What Does Matthew 20:2 Mean?
And when he had come to one voice with the workers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.THE KEY
The agreed wage is followed by a sending: the workers move from a promise into the place where fruit is cultivated.
THE MEANING
A day’s measure is named before the workers enter the vineyard. The agreement becomes a dispatch, joining what is promised to the place where you labor now. The verse holds the wage and the work together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a promise is only a number agreed upon: here, the penny is followed by a real sending into the vineyard.
THE ROOT
ἀπέστειλεν
apésteilen
GROWS FROM
στέλλω
stellō
To send or dispatch; here, the form means “he sent.”
“sent” in this verse is apésteilen. The verb is ἀποστέλλω (apostellō), “to send forth” or “dispatch.” Its word family carries the sense of a sending that places someone into a task, so the workers’ agreement leads directly into their vineyard labor.
ALSO GROWS
apóstolos: A sent one; a messenger.
ἀπόστολος
The shared word family shows how sending can define the role of the person who is sent.
apostolē: A sending; a commission.
ἀποστολή
This branch names the dispatch itself, bringing out the movement from agreed terms to assigned work.
THE PATTERN
Cultivation joins prepared ground, assigned labor, and the expectation of fruit.
And he dug around it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with the red vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and hollowed out a winepress within it. And he waited for it to bring forth grapes, and it brought forth stinking grapes.Beg therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would throw out workers into his harvest.For we are fellow workers with God. You are God's field; you are God's building.THE THREAD
Then Jesus said to them again, Wholeness be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.Matthew’s “sent” and John’s “hath sent me” use the same Greek verb, ἀποστέλλω (apostellō), meaning “send forth” or “dispatch.” John then echoes the sending with a second verb: the one sent also sends, widening the vineyard’s dispatch into a chain.
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