This is the second of a four-part teaching series on the “readiness” parables of Matthew Chapter 24/25 concerning what we are and are not to do in order to be ready for our Master’s return. In this installment, we are going to explore the Parable of the Ten Virgins–paying special attention to what it does and does not say and possibly tipping some sacred cows as this parable is possibly the most abused in Scripture.
Here’s the transcript, which is not thoroughly edited so unless you catch me saying something just horrid, just ignore the small stuff.
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This week we are going to look at a section of Scripture where we are taught some, I believe, erroneous assumptions based on our own culture and what we expect from weddings—as well as some anthropological leaps of faith being passed on as concrete facts.
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ 10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
Hi, I’m Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where we explore the historical context of Scripture and talk about how it bears on our own behavior and witness as image-bearers. You can find my teachings on my websites theancientbridge.com and contextforkids.com as well as on my youtube channels, accessible from my websites. You can also access past broadcasts on my podcast channel characterincontext.podbean.com, which also links to my iTunes channel, and my context books for adults and families are available through amazon.com.
This is the second part of “Therefore you must be ready”—Yeshua’s/Jesus’s words to His disciples about the kind of lives that we must live until His coming, being that He was very clear in Matthew 25 that we will all be caught unaware and it will be easy to be living as though we are asleep. Last week I talked about the parable of the faithful servant and how important it is to God that we serve others, and not abuse them in any way. We are all fellow servants, and none of us are the Master. But this week we will be discussing the ten virgins of Matthew 25.
We really know woefully little about marriage ceremonies in the world of first-century Judaism. Given all the teachings out there giving so many details, that shocked me. Much of what is passed around as accurate comes from much later documents or is presumed from other ancient dyadic cultures—but the truth is that much of what is out there is guesswork. Some of it was published with the clear warnings that it was anthropological guesswork, but then others read the papers and books and passed on the information as established fact. I see an awful lot of that out there, with people being led to believe that they absolutely have proof of things that we really don’t know for sure. But as for this bit, I can give you some pretty decent “probablies” based on what we know about Greco-Roman wedding processions—one of which is fairly accurately alluded to here—BUT, there is still a lot of guesswork because people living in a culture writing to other people living in a culture don’t spend any time explaining what everyone already knows. If you have taken your kids through my book Honor and Shame in the Bible, you probably had a good laugh at my Fourth of July letter to someone from another culture. We just naturally assume that everyone knows what we know!
So, first of all, let’s look at the language.
Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.
First of all, when you read the “kingdom of heaven” I don’t want you to think about “heaven”—I want you to think about the reign of God invading the earth through the Kingship of Messiah and I will be teaching about that a lot when we get to the Gospel of Mark because he is all about the Greater Exodus at the Cross and the Kingdom here on earth. But we don’t have time to lay out the foundations of that.
I am using the ESV, but some versions translate “virgins” as bridesmaids—but this is not appropriate to the culture or to the language. First of all, the word is Parthenos (par-theh-nos) and it always translates as virgin or a nubile, marriageable young girl who, in that culture, had better be a virgin or the whole family is ruined. Since Yeshua is not casting aspersions on their virtue, they are virgins and not just marriageable and I will explain why as we go along.
Lamps—I am not happy with the ESV here. The Greek word is lampas (lam-pas) and it shouldn’t be confused with the lamp in Matthew five that can be kept under a bushel—lychnos ((soft ch) almost lishnon)—that is the type of handheld lamp that you see in souvenir shops. They barely lit a step in front of you but lampas—that’s more of a torch—actually, it pretty much is a torch. So, don’t think about girls with little handheld lamps looking at the ground trying to see what’s in front of their feet. Think about a procession with torches. After all, they are going out to meet the bridegroom and this is a big deal. This is a celebration—and in Greco-Roman culture, a sort of honor guard. This is an honor for the young girls. Anyway, from now on I will be subbing in torch for lamp.
