Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Rich Fool
Luke 12:13-21
13 One of the multitude said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” · WEB
A man wants help with an inheritance and gets a parable about a farmer whose only conversation is with himself.
"Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me" Luke 12:13.
The request interrupts a discourse about martyrdom, which tells you how far the man was listening. It is also not unreasonable — rabbis did settle such disputes, and he may well have had the better case.
"Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?" Luke 12:14. The refusal declines the office rather than the man. He will not arbitrate, because settling the estate would leave both brothers exactly as they are.
"Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man's life doesn't consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses" Luke 12:15. The warning is issued to both parties. The one who asked has been treated as a man with a problem rather than a claim, and the problem is one he shares with the brother he is complaining about.
"The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly" Luke 12:16.
The parable is this Gospel's alone. Notice how it starts: the ground produced. Nothing in the story is his doing — no shrewdness, no fraud, no exploitation. He is a decent farmer having a very good year.
"He reasoned within himself, saying, 'What will I do, because I don't have room to store my crops?'" Luke 12:17.
The soliloquy that follows is the whole indictment, and its grammar gives it away. I will pull down my barns... I will store all my grain and my goods... I will tell my soul. First person throughout, and the possessives are relentless. In four verses there is no other person in the world.
He has a problem — a surplus — and only one solution occurs to him, which is a bigger container. That a surplus might be a supply for somebody else does not enter the reasoning, and this is a country with a law about leaving the edges of the field Leviticus 19:9–10.
"Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry" Luke 12:19. He talks to himself because there is nobody else in the conversation. And what he offers his soul is food, drink and rest — things a soul cannot eat.
"But God said to him, 'You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you'" Luke 12:20.
God speaks in only one parable, and this is it. The word fool in the Scriptures is not about intelligence; it is the practical atheist, the man who says in his heart there is no God Psalms 14:1. And his own word is turned back on him: he addressed his soul as a thing he owned, and the soul is required — the term for calling in a loan. It was never his.
"The things which you have prepared — whose will they be?" The last question is the one he never asked. He planned for many years and did not plan past the last one.
"So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God" Luke 12:21. The verdict names the fault exactly. Not that he was rich, but that the treasure went one direction only — for himself, which is the phrase that has been the grammar of the whole parable.
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