Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

The Reign of God as a Lucky Find

Those who try to answer these questions cannot avoid one of Jesus’ most important parables. If we want to understand it even remotely we have to listen carefully. It is the double parable of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price:

[It is with the kingdom of heaven as with] a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, [it is with the kingdom of heaven as with] a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matt 13:44-46)

Before delving into the content of these two parables we should first examine their form. To begin with, this is a double parable. We find a great many texts among the sayings of Jesus that are similarly structured, with double strophes. Recall the saying about tearing out one’s eye and the immediately following one about cutting off one’s hand (Matt 5:29-30). Apparently this kind of two-part parallel composition was not first created for the post-Easter catechesis. Jesus himself must have loved to repeat the same subject with different imagery in order to impress it on the minds of his hearers.

Of course, Jesus did not invent this technique. It was already in use, in the parallelisms in the psalms and the didactic material in the Wisdom literature. But it is striking how frequently and consistently such double strophes appear in Jesus’ teaching in particular.¹ To take another example:

I came to bring fire to the earth,

²

and how I wish it were already kindled!

I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! (Luke 12:49-50)

The final clauses of this double saying (“how I wish…” and “what stress I am under…”) are structured in parallel, and the two opening clauses are also related in their content: the fire in the first image corresponds to the water (of baptism) in the second. Jesus first speaks of having come to kindle a fire. That is precisely what “bring fire” means. It is the fire of his message, a fire that kindles and transforms. Certainly he himself had to sink to the depths, to the most desperate straits, as one sinks deep into water at baptism. The two-part structure of the text leaps immediately into view, and the same is true of many of Jesus’ images and parables.

In Matthew 13:44-46, the text we are examining here, the parallel structure is especially obvious. Two people each come across something extremely valuable and precious, and they give up everything in order to acquire it. But just as fire and water contrast in Luke 12:49-50, so here the two actors: the first is a day laborer who has to work in a field that does not belong to him (he has to go and buy it), while the other is a wholesale merchant who has business connections everywhere. Another difference controls this double parable: the day laborer comes across the treasure by pure accident while the merchant has already been seeking precious pearls.

By making this contrast Jesus means to say that the reign of God is open to everyone, poor and rich, and one may encounter it in altogether different ways: suddenly, unexpectedly, unintentionally, or as something always longed for and sought that at a certain point one actually finds.

But something else about the form of this double parable should be considered: each of its two parts is unusually short. We quite naturally ask ourselves: Did Jesus really tell such compact stories? What is more exciting than stories about finding treasure? Why did he not draw out two such naturally absorbing stories at length, telling them in such a way that the tension steadily increased—for example, the way he did in the story of the lost son (Luke 15:11-32)? That parable is incomparably longer and more vivid than Matthew 13:44-46. Why the brevity here?

The answer could be that obviously Jesus did tell his parables at greater length, and it was the teachers and theologians of the early communities who had to compress them into a brief form and a manageable structure so that they could be handed on more easily. It could have happened that way. But it could have been completely different; it could well be that Jesus himself concluded a longer discourse on the reign of God with a brief parable the audience could remember. It would have had the function of setting an ending to the discourse and sending the hearers away with something to think about. We have to reckon with the fact that Jesus could do many different things, that he was a master of both short and long forms simply because he was a highly talented teacher. So much for the form of Matthew 13:44-46. Now for a closer examination of its content!