The twenty-eighth passage of the Sefer Yeshua is based on Lk 15:11-32. The scholars of the ‘Jesus Seminar’ voted it as category pink – that is, that Yeshua probably said something like this, but the scholars had some reservations.
28. 1There was a Zealot who proclaimed that tax collectors and others who worked with the Romans had cut themselves off from God’s people, 2and that God would never forgive them for what they had done. 3So Yeshua tried to reason with him, but the Zealot said, 4‘We have kept God’s Covenant, but they have broken it; why should they ever be forgiven?’
5So Yeshua said, ‘There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 6“Father, give me the share of the property that will come to me.” 7And so the father divided his resources between them.
8Not long after that, the younger son gathered together everything he had, and took himself off to a country far away, and there he squandered his property in riotous living.
9And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be without. 10So he went and hired himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 11And he would gladly have fed on the carob husks that the pigs ate, because no one gave him anything.
12So he came to his senses and he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have enough food and more to spare, and here I am starving to death! 13I’ll get up and go back to my father and I’ll say to him, 14‘Father, I’ve sinned against God and shamed you; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants’.”
15So he got up and returned to his father. 16But while he was still at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion on him, 17so he ran and threw his arms around him and kissed him.
18And the son said, “Father, I’ve sinned against God and shamed you; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.”
19But the father said to his servants, “Quick, bring the best tunic, and put it on him; and put a gold ring on his hand, and sandals on his feet; 20and bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 21because this son of mine was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to celebrate.
22Now his elder son had been out in the fields; and as he came closer and approached the house, he heard the sounds of music and dancing. 23So he called one of the servant boys and asked what this meant. 24And the servant boy said to him, “Your brother’s come back, and your father’s killed the fattened calf, because he’s got him back safe and sound.”
25But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and tried to reason with him, but he answered his father, saying, 26“Look, all these years I’ve served you, and I never once disobeyed your orders, yet you never even gave me so much as a kid-goat, so that I could celebrate with my friends. 27But when this son of yours returns, who’s squandered your resources on prostitutes, you go and kill the fattened calf for him!”
28So his father said to him, “My son, you’re always with me, and all that’s mine is yours. 29But it was right to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead, and now he’s alive; he was lost, and now he’s found.”‘’
Overview
In his commentary on Luke, Darrell Bock calls this, ‘The Parable of the Forgiving Father’.
For me, this parable is the one which best exemplifies God’s unconditional love for us. It shows the true personality of the God of Israel, as a loving God who longs for us all to be close to God. In the Sefer Yeshua, it starts off a series of four passages on Yeshua’s teaching about the nature of Divine compassion.
This is a straight parable, where we are not meant to read too much into who the characters represent. The final actions of the father represent God’s love and forgiveness, the change of heart in the younger son represents the penitent sinner, and the anger of the older brother represents religious people who resent the fact that God is willing to forgive and embrace the sinner. This echoes how people rejected this part of Yeshua’s ministry to the outcast – people whom religious people refused to allow back into society. Further than these points, one would otherwise be reading things into the story that Yeshua never intended for the parable.
For example, there are some Christian commentators who insist that the younger brother represents Gentiles who accept ‘Christ’, and the older brother represents the Jews, who resent that God gave the gospel to Gentiles – this allegorisation is pure fantasy, and nothing more than underhanded replacement theology.
The parable is divided into three parts: the fall, repentance and redemption of the youngest son; the loving forgiveness of the father; and the angry resentment of the oldest son.
Divine Forgiveness
This particular parable is about Divine forgiveness – YHVH’s infinite and unlimited capacity to forgive our sins, and remember them no more. On the other hand, human forgiveness, theologically, emotionally and in practice, is a different and more complicated matter, and needs to be treated separately (see my commentary on passage 35 when it comes out).
The Miqra (Hebrew Bible) tells us that YHVH is slow to anger (Ex 34:6, Num 14:18, Ps 86:15 and many others), and quick to forgive (Neh 9:17). YHVH is a God who would rather not punish us (Jonah 4:2, Joel 2:13), because YHVH is gracious and merciful. In Israelite culture, someone who was slow to anger was someone who had great understanding (Prov 14:29), and good sense (Prov 19:11).
Ps 103:10-14 says,
God does not treat us as our sins deserve,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is God’s steadfast love toward those who revere God;
as far as the east is from the west,
so too is how far God removes our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so too does YHVH show compassion to those who revere God.
For God knows our fragility;
God is ever mindful that we are but dust.
There are individuals who love to say that the God of the Jews is a God of wrath, and that only the God of Jesus was a God of love (but doesn’t that imply that they are two separate gods)? All of the above verses I have mentioned show YHVH to be a God who would rather not punish sinners, but is ever eager to be merciful and forgive us. It does not delight God to punish anyone:
“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” says YHVH God. “Would I not rather that they turn from their [wicked] ways and live?” (Ezek 18:23; see also Ezek 33:11).
This is the God of forgiveness that Jewish people are familiar with, and the God that the Jewish Yeshua knew and was brought up with – he wasn’t presenting the Jewish people with a God they were unfamiliar with. YHVH takes delight in the penitent sinner – the one who acknowledges their wrongdoings and returns to God’s ways.
When does God forgive us?
I get the impression that most Christians think that God, in biblical times, could not forgive us until sacrifices and ‘atonement’ had been made, but this is not true. In Yahwist Israelite theology, forgiveness comes immediately with repentance. Paullist theology conflates forgiveness with ‘atonement’, as if they were one and the same thing, but in Yahwist theology they are separate issues. Isaiah 55:7 says,
“Let the wicked forsake their ways, and the unrighteous their evil thoughts; let them return to YHVH, that God may have mercy on them – to our God, for God will abundantly forgive.”
There is no mention of having to sacrifice sin-offerings in order for God to forgive us our sins. Jeremiah 36:3 says,
“It may be that, when the house of Judah hears of all the disasters that are in My power to do to them, all of them may yet turn from their evil ways, so that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.”
Again, there is no mention of having to make sin-offerings before God will forgive the people of Judah. Instead, it is YHVH alone who blots out our sins, not the blood of sacrifices:
“I alone am the one who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and I shall no longer remember your sins.” (Isaiah 43:25)
“I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against Me, and I will forgive all the blemish of their sin and rebellion against me.” (Jeremiah 33:8)
The Opening Midrash
This parable is one of the more substantive ones, so I’ll go through the individual paragraphs.
