As he began the settlements, a debtor was brought to him owing ten thousand talents.
Parallel translations
- WEB When he had begun to reconcile, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.
- KJV And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.
- NKJV And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.
- NASB And when he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.
- NLT In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
One servant is brought who owes ten thousand talents, an impossibly vast sum. The staggering debt pictures the immeasurable debt of our sin before God.
Overview
Ten thousand talents was an astronomical amount, far beyond any servant's ability to repay. The deliberately enormous figure represents the crushing, unpayable debt we owe God because of sin. It sets up the contrast with the trivial sum owed by a fellow servant later in the parable.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- Ps 130:3–4If You, O LORD, kept track of iniquities, then who, O Lord, could stand?
- Ps 38:4For my iniquities have overwhelmed me; they are a burden too heavy to bear.
- Luke 13:4Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed on them: Do you think that they were more sinful than all the others living in Jerusalem?
- Luke 16:5And he called in each one of his master’s debtors. ‘How much do you owe my master?’ he asked the first.
- Ezra 9:6and said: “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our iniquities are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached the heavens.
- Ps 40:12For evils without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, so that I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart has failed within me.
- Luke 16:7Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ ‘A hundred measures of wheat,’ he replied. ‘Take your bill and write eighty,’ he told him.
- Luke 7:41–42“Two men were debtors to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.
- 1 Chr 29:7Toward the service of God’s house they gave 5,000 talents and 10,000 darics of gold, 10,000 talents of silver, 18,000 talents of bronze, and 100,000 talents of iron.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Matthew presents Jesus as the promised King — son of David, son of Abraham — the new Moses and true Israel in whom every prophecy reaches 'that it might be fulfilled.'
How Matthew 18:24 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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