But they aren’t associated with the bride, who is never mentioned. No, they are going out to meet the bridegroom. In Greco-Roman culture, this could be referring to servant girls of a wealthy house. After all, there are ten servants so this wouldn’t be a pauper bridegroom. It is hard to imagine parents of young virgins allowing them to go out unescorted in the middle of the night to meet another family’s son, but if they are household servants, it makes sense AND it ties in with the concept of the previous parable (and the next) that again, we are probably dealing with slaves who were, by definition, members of the household because Roman households always included the slaves. This is my theory—can’t prove it, don’t quote me on saying I have concrete evidence or anything. There are some things we straight up know about the first century and even more that we just don’t. But it’s all cool. We just have to admit it. There are, however, things we can rule out based on the culture as compared to our own.
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their torches and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their torches, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their torches.”
So, these girls were given torches and only five of them were clever enough to take extra oil with them. These types of torches would burn for like 15 minutes tops, so you can see why they would need to replenish them. If they have gone out to wait for their Master’s son in order to give him an honorable escort to go to the bride’s house, and are perhaps waiting for him to come back outside with his bride to go back to the main event, the wedding banquet at his father’s house—the text is not clear and it actually doesn’t matter. What matters is that they had a job that they needed to be diligent about doing and being prepared for. We can already see that only half were diligent and prepared to do that job.
“5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.”
Okay, wise and foolish both became drowsy and fell asleep. Falling asleep here is not about virtue, as they are all virgins, and not about wisdom, as both the wise and the silly slept. As RT France points out in his NICNT commentary on the Gospel of Matthew—we can’t live on red alert, and especially not for 2000 years, life must go on while we wait and part of that life is sleeping at the proper times. So we shouldn’t read too much into their falling asleep. Remember from last week and from my earlier teaching on the Parable of the Four Soils, parables will not line up perfectly with the lesson and they aren’t supposed to—we can’t force an ancient teaching method into our modern ideas about how everything as to be accurate and line up just so. Yeshua is painting a picture, not taking one. Hey, I like that.
But like I said, all girls are asleep. There aren’t five filled with the Holy Spirit who stayed awake or who were commandment keepers and stayed awake while the “sinners” slept. Sometimes we like to add our own agendas into the text, but in this case, it is definitely a distraction from the message.
“ 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their torches.”
For whatever reason, the delayed bridegroom shows up and the girls are sent out to meet him with their torches lit in celebration in order to honor him and escort him to the wedding feast. This was their one job—to be ready to honor him when he came and to light his way to the party in style.
So all the virgins, wise and silly, woke right up and got to work on their torches, which had undoubtedly burned out as I don’t know any group of girls who can all fall asleep within fifteen minutes of lighting their torches—unless of course, they put them out before drifting off, but again, doesn’t matter—this didn’t really happen. This is a story to relate a point. Readiness is about always being prepared, not about being “woke” and not about having stuff that you may or may not need in the future. It is about being prepared for the job you have to do, the one that has been given to you. It’s doing what we absolutely know needs to be done—in this case, the girls were serving as the escorts of the bridegroom to his wedding feast. That job meant they had a few things they needed—their virtue intact, wedding garments, torches, and extra oil. All the virgins had the first three things (the garments are culturally assumed), but not all had the oil needed if the wait was longer than expected. I will talk about this more later, but let’s get on with the parable.
7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’
All the virgins, both wise and foolish, knew what they had to do and got to work once they heard the shout. It is important for us to know that they weren’t clueless, they knew the mechanics, but they were lacking what made the mechanics meaningful. Without extra oil, it didn’t matter how well preprared their torches were. No oil meant no lit torch, meant they would not be able to do their job—even after all their other preparations. And they pleaded with the wise, who had brought oil.
9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’
The wise virgins have heard the shout, and they know the bridegroom is coming, but they still need to escort him and his bride to the wedding feast. They can’t assume that they have enough if there is still another delay or if the procession takes longer than expected. Their honor within the community hinges on how well they serve and honor the bridegroom—and if all the virgins together only have enough oil to get him halfway home in style then they have all failed and will be branded as foolish, and more than that, unsuitable for the responsibilities of marriage themselves. This would be a disaster. So the wise aren’t being cruel, they are making sure they can do their job. Someone needs to, and the wise can’t magically ensure that there will be enough oil otherwise.