28. 1There was a Zealot who proclaimed that tax collectors and others who worked with the Romans had cut themselves off from God’s people, 2and that God would never forgive them for what they had done. 3So Yeshua tried to reason with him, but the Zealot said, 4‘We have kept God’s Covenant, but they have broken it; why should they ever be forgiven?’
This is reconstructed midrash. These opening verses are intended to replace the context of the one given in Luke (Lk 15:1-2). Luke tells of ‘Pharisees and scribes’ who criticise Yeshua for socialising with sinners, and Yeshua then tells several parables about forgiveness, the last of which is this one. The thing is, Pharisees would have agreed with Yeshua on this matter, so if this parable was told in response to something uncompromising that someone said, it is more likely to have been in response to a Zealot’s objections, or someone similar.
This might also be an appropriate point to discuss the oft-repeated grouping of, ‘the Scribes and the Pharisees’ in the gospels. In my commentary on passage 16 (under the section entitled, ‘The First Protagonist: the Pharisee / Torah scholar’), I explained how all Jewish sects had their own scribes, who were, in effect, each sect’s Torah scholars; scribes were not exclusive to the Pharisees, nor were they a sect on their own.
As the earliest gospel, it is in the Gospel of Mark that the scribes make their first proper appearance (Mk 2:6-7); together with the Pharisees, they first appear in Mk 2:16. Mark’s overriding agenda is to explain how someone whom Christians claim to be the messiah, the ‘saviour of the human race’, could ever be rejected by the Jewish people. As a result, whenever Mark needs a bunch of intransigent and sceptical Jews, he uses the collective phrase, ‘the Scribes and the Pharisees’. Matthew and Luke follow suit in their gospels. Unless they are specifically discussing the Oral Law (also known as, ‘the Traditions of the Elders’), in most cases the sect of Jesus’s opponents is irrelevant. The gospels use ‘the Scribes and the Pharisees’ as a collective epithet to mean, ‘the stubborn Jews who rejected Jesus’. For most early gentile Christians, who knew nothing of the nuances of Jewish denominations, ‘Pharisees’ was synonymous with ‘Jew’, and ‘Scribe’ was used almost like the name of sect on its own – or at least, a social or professional class of people who were their own grouping, separate from any Jewish sect (which they weren’t).
Because of this, I really do not think that Yeshua was directing this parable about divine forgiveness to the Pharisees. Because of the mention of ‘tax-collectors’, who were opposed by the Zealots for being collaborators, the group or individual this parable would have been directed towards, is most likely to have been a Zealot. Remember, the gospels could never mention Zealots, because then it would have invited uncomfortable questions about the Romans being unwelcome in the Galilee and Judea.
The Youngest Son’s Story
The story of the youngest son is one where he seemingly starts out in a good place, chooses to go to a bad place, but doesn’t realise it; and then he ends up in a really bad place. It is then that he realises the depth of his fall, and returns to his father.
5So Yeshua said, ‘There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 6“Father, give me the share of the property that will come to me.” 7And so the father divided his resources between them.
v. 5a: ‘There was a man who…’ – This seems to have been a typical way of Yeshua’s folksy way of starting a parable, much like the way we might say, ‘There was this guy who…’. This opening phrase is most commonly recorded in Luke.
v. 5b: ‘two sons’ – There are some commentators who say that the ending with the second son is a later addition, but I don’t agree with this. The father’s reaction to what the second son says, is an important underlining of the depth of God’s love. Just as other parables might contrast the sinner with the one who never went astray, in this parable too, the contrast is required, and so I think that the detail of two sons is an essential part of the original parable.
v. 5c: ‘the younger of them’ – In ancient Middle Eastern society, it was expected that the oldest son would take over the leadership of the clan, as well as control of the clan’s resources. The fact that it is the younger son who wants to go off and do his own thing, is in practical terms not a loss to the family. If it were the oldest son who wanted to do this, or if the son was the father’s only child, it would have been a much more serious matter. This fact adds weight to argument that having two sons in the parable is an original detail.
Furthermore, the age of the youngest son is irrelevant to the story; it is enough to assume that the son is a legal adult (20 or over).
v. 6: ‘give me the share of the property that will come to me’ – In Torah inheritance laws, the oldest son gets twice what is given to the other individual children (‘a double portion’, Dt 21:7). This means, for example, if a man had three sons, then he would have to divide his property and resources into four parts, then give two parts to his eldest son, and one part each to his remaining sons. In the case of this parable, this means that the youngest son got a third of his father’s estate.
v. 7: ‘the father divided his resources between them’ – At this stage, the father would merely be legally assigning parts of his property and resources between his two sons. It is notable that the father does not question his youngest son’s intentions – the son is not required to give any explanation of why he is asking for this to be done, or indeed, what he intends to do with his share. The father seems to graciously accept his youngest son’s request; we are not told what his father thought of the request.
For the purposes of the story, we are given to understand that, consequently, the oldest son is now in control of the share that would normally have come to him upon his father’s death. He is now legally in control of the family estate.
The dividing of resources was probably accomplished by the father legally apportioning a third of his property and resources to his younger son (i.e. instead of selling it), which would have included land and farm animals, as well as any precious items of gold or silver. The main dwelling would probably have been included in the double portion that was left for the eldest son.
The division of resources would normally be done at the death of the father, or near the father’s death. Although not unknown, it would have been highly unusual for one’s ancestral property to be divided like this while the father still lived and was in good health. The son’s request at this stage, would have been seen as somewhat disrespectful to his father. It is therefore meant to be understood as a poor reflection on his character; it is the first of a series of dubious actions on his part.
A side-note on the matter of women’s inheritance: People too often focus on the question of land alone, as if land were the only wealth that could be inherited. Just in case you are wondering what a daughter gets (apart from the special case of when there are no sons, Num 27:1-11), women in Israelite society were not exactly penniless when they entered marriage.
