Jesus portrays the magnitude of God's grace in terms that would have stretched his hearers' imagination: each of us owes God more than we could ever repay. Galileans were quite aware of some features of royal courts outside Palestine, and Jesus presents such a setting to emphasize the severity of the punishment (Derrett 1970:35). Later Jewish parables frequently include a king as a symbol for God's majesty (for example, t. Berakot 6:18; Johnston 1977:583). No one can offend our moral sensibilities as much as everyone offends the moral sensibilities of a perfect God!

Servants could refer to the king's high officials, like provincial satraps (Jeremias 1972:210, 212; Via 1967:138). Then again, servants could also be tax farmers working for the king; in earlier days some Gentile tax farmers would bid on collecting taxes for the king and could generally turn a profit-provided everyone paid their taxes (Derrett 1970:37; B. Scott 1989:270). Because tax farmers were responsible to collect the taxes for the king, they could become quite ruthless in their efficiency. Business documents from Jesus' day sometimes depict peasants with such overwhelming tax indebtedness that they fled their own land (N. Lewis 1983:164-65; Avi-Yonah 1978:216; M. Grant 1992:90).

At the appropriate time of year the king wanted to settle accounts with his servants. Although the talent's worth varied in different periods, ten thousand talents represented between sixty and one hundred million denarii, or between thirty and one hundred million days' wages for an average peasant-a lot of work. The combined annual tribute of Galilee and Perea just after the death of the repressive Herod the Great came to only two hundred talents (Jos. Ant. 17.318; Jeremias 1972:30); the tribute of Judea, Samaria and Idumea came to six hundred talents (Jos. Ant. 17.320). This fact starkly reveals the laughably hyperbolic character of the illustration: the poor man owes the king more money than existed in circulation in the whole country at the time! The man was a fool to get so far in debt, and the king had been a fool to let him get away with it. Jesus could compare God with a father (Lk 15:12) or landowner (Mt 21:33-37) so merciful that hearers would consider him shamelessly indulgent. So here he compares God with a king who let a subordinate get too far into debt to ever pay him back. The grace of God is so deep and unimaginable that it repeatedly bursts the bounds of Jesus' metaphor.

Selling the man into slavery would recover virtually none of the loss, though it might abate some of the king's anger: the most expensive slave recorded would sell for only a talent, the average being one-twentieth to one-fifth of that (Jeremias 1972:211). Jewish custom prohibited the sale of women and children, but Jesus' hearers recognized that a pagan king wouldn't care about such just technicalities (compare m. Sota 3:8; t. Sota 2:9; Jeremias 1972:180, 211; Derrett 1970:38; Via 1967:138-39). In all, the king was bound to lose at least 9,999 talents (as much as 99,990,000 days' wages, or roughly 275,000 years' wages for an average worker) despite the sale. Perhaps this was one reason the king canceled the debt at the pitiable sight of the fool offering to pay it all back.