The Prodigal Son

Analysis of The Prodigal Son

Luke 15: 11 – 12 The Prodigal Son

And he [Jesus] said, “There was a man who had two sons.” And the younger of them said to his father, “Father give me the share of the property that falls to me.” And he divided his living between them.

The three parables—The Lost Sheep, The Lost Coin, and The Lost Sons (prodigal)—are told together by Jesus. When he tells these parables, Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem where he knows he will be killed. He tells these parables about himself (as the good shepherd, the woman, and the father) to explain his purpose.

It’s important to know that Jesus is talking to an audience (the Pharisees) who thought of themselves as righteous because they followed the law very carefully, and they looked down on the “sinners,” the ordinary people of the land. In the Prodigal Son, the older son represents the Pharisees and the younger son represents the “sinners.” In these three parables, Jesus is answering the Pharisees’ question about why he eats with and accepts “sinners” at a deep level.

Bailey's analysis of the parable of The Prodigal Son determines that the verses you just read have a particular meaning in the Middle East. If a son were to ask for his inheritance before the father’s death, the son would be wishing his father dead. Bailey lived in the Middle East and researched the culture—a culture that in some areas has not changed much since the time of Jesus. With Ken Bailey’s living in this culture for more than 40 years, he has never found one example of such a request.

Jesus agrees with the Pharisees that the “sinners” are far from God. In fact, he paints a picture in which we wish God dead—living our lives extravagantly with friends, not thinking of God. If we consider the son’s words, the son is careful not to use the word inheritance. In the Middle East, accepting the inheritance means accepting responsibility to carry on providing for the family. The son is not looking for responsibility but for the money and the easy road.

Middle Eastern parables are packed with emotion, they speak truth. To leave out the intended, inherent emotion is to miss the rich content. Middle Easterners would anticipate that the father’s (God’s) response to the son’s request would be to explode with ANGER and refuse the request. His son is wishing him dead. He would have to sell much property because wealth was held in land, not a bank account. There would be shame because of the community’s reaction. However, the father’s (God’s) actual response is to grant this request. The father knows that punishing the son would only further alienate the son from himself. As Bailey points out, the father had two choices. He could protect himself by writing the son off no longer considering him a son and banishing him from his thoughts. But the father chooses the second way of suffering. The son had severed the relationship, and now the father holds this broken rope out to the son in hope of reconciliation.