Normally, while growing up, she would deliberately be given various things by her family which are hers alone to keep, often in the form of something which can potentially be sold for money. When the time comes for her to marry, she is able to take along with her everything that is hers; her clothing, her valuables, her personal possessions and trinkets, which cannot be taken away by her husband, because it is all hers. In addition, as part of the bride-price (‘dowry’), where the husband gives money or valuables to the bride’s family, the prospective bride might receive valuables from the family of the husband-to-be as well. All of this can be seen and well-demonstrated in the episode of Abraham’s chief steward giving gifts to Rebecca and her family as a dowry (Gen 24:53).
So even though it was difficult for a woman in biblical times to inherit land, nevertheless there was plenty of other stuff she could be given by her family that had monetary value – anything she had as her own, she could take with her; the valuables her family gave her while growing up were her personal wealth and her inheritance. The Septuagint version of Gen 24:59 says that Rebecca took with her ‘her nurse and everything she owned’, and in Gen 24:61, it says that she took her maidservants with her as well.
8Not long after that, the younger son gathered together everything he had, and took himself off to a country far away, and there he squandered his property in riotous living.
v. 8a: ‘gathered together everything he had’ – that is, he liquidated whatever had not already been given to him by his father in the form of money. This would be the point at which the son’s original request would shock the family. The youngest son’s impatience would obviously mean that he is getting a lower value for his share now, than if he had waited until after his father’s death.
It is also possible that his older brother might have guessed what his brother was going to do with the money as the younger brother departed on his way. There is otherwise no way that the older brother could have known later in the parable that he had spent his money on prostitutes. Or perhaps his brother already had a reputation for ‘riotous living’, even when he was with his family. Perhaps God knew that the only way to make him see the error of his present, reckless and debauched life, was for the son to live such a life to profligate excess, and then end up with nothing.
v. 8b: ‘took himself off to a country far away’ – this detail is also used in Lk 19:12 in the parable of the gold talents. In those days, communication took a good deal of time over long distances, so the implication is that the younger son’s dubious activities are beyond the knowledge and awareness of his family. Where he goes to is therefore not important to the story. The son wishes to go somewhere far enough to sever all ties with his family – a motive which, in Jewish society, would have been seen as a sad tragedy, given how important family was and still is.
Another element of this might be that the son wanted to get away from the moral values of his Jewish faith, and so by going off to a distant country, he is removing himself from the control of his family’s religious values.
v. 8c: ‘there he squandered his property’– In squandering the money he got from the sale of his father’s land, in effect he is squandering his father’s land itself. In ancient Israel, the Land was a gift of God to the tribes of Israel. The youngest son is therefore, in effect, squandering what God has given him and his family on prostitutes, and presumably, on drinking and fine food as well.
9And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be without. 10So he went and hired himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 11And he would gladly have fed on the carob husks that the pigs ate, because no one gave him anything.
v. 9a: ‘when he had spent everything’ – Having a wealthy father has meant that this son had never learned the value of money. He spent it as if it would never run out, which is probably how it was when he was at home with his parents.
v. 9b: ‘a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be without’ – ‘great’ is used in the sense of ‘terrible and very severe’. The implications of this are that he could not even use his charm to sponge off the kindness of strangers. Without the famine, he might at least have been able to put his good looks and charm to good use, and persuade some rich woman somewhere to take him in. However, without any food to be had in that foreign land, no amount of money would have been enough to buy what wasn’t there. So for the first time in his life, he began to be without – he began to starve, and feel what real hunger was.
v. 10a: ‘So he went and hired himself to one of the citizens of that country’ – Unable to find anyone he could scrounge a comfortable living off, for the first time in his life, he had to work for a living.
v. 10b: ‘who sent him into his fields to feed pigs’ – In a famine, the only farm animals that might survive – because of their omnivorous diet eating scraps and rooting in the soil – were pigs. He might have been hoping to be hired by someone to tend their sheep or cattle, and be given their meat in payment, but without fodder, even these animals would die off in a famine. Tending pigs would have been the ultimate indignity for a Jew.
v. 11a: ‘he would gladly have fed on the carob husks that the pigs ate’ – The husks that he fed to the pigs are likely to have been the husks of carob pods. Carob trees are able to grow in dry climates – the famine is likely to have been caused by a drought. You can eat the carob beans (although too much causes constipation). However, the outer pods are inedible to humans, so the owner of the pigs was giving them to him, so that he would feed them to the pigs. He couldn’t eat the pigs, so the only food available to him were the inedible carob husks he was feeding to them.
v. 11b: ‘because no one gave him anything’ – We can assume by this that he wasn’t being paid anything (there would not have been anything to buy even if he was). He couldn’t beg or charm his way into getting people to give him anything either. He was starving, probably emaciated, and was no longer an attractive prospect to any woman. No one gave him any food, or any money, and he had no prospects – there was no way out of this, if he chose to stay there. He had sunk as low as was possible for him to get.
It might also be worth noting that in Greek and Roman society, almsgiving wasn’t really practised (Joel Green, Commentary on Luke, p. 581). The fact that no one gave him anything might be a statement of the values of the pagan society he was now living in. The Roman writer Plautus (254 – 184 BCE) reflected the general attitude of polytheistic pagans towards poverty when he wrote, “One does the beggar a disservice by giving him food and drink, for what one gives is lost, and the life of the poor is thus prolonged in their own misery”. In other words, it’s better that a poor person starve and die, than to waste resources on them.
Whereas in Jewish society, the life of a poor person was worth just as much as the life of a wealthy person – with copious laws in Torah commanding us to look after the poor – we often forget that this is not how it was in most Gentile societies of the time. The destitute beggar was on the lowest rung of human society, and was considered disposable – someone not worth saving.
12So he came to his senses and he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have enough food and more to spare, and here I am starving to death! 13I’ll get up and go back to my father and I’ll say to him, 14‘Father, I’ve sinned against God and shamed you; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants’.”
v. 12a: ‘So he came to his senses’ – This is another way of expressing repentance. He had finally realised that there was no future or profit to be had in the life he had been living up to now – and probably the life he had been living while he was with his family, if his brother is able to guess what he had spent his money on, without even being told.
