Parabole #54

Parabole comes from a verb meaning “to throw alongside,” and it refers to a comparison in which one thing is set beside another to illuminate it. In the Septuagint it regularly translates the Hebrew mashal, a broad word that covers proverbs, riddles, taunts, and figurative sayings. For this reason the New Testament word is wider than the English “parable,” which normally means a short story with a moral.

Biblical Usage

The Gospels use parabole of fully developed stories, such as the sower who went out to sow (Matthew 13:3), and Mark notes that Jesus taught the crowds many things by parables (Mark 4:2). Luke introduces the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son with one parable (Luke 15:3). But the word is also used of a saying: in Luke 4:23 the “proverb” about a physician healing himself is a parabole, and Hebrews uses it for a “figure” in Hebrews 9:9 and 11:19. Matthew ties Jesus’s teaching to Psalm 78:2, where the psalmist announces he will open his mouth in a parable (Matthew 13:34-35).

When the disciples ask why Jesus speaks in parables, he answers that the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom is given to them and not to the others, because “seeing see not” (Matthew 13:10-13).

Theological Significance

Interpreters disagree about the purpose of parables. One line of reading, based on Matthew 13:10-13 and the parallel in Mark 4, holds that they conceal the truth from those who are unwilling to hear, and another holds that they are meant to reveal and provoke, drawing hearers into a decision even where they resist. Older allegorical interpretation found a hidden meaning in every detail, while most modern interpreters look for one main point suited to the story’s first audience. In either view parables are among the best-known features of Jesus’s teaching, and they carry the Old Testament wisdom tradition of teaching by comparison into the Gospels.