10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.
So the foolish virgins, virtuous though they are, had to go out in the middle of the night to buy more oil for their torches. This, of course, is pure fiction but isn’t supposed to be entirely accurate. Girls out by themselves in the middle of the night was unthinkable, exposing them to shame and slander and ruin. But like I said, He is painting a picture, not making a documentary here. While they were off buying, the wedding escort left without them—probably without giving them a second thought although the bridegroom was undoubtedly irked that half of his wedding party was absent. He must have been wondering why they would dishonor him like that, but life must go on and the wedding feast must be attended do off they went, the whole lot of them, to the banquet, which was the main event. Not being able to go to the banquet was a nightmare for a community member, and especially for a member of the groom’s escort.
But the door was shut, which also would not have happened in antiquity where people were notoriously late and it just didn’t matter. But remember, parables don’t usually completely line up with reality, but with the lesson being taught.
11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’
Realizing that they were locked out of the social event of the season, where marriageable men would see them and where they were supposed to play honored key roles, the foolish virgins (still virgins) plead with the bridegroom to allow them entrance—but they shamed him through their actions. This is all about honor and shame at this point, the primary underlying value of the ancient Mediterranean world and 2/3 of the world today—including American high schools. Honor was serious business, and so was snubbing someone. The bridegroom likely didn’t stop to inquire why the girls were absent as that would have brought attention to their snub—he just escorted his bride to the banquet with those young ladies who made sure they could honor him and they all went inside. So, of course, shamed on his own wedding day, the bridegroom is, of course, going to have some choice words for the young ladies who shamed him. They are calling out kyrios (kuh-rrr-ee-os) to him, honoring him as Lord with their words but they were unprepared to honor him with their actions when it mattered.
12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
Didn’t know them? Of course he knew who they were—they were members of his escort. No, this has nothing to do with not recognizing the girls because in this culture people would have been coming and going and the girls would not have been turned away as long as they were from honorable families or members of the extended household. No, this is an ancient form of insult. “You snubbed me and so I will not acknowledge knowing you.” Simple as that. He didn’t forget who they were—he was dishonoring them by disassociating Himself from them.
Last line:
13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
Again, Yeshua tells the twelve, including His inner circle, that they know neither the day nor the hour. Backing up what He said back in Matthew 24 about not even Himself knowing, but only the Father. What does this mean? It means that from beginning with the hour we are called, that we must always be prepared. But HOW are we to be prepared? Let’s go back to the first of these four parables:
45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 47 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ 49 and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, 50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know 51 and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ 10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward, the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
The parable of the virgins isn’t exactly the same, but addresses the opposite sides of the same frivolous lackadaisical attitude—people acting as though their Lord is never coming back and so their behavior doesn’t matter in how they treat their fellow servants on one hand, and on the other hand, foolish virgins acting as though He will come back soon enough that they don’t need to be prepared at all. Being consigned to the place of the hypocrites is exactly the same as the picture of being shut out of the wedding banquet. There is weeping and gnashing of teeth in both circumstances, even though it is not mentioned in the second because those girls are now shamed and shut out. The wicked servant behaved as though the end would never come, while the girls presumed too much because maybe they didn’t want to prepare, or maybe they just weren’t taking the job as seriously as they needed to—we really don’t know and it doesn’t matter because the end result is exactly the same.
Not denominations, but individuals.
Not woke people and asleep people–everyone slept and no one was rebuked for it. No one could keep watch and predict his return, or check for texts or anything like that.
Can’t be the spirit because you wouldn’t need a refill. It can’t be commandment-keeping because none of them are portrayed as breaking a single one.
Remember, this parable is part of a series which has one theme–how to live a life of readiness, and againn, living a life of readiness is about (1) serving others as in the first parable, and (2) honoring and serving God in this second parable, no matter how long it takes, focusing on His needs and not on our own or getting lazy.