Coming from a culture where one’s inherited land was so important, the son has come to realise that he has no inheritance left. He has thrown away all his claims and inherited rights. He even reaches the stage where he realises he has thrown away his right to be called his father’s son. He resolves to throw himself upon his father’s mercy.
v. 12b: ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have enough food and more to spare’ – this detail and others, indicate that his family was a very wealthy one, in relative terms. He had never known want before, but he had never truly seen what he really had while he was with his father, because he was always provided with everything he ever wanted. Compared to his current employer, even if he returned to his father only as a hired servant, his father would be the better employer.
In Torah, Israel is told that she will be provided with everything in abundance, but then God warns the Israelites that a time will come when they will become complacent with the abundance they have, and forget who has so graciously given them that abundance (see Dt 8:7-20). The result of becoming smug and complacent in what you have, is ultimately ruination (Dt 8:19b). This is where the youngest son has found himself.
‘hired servants’ – In the time of Yeshua, it would have been unusual for Jewish people to have slaves. The laws in Torah on slavery deliberately make it difficult for Jewish people to keep slaves, by obliging the slave-owner to treat his slave humanely, and not like chattel or mere property. As a result, it produced a mindset within the Jewish people that slavery was an undesirable, even distasteful practice. Any help in a rich person’s home was therefore paid (‘hired’) help.
Quite a few translations render the Greek misthios (a hireling, ‘someone who is paid for a job’) as ‘hired worker’ (someone who works out in the fields). However, hired labourers would have brought their own food with them from home. A perk of being a hired servant indoors, however, was that they would be provided with all their food by their master – hence the son’s original comment, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have enough food and more to spare’.
Occasionally, some servants were kept on for long periods, but often, servants were hired for temporary periods of time, during those times of the year when labourers would not have been required in the fields.
I have often suspected that, because Yeshua uses the image of hired servants and hired workers in his parables so often, it is possible that, as a young man, he might have supported his mother by hiring himself out to work these very jobs. During his time working as a hired servant, could Yeshua have witnessed a similar scene himself, and based his parable on that experience? This is a very long parable, not one of his usual shorter, pithy tales. Therefore, the suggestion that it might be based on an actual experience is a possibility, though obviously not a certainty.
v. 12c: ‘here I am starving to death’ – If he stays in his current situation, he realises that there is a serious probability that he will die.
v. 13: ‘I’ll get up and go back to my father’ – He needs to make a big decision; returning home is a significant act, because the Aramaic and Hebrew verbs ‘to repent’, are the same for ‘to return’.
v. 14a: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God and shamed you’ – Israelite theology arranges laws first, in relation to God, and second, in relation to human beings. This is how the Ten Proclamations (‘Ten Commandments’) are arranged. Our sins against God don’t harm God, although our actions sadden God. Our sins against God are in respect to breaking God’s laws, which are given to keep us on the path that leads to God. As a parent guides their children and so keeps us from harm, so too God guides us to steer us away from what which can harm the spiritual health of our souls.
Furthermore, in Israelite culture, there was an aspect of sinning which we moderns don’t often think about. A badly behaved son or daughter, even if they are grown up, was seen as a bad reflection on their parents – not implying that their parents have brought them up badly, but rather, that their bad behaviour brings shame upon the reputation of their parents (Prov 28:7).
Knowing this aspect of Israelite culture, it then follows that a Yahwist – a son or daughter of YHVH – brings shame on God’s reputation if such an individual uses their religion to oppress others, or inflict cruelty on others. A religious person who uses their religion to be generally unpleasant brings shame on God.
v. 14b: ‘I’m no longer worthy to be called your son’ – The fifth commandment starts off with, ‘Honour your father and your mother’. Our western cultures give us two aspects of this commandment (respect and obedience), but it doesn’t allow us an understanding of what the commandment goes on to promise: ‘so that you may endure a long time in the land YHVH your God is giving to you.’
When we think of this proclamation of God, we think of respecting our parents, and of obeying their authority. These are indeed two vital and important components of how to fulfil this commandment. However, there is a third aspect to honouring your parents that is now absent in modern western culture – that of acting in such a way that you do not bring dishonour to your parents’ reputation, but rather that you behave with dignity, grace, justice and kindness in this world, such that your parents will have no reason to regret calling you their son or daughter. When a child acts with righteousness in the world, the reputation of their parents will increase. It is this aspect of the fifth commandment that enables a person to ‘endure a long time in the Land’.
So when the youngest son considers telling his father that he has shamed him, this is what he is thinking of; his irresponsible behaviour has not only been a sin against God, it has also brought shame to his father. This is the cultural significance of what he means when he says, ‘I’m no longer worthy to be called your son’.
The Father’s Forgiveness
15So he got up and returned to his father. 16But while he was still at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion on him, 17so he ran and threw his arms around him and kissed him.
v. 15: ‘so he got up and returned to his father’ – The phrase, ‘so he got up’ reflects the resolve to return, not necessarily the act of standing up from a seated position. So too, before repentance, we come to a point of remorse, and resolve to return to God.
v. 16: ‘while he was still at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion on him’ – We might at first wonder how the father could have recognised his son at a distance. Sirach 19:30 says, ‘People’s attire and hearty laughter, and the way they walk speak volumes about them.’ Even if he couldn’t see his son’s face, it is highly likely that the father recognised his son’s gait; it is not difficult to recognise someone you know well from their gait.
We can imagine what his father saw – not the healthy young man he had seen leaving the family home, but a sorry, tired, ragged and emaciated shadow of his son. He is not angry at his son’s return; he is filled with compassion at the sight of his son.
And when the son catches sight of his father, we can imagine that he is breaking inside, full of remorse for what he has done, and feels utterly ashamed in the presence of his father.
v. 17a: ‘so he ran’: Anyone who is familiar with Middle Eastern culture, and therefore with ancient Jewish culture, would be surprised and even shocked at this detail. The head of the family – the father of the clan, especially a wealthy one – always maintains a dignified demeanour. He just would not have picked up the skirt of his tunic and run – and run some distance too; to do so would have made him look undignified and foolish. One can even imagine the incredulous looks of his neighbours as he runs down the street! Given the cultural context, this detail therefore stands out in the parable as a statement about God’s boundless love. Yeshua used it to deliberately jolt those listening to the parable, and make them think about the depth of God’s love, such that God does not care about human conventions when it comes to love, mercy and forgiveness.
