's burden and the heat." The owner answers: "My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?… Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?"
What to notice
The complaint is not that they were underpaid, and the parable makes sure you cannot think it is: the first group symphōnēsas — agreed, contracted — for a denarius, and received a denarius. Their grievance is entirely about somebody else's envelope. Then the detail that decides how the story reads: the eleventh-hour men are asked why they have been standing all day, and answer "because no one has hired us."They were not lazy. They were unemployed, standing in the market since dawn, being passed over. And a denarius was not a fortune; it was the standard daily wage of an unskilled labourer — roughly what it cost to feed a household for a day. So paying every man a denarius means every one of those families eats tonight. The owner is paying by what a man needs rather than what he produced, and it is that, not the money, that offends. His last question is an idiom, sharper in Greek: ho ophthalmos sou ponēros estin hoti egō agathos eimi — "is your eye evil because I am good?" He is not accusing them of greed. He is telling them their eye has gone bad from looking at what someone else received.
Everyone gets a full day's wage, including the men hired at five
The lectionary has built this Sunday around a single complaint, and it takes the complaint seriously rather than dismissing it. The all-day workers have a real case. They worked twelve hours in the heat; another group worked sixty minutes in the cool of the evening; the pay was identical. Any labour tribunal would hear them out. The parable does not tell them they are wrong about the facts, and it does not tell them they were cheated — because they were not. What it tells them is that they have started reading the wrong document. Their contract was fulfilled to the letter; what they are objecting to is a second transaction, between the owner and somebody else, which cost them nothing and which they have decided is theirs to audit.
This is where Isaiah does its real work, provided the verse is read in place. My thoughts are not your thoughts is not a shrug at inscrutability; it is attached, by a because, to the sentence about a Theos who multiplies pardon. The distance between the heavens and the earth is the distance between how much he forgives and how much we think is reasonable — which is exactly the distance between the landowner's payroll and the first shift's sense of proportion.
Then Philippians shows the same arithmetic run from the inside by somebody who has stopped keeping score of it. Paul is not calculating what he is owed for his years of service; he is trying to decide whether he would rather die and be with Messiah, which he wants, or stay alive and be useful, which he does not particularly want. He chooses the second, and gives the reason in four words: it is more necessary for you. The man who has borne the heat of the day would, on the parable's logic, have the strongest claim in the vineyard. He does not file one.
Which leaves Psalm 145 saying the only thing that can be said to the grumblers. Not you are wrong, and not you will be compensated. Just tov Yahweh la-kol — he is good to all — and near to everyone who calls. It is not an argument. It is the fact the parable is about.
A Question to Sit With
The men who worked all day were not wrong. They had a contract, they honoured it, and they were paid exactly what they were promised — and what ruined the evening was watching somebody else's envelope. I know that feeling with unpleasant precision, and its distinguishing feature is that nothing of mine was taken. Where am I currently auditing a transaction I am not party to, and what would it take to walk home with what I actually agreed to and be glad of it?