When we turn against God’s ways, Paullist Christianity portrays us as being separated from God. The separation is not on God’s part; even though God might withdraw God’s Glory to prevent it doing us harm when we have sinned, nevertheless, God’s Presence is not separated from us – God’s love is never separated from us.
The separation is on our part. When we turn against God’s values and principles, it is we who are doing the separating; it is we who are doing the walking away. God’s love is never taken away from us, nor does God ever stop caring about us.
As an allegory to explain the unbreakable depth of God’s love, Isaiah 49:15 says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or a mother show no compassion for the child of her womb? But even if these could forget, I Myself will not forget you!”
v. 17a: ‘and threw his arms around him’ – The Greek literally says, ‘and fell on his neck’. This reflects an Aramaism, which also exists in Hebrew. You can see the same phrase reflected in the biblical episode of where Joseph meets his brother Benjamin for the first time (Gen 45:14), and where Jacob meets with Esau after many years (Gen 33:4). The phrase is intended to reflect a very emotional reunion.
Some people look at the image portrayed of God in the Hebrew Bible, and get the impression that God is a distant, stand-offish God. However, we are told to ‘know YHVH’, because we are supposed to interpret the God of the Bible through our living experience of God, not the other way round. YHVH is a God who wants to be close to us, wants to show God’s tender care towards us as God’s children. When we make up our minds and resolve to return to God, YHVH meets us half-way – and most eagerly so.
Some might object to the Father’s behaviour, and point to the sins of the returning sinner, but God might reply, “I don’t care! My child has come back to Me! What better gift can there be, but for My child to return to Me!” God is always so overjoyed, that God is willing to appear foolish in God’s carefree expressions of love towards us!
v. 17a: ‘and kissed him’ – This side of it would not have been considered unusual. In many cultures around the world, to kiss those close to you in greeting, by giving them a kiss on the cheek – even between men – would be considered perfectly normal. As a greeting between father and son, it would have been expected in Israelite culture.
18And the son said, “Father, I’ve sinned against God and shamed you; I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.”
In modern literature, repeating phrases is frowned upon. However, it is quite normal in Hebrew literature. For example, in the Hebrew Bible, God says God is going to do something, and then the narrative recounts that God does it. This indicates resolve and a promise kept. So too, the younger son resolves to repent, and then carries through with his act of repentance.
However, the son is unable to complete his prepared speech (closing with, ‘treat me as one of your hired servants’), because he is stopped by his father. Perhaps the father knows what his son is likely to say. The words that follow, show to his son that he is unwilling to treat his youngest son like a hired servant; he is to be treated as an honoured guest instead.
19But the father said to his servants, “Quick, bring the best tunic, and put it on him; and put a gold ring on his hand, and sandals on his feet; 20and bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 21because this son of mine was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to celebrate.
v. 19a: ‘the father said to his servants’ – It is possible that, having witnessed the unusual sight of their master running to greet someone, a couple of servants might have gone running after him. It might even have been expected – I have seen such a sight portrayed in TV dramas from various Asian countries.
v. 19b: ‘bring the best tunic, and put it on him; and put a gold ring on his hand, and sandals on his feet’ – The desire to re-clothe his son reflects the father’s desire to restore his son to his former, healthier state. Such is also God’s desire to restore our souls once we have repented.
A tunic is a one-piece, sleeved garment. A working-man’s tunic would reach down below the knees, but a rich man’s tunic would reach down to his ankles. A fine tunic would have been made of linen or finely woven cotton. Furthermore, sometimes a wealthy guest might keep fine clothing to clothe their guests in, especially if such a guest has arrived after a long journey, and is short on things to wear. In telling his servants to bring ‘the best tunic’, the father is treating his son as a guest of high honour.
Putting a gold ring on his hand might literally have meant exactly that, in which case it would have been a bangle. Or else the word ‘hand’ could have been used instead of ‘finger’ as a counter-balance to the use of ‘feet’ in the same sentence. The gold ring is another expression of the father’s desire to restore his son to his former state – the gold ring might be a ring that his son left behind, before he went on his decadent journey to foreign lands.
In the house, servants would not have worn anything on their feet. Instinctively knowing what his son might have wanted to say next before he cut him short, the request for the servants to bring a pair of sandals was a way of saying, ‘I’m not going to treat you as a servant!’
v. 20a: ‘bring the fattened calf’ – In ancient Israel, meat was only eaten on special occasions, such as at religious festivals. Most of the time, people ate a vegetarian diet. This was not out of any conscious decision to do so, nor out of any objection to eating meat; it was for practical reasons. Meat was expensive, and most people could not afford it. Only in wealthier households would meat have been eaten more regularly.
A wealthy family would have raised a calf or two for special occasions, for example, for when a special guest came by. The calf would have been fed a rich diet of grain and straw, once it had been weaned. It would also have been raised in a stall, instead of being allowed to roam freely out in the fields. Being kept like this it would have gained weight, hence ‘fattened’, and also having to ‘bring’ it from the stall where it was being raised. We would not condone this treatment of animals nowadays, and this method of keeping calves has been banned in many countries, but this is what they did in those days.
v. 20b: ‘let us eat and celebrate’ – In ordering a fattened calf to be brought, he is treating his son the same way as he would treat a special guest, by putting on a banquet for him.
v. 21a: ‘this son of mine was dead, and is alive again’ – The celebration with a banquet is like a thanksgiving feast to God. The father thought his son was gone forever, not really knowing if he was dead or alive, since he was so far away, and beyond regular communication. His feast is a thanksgiving feast, as much as it is a banquet for his son as a special guest.
It might also be a reference to being spiritually dead. In my commentary on passage 7 (under the section, ‘Who were ‘the Dead’’), I explained how in the Hebrew Bible, choosing to oppose God’s ways meant choosing the way of Death; such people were spiritually ‘dead’. The ‘land of the dead’ is a metaphor for a place of exile that Israelites have been banished to for their sins (Isa 53:8, where ‘to be cut off from the land of the living’ means to be exiled; cf Jer 22:10, where mourning is not for someone who has died, but for someone who has sinned). The son has made a 180o turnaround, and so has returned to the way of Life – in repenting of his past, he is alive again.
v. 21b: ‘he was lost, and is found’ – The father may have known of his son’s disagreeable lifestyle, even while his son was living with him; perhaps he can now see that his son has turned his back on all that.
The Oldest Son’s Story
The parable as it has been told so far has reached its zenith – the forgiveness of the father, and the father’s unrelenting love for his son. However, there is more to tell.
In our modern society, especially in the media, an individual’s sins are never forgotten. Even if someone has completely turned their life around, and is now a much better person than they were in the past, the sins of one’s past are still used as a club to beat a person with; even if someone has repented of their sins and become a new person, our modern outlook and mindset will never permit them to escape their past. This is not how it is with God.
The oldest son represents the type of person who believes that you can never be cleansed of your sins, even those you have repented of. He symbolises the kind of person who holds the past against even the penitent, unable to let go.
22Now his elder son had been out in the fields; and as he came closer and approached the house, he heard the sounds of music and dancing. 23So he called one of the servant boys and asked what this meant. 24And the servant boy said to him, “Your brother’s come back, and your father’s killed the fattened calf, because he’s got him back safe and sound.”
v. 22a: ‘out in the fields’ – The oldest son is portrayed as the dutiful son, the one who never went astray. For the sake of the flow of the story, the oldest son is unaware of his brother’s return because he was outdoors.
Most people get the impression that the oldest son has been out in the fields engaged in manual labour. However, given that the parable portrays his family as quite wealthy, the eldest son doesn’t need to work like a field labourer. It is more likely that he was supervising, and only participating in manual labour when needed.
v. 22b: ‘he heard the sounds of music and dancing’ – As he gets closer to the house, he hears the sounds of celebration. His father is a wealthy man, and it is likely that he often entertained guests. At this stage in the story therefore, he is not unduly concerned. He is probably more concerned over why he was not involved or consulted in the organisation of any festivities on the property.
v. 23a: ‘he called one of the servant boys’ – In Aramaic, a servant boy is talya, the same as the regular word for ‘boy’. This would have been a young man in his mid to late teens.
v. 24: The servant boy happily gives him a summary of everything that took place earlier, in a manner which suggests this is the most natural thing in the world to happen. However, the oldest son is angry, because he knew what kind of life his brother used to be engaged in, even before he left. However, he is unaware at this stage of the fact that his brother has turned a new leaf, and repented of his past.
25But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and tried to reason with him, but he answered his father, saying, 26“Look, all these years I’ve served you, and I never once disobeyed your orders, yet you never even gave me so much as a kid-goat, so that I could celebrate with my friends. 27But when this son of yours returns, who’s squandered your resources on prostitutes, you go and kill the fattened calf for him!”
v. 25a: ‘he was angry and refused to go in’ – The father’s compassion is contrasted by the eldest son’s anger. As the eldest son, he would have been expected to mingle among the guests, and to play a significant part in making the celebration a success (KE Bailey, Poet & Peasant, p. 194). However, he refuses to play this rôle in the celebration.
He also displays some rudeness towards his father – it would have been expected that the son should begin his conversation by acknowledging his father, by saying, ‘My father’, or even just ‘Father’ (abba). This is in contrast to how the youngest son always addresses his father in the parable, before and after repentance, always beginning his opening phrases with ‘Father’. The eldest son not only rejects his brother, he neglects to acknowledge his father too.
Furthermore, in a culture which values table fellowship as an opportunity for strengthening family bonds and ties of friendship, the eldest son is refusing to participate in an important social ritual. When you realise the importance of meal-times in ancient Jewish culture – that they were not just times of the day when one consumed sustenance – you come to understand the fullness of his rejection.
I get the impression that the eldest son has lived most of his life at some kind of emotional distance from his father. For example, he mentions celebrating with his friends, but no celebration with his father. He also seems to view his duty to his father as an obligation, rather than something he does out of any positive, emotional connection. The youngest son has this emotional connection, but for whatever reason, the eldest son is lacking in this.
There are some religious people who have a certain expectation of God, basing their faith entirely on what God can do for them. In their mindset, God is there to do things for them, without any emotional ties. The truth is that you get more out of your relationship with God if you are willing to put just as much into that relationship. Just as you will get nothing out of your prayers if they are but mere words to you, so also you will get nothing out of your relationship with God, if God is merely there to fulfil your wishes.
v. 25b: ‘His father … tried to reason with him’ – Presumably, it is at this stage that the father explains his younger son’s turnaround and repentance, but his older son is unmoved, even when he learns of it.
There is irony in the fact that the son whose actions put him on the outside of the family, is now on the inside of the house, and the son who was on the inside of the family, is now on the outside of the house – and by his words, is further estranging himself from his family. Furthermore, whereas the youngest son would have been happy to become a hired servant, the oldest son resents having lived his life almost like a hired servant.
This verse could also represent the actuality of what is going on between Yeshua and the person he is telling the parable to. The personal life-circumstance of the man Yeshua was speaking to, is that there is someone he cannot forgive for his past, and Yeshua had been trying to reason with him. We are not told if the parable changes this man’s mind.
It might also reflect discussions Yeshua might have had with people who criticised his dining with sinners – that at these meals, Yeshua had tried to reason with such people, and asked them to come inside and join him – likely, without success. The words, ‘But he was angry and refused to go in’ might reflect such encounters in Yeshua’s own past (see SY 87, for example).
v. 26a: ‘all these years I’ve served you, and I never once disobeyed your orders’ – The oldest son points out that he has always been the dutiful son, and like someone who has always been faithful to God, he has always been faithful to his father’s orders. He is resentful that his father never once rewarded him for his faithfulness. In fact, he is likening his status to that of a hired workman who works for a landowner – ironically, exactly what the youngest son expected to happen.
As a reflection of the son’s attitude to a habitual lack of thanks from his father – that his father never celebrated him in the same way – we might look at the Parable of the Dutiful Servants (Lk 17:7-10 – see SY 55:7-10). The servants don’t expect their master to reward them for having fulfilled what was required of them. It is indeed nice to be thanked for helping someone – and I would always encourage people to thank those who help you – but when you show kindness to someone, if you do it expecting to be thanked, you are only helping people for selfish reasons. When you do your duty – when you help someone in difficulty or need, when you save a life, when you go out of your way to do something good, your reward is from God. The oldest son reflects the attitude of the self-centred religious person, who expects to be rewarded and praised whenever they do something good, when in fact, they have simply done their duty towards their fellow human beings.
v. 26b: ‘yet you never even gave me so much as a kid-goat, so that I could celebrate with my friends’ – A young goat was worth about a day’s pay (jBer.6, 8[44b]).
v. 27a: ‘when this son of yours returns’ – the oldest son is so angry, that he doesn’t even refer to the youngest son as his brother. He refers to him in a derogatory way as, ‘this son of yours’.
v. 27b: ‘who’s squandered your resources on prostitutes’ – As I have mentioned a couple of times, we might wonder how the older brother knew what his younger brother had been doing in a distant land. We might think that he learned about it in the talk he had with his father outside the house, but perhaps the oldest son had always known what his younger brother was in the habit of getting up to, even when he lived with them. That is why he was angry and didn’t go inside, even before the exchange with his father – he already knew.
28So his father said to him, “My son, you’re always with me, and all that’s mine is yours. 29But it was right to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead, and now he’s alive; he was lost, and now he’s found.”’
v. 28b: ’My son, you’re always with me’ – Even to his oldest son, in spite of the son’s anger, the father tries to speak in a conciliatory manner. The point is that God has love for both the sinner, and the one who never went astray (Jer 31:10-20)
In order to arrive at a correct sum for division, the assumption is that when the property and wealth was being divided for the younger son, everything was apportioned out, including what was going to go to the oldest son. This means that the father’s land now belongs to the oldest son, even though the oldest son remains with him. The oldest son will remain on the property, and his father will stay on the property for as long as he is alive. In this way, the father can say, ‘My son, you’re always with me’.
v. 28c: ‘all that’s mine is yours’ – However, the father still exercises the right of what is legally known as ‘usufruct’. While the father still lives, he has the right to exert control over what has legally been given over to his sons. He still has the right to use it, and keep whatever profit he makes from it.
The gripe that the oldest son is voicing is therefore a little unfair. Perhaps the son is complaining that before the division of the property and resources, his father did not give him even a small goat to celebrate with his friends. However, the father counters that everything now belongs to the son, and the son can do whatever he pleases with what is on the property.
v. 29a: ‘it was right to celebrate and be glad’ – The Greek suggests something that was necessary to do, something that had to be done – he had to celebrate his son’s return, there was no other alternative.
v. 29b: ‘this brother of yours’ – The father deliberately counters his oldest son’s dismissive words, ‘this son of yours’, with kinder words of his own – ‘this brother of yours’.
The subtext in this, is that is right and fitting to celebrate the return of a sinner to God – what else would God do? The penitent and returning outcasts are our brothers and sisters too.
The father closes with the words he used when he first called for the celebration, when he was speaking to his youngest son. It was right to celebrate, because his once ‘dead’ son – his son who spent his youth and his adulthood so far in riotous living, has now repented and returned to his father.
v. 29c: ‘he was lost, and now he’s found’ – As in the parables of the lost denarius and the lost sheep, which precede this parable in Luke, and which follow this parable in the Sefer Yeshua, there is an emphasis on finding what was lost – that a sinner is not lost forever, but can be found.
The chiasmic purpose of this line
In western literature, the climax – the most important point of the story – is placed at the end, as it is in this chapter in Luke (this parable appears as the last of three). However, in Hebrew literature, the climax and central point of the story is placed in the middle. For example, the central zenith of the Torah narrative is the Theophany – the manifestation of the Glory of God on Mt Horeb. Understanding the nature of God’s Glory is pointed out in this way as the key to understanding the symbolism behind all Israelite ritual. That’s why it is the centre of the Torah, not at the end.
The reason why I chose to change the order of the three parables, is because of this Hebrew literary convention, which is a type of chiasm. What this means is that, in a story with an overarching chiasmic structure, there is a build-up to the central point of the story, and then after the central point is reached, the power of the narrative diminishes. The chiasm therefore points us to what the central message of the story is. The parables of the lost denarius and the lost sheep are therefore anti-climactic to this parable in the Sefer Yeshua, because the zenith of the narrative chiasm has been reached. The zenith is God’s overwhelming joy at finding what was lost.
The Reaction of the Oldest Son
Some religious people have this idea that God’s love and forgiveness has to be earned. They find it difficult to believe that God’s forgiveness is so immediate for the penitent sinner who returns to God; they cannot believe it can be so easy for God to forgive us. However, we must also realise that for the person who repents – especially one who has been a reprobate for most of their life – the journey towards repentance has not been easy.
The older son saw his own righteousness as a burdensome task – he felt that, in the eyes of his father, he was no more than a hired workman. Why should someone who has not had to shoulder this same burden be forgiven so easily? A religious person with a good heart, would instead think that the sinner who has only recently come to faith has been missing out on the happiness that comes from following a righteous life in God’s presence. Instead, the oldest son is resentful that his younger brother has not had to share the burden of a righteous life – he views a righteous and faithful life as a burden, not a joy.
The Reaction of Resentful Religious People
We don’t know how the oldest son reacted to his father’s closing words – and we will never know, because the parable is a made-up story, and the characters are fictional. However, it would be legitimate to wonder how the person to whom Yeshua was telling this parable reacted.
In the Galilee, because the Galilee did not suffer the same destruction in the Jewish-Roman wars that Judea and Jerusalem did, we can assume that resentful religious people might have reacted with a change of heart towards a tale of returning outcasts and sinners – they would have understood the point that Yeshua was trying to make. However, because of the very fact that Judea and the Holy City suffered a very different fate, we can assume that the people there would have reacted very negatively to such a parable – that they would have been unmoved by the father’s loving forgiveness. This may actually be the reason why no reaction is given at the end of the parable – because people can react in one of two different ways.
We are also not told how the oldest son reacts to his father’s closing words. We can perhaps see this as asking us: Are we going to react like the oldest son did towards the sinner? Or are we going to react as the father did towards his youngest son? Are we going to imitate the oldest son, or the father?
In the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:1-15 – see SY 69), the reaction to the vineyard-owner’s words is also unspoken – the hired workers also give no reaction. In that parable, the workers who had laboured the whole day are resentful that those who laboured only for one hour received the same pay as them. The self-righteous want to receive more reward from God, and resent the fact of penitent sinners being rewarded with the same as they get – they are symbolically resentful that everyone eventually gets to heaven.
God’s Kingdom is not just for those who have been faithful all their lives; God’s Kingdom is open for the outcast and the lost, the penitent who have only come lately to God after a disastrous life of squander and shame. God’s Message is not something that is to be locked up and kept only for the righteous – it is also there for the lost, to be embraced when they are found.
It is indeed sad that many people who claim to be a community founded on Yeshua’s teachings, emulate the judgmental reaction of the oldest son, instead of the love and merciful forgiveness of the father.
Our kinship with the Father
Another important point in the chiasmic structure of the story, is that we never stop being God’s sons or daughters. The father in the story refers to his youngest son as, ‘this son of mine was dead, and now he is alive’.
In the entire story of Israel’s vacillating faithfulness and sinfulness with God, there is one thing that those who like to diminish and taint the character of the God of Israel fail to point out: whenever God seemingly condemned and threatened to annihilate Israel, there was never any real possibility that such a thing was ever going to happen, because of what God promised Israel. God promised Israel that God would protect and ensure the survival of Israel, no matter what. That was a covenantal promise, and God does not break God’s promises. This is the basis of the Jewish understanding of such passages (that they only indicate what God has the power to do, not what God is actually going to do), in contradistinction to the Christian view of such passages (that the God of the Old Testament is a wrathful and vengeful God, in comparison to the loving Christian God, as if they were two different gods)!
What God shows to Israel is hésed, merciful love backed up and underscored by a covenantal promise. Throughout our ups and downs, through the episodes of our obedience and disobedience, we never stop being God’s children; God will never abandon us or give us up as lost. So too, the father in the parable is never going to give up his youngest son; no matter what, he is his father’s son, through everything he has done.
The failure of the oldest son to recognise his brother
One of the takeaways of this parable for us to put into practice, is the fact that the oldest son refuses to recognise the younger son as his brother – he refers to him as, ‘this son of yours’, rather than, ‘this brother of mine’.
It is part of the basest element of human nature to create outcasts. In creating ‘us and them’, humans regress to the most animal part of their nature. They treat certain people as sub-human, or an entirely different species. All humans are descended from the same, single mother, ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, who lived 200,000 years ago, and so we are all brothers and sisters. To mistreat and oppress certain people as outcasts, means that you are behaving like the lower animals would – you are abusing your own sisters and brothers.
This is the sin that the oldest son in the parable committed against his brother – he refused to recognise him as his brother. He failed to recognise that, no matter the life they lead, no matter their choices, no matter how different they are, these ‘other’ people are not strangers, they are not alien or sub-human, they are not objects to be abused – they are our sisters and brothers. This is not my teaching – it is Yeshua’s teaching. So if anyone has any objection to reaching out to the outcast and the lost, or to treating people like human beings, they should take it up with Yeshua!
Closing thoughts
The father’s forgiveness and joyous acceptance in the parable reflects Divine forgiveness. God’s ready forgiveness is the central focus of the parable. Repentance sets us on the path to restoration.
The human focus is on the two sons and their actions. The final focus is on the reaction of the eldest son, which likely mirrors the life-circumstance which prompted Yeshua to tell the parable.
It would have been a different matter if the youngest son had done something terrible to the oldest son; we might understand the eldest son’s reluctance to forgive and accept his brother’s repentance if that had been the case. However, the decadent behaviour of the youngest son had nothing to do with the life of the oldest son.
The reaction of the oldest son represents the mindset of those religious people who resent God’s willingness to forgive and forget. Such things might be difficult for us as human beings, but we are not God. We might even be jealous, because God is generous.
What are we being resentful of? We are not being given less than a penitent person, and the penitent sinner is not being given more than us.
The older son is perhaps thinking of the case of how a rebellious son, ‘the glutton and the drunkard’, is meant to be punished, not rewarded (Dt 21:18-21). Are we in turn resentful that sinners are not being punished for their sins? Do we think that there is no justice without punishment? In the case of the prodigal son, he has already received his punishment – by being taken to a point in his circumstances where he was close to the point of starvation and death.
When you repent, true repentance is realising the hurt we have done to others, and remorse is feeling the pain we have caused others. God is not an unjust judge; God deals out what is necessary and just to deal out. However, YHVH is above all a God of love and compassion. When a sinner recognises the wrong they have done, and have a genuine desire to change their life and do better, God forgives us, out of love.
Saying sorry, but having no intention of being a better person, is not repentance. Doing bad things, and merely refraining from doing those bad things, while holding on to the mindset that led to those bad things in the first place, is not repentance. True repentance is a complete change of heart, feeling the pain of what we have done to others, and resolving to do better. The son fully realised the decadence of his former way of life, and wished to turn his life around.
In this parable, we are not talking about a sinner who hurt his brother and inflicted terrible harm on him; we need to keep this story in perspective. We are talking about accepting God’s forgiveness for a sinner who has had no personal impact on our own lives. The sinner in this case is someone who ultimately only really hurt himself, and his relationship with God, by living an immoral life that destroyed his future.
The older brother felt that the way his father was celebrating was unfair; he felt his brother did not deserve it. He felt that he deserved to be celebrated as a dutiful son, not his brother. His father’s love was always there, but he was the type of person who believed he should be rewarded for his duty and obedience – without it, being good was simply a burden, and that was the crux of his problem.
This is why Yeshua taught that we should do good without thought of reward – of giving, without thought of receiving anything back. Our reward is ultimately from God, and doing good lifts our souls up towards God. The eldest son’s relationship with his father was not all it could have been, because he saw duty as a miserable burden, and he was jealous because his brother did not seem to have ever shared that burden. In his view, he should have been rewarded, not his brother.
The change in mindset, is in perceiving the doing of good as a joy in and of itself. The pious person rejoices in their closeness to God – that it is not a burden, but a delight. And when a sinner eventually turns their life around, and finds that very same delight, the gracious thing for a pious person to do – for oneself and for God, as well as for the penitent sinner – is to be happy that they have finally returned to God, and reached a place where you have been most of your life.