Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Coin, and the Lamp
Luke 15:8-10
8 “Or what woman, if she had ten drachma coins, if she lost one drachma coin, wouldn’t light a lamp, sweep the house, and seek diligently until she found it? · WEB
A woman turns the house over for one small coin, and the finding is worth more than the coin.
"Or what woman, if she had ten drachma coins, if she lost one drachma coin, wouldn't light a lamp, sweep the house, and seek diligently until she found it?" Luke 15:8.
The second parable is this Gospel's alone and it is the shortest of the three. It pairs with the first the way this book habitually pairs things — a man with sheep, a woman in a house.
The amounts are worth knowing. A drachma was about a day's wage, so a tenth of her holding is gone; and if these are the ten coins of a woman's headdress, worn as a dowry, then the loss is worse than financial. Either way she is not wealthy. The first parable lost one percent, this one ten.
Three verbs describe what she does. She lights a lamp, because the houses had one small window and a coin on a floor of packed earth is invisible without it. She sweeps, listening as much as looking — the sound of a coin moving under a broom is how it is usually found. And she seek diligently until she found it, which is the same until as the shepherd's.
There is no suggestion that the coin can do anything to help. It is not lost the way the sheep is lost, by wandering; it is simply somewhere in the house, and the entire remedy is the effort of the woman searching. That is the second parable's contribution — the first showed a loss that strayed, this one a loss that never moved.
"Rejoice with me, for I have found the drachma which I had lost!" Luke 15:9. She calls in the neighbors, exactly as the shepherd did. It is likely the celebration cost more than the coin.
"Even so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner repenting" Luke 15:10.
The wording is careful and worth pausing on: joy in the presence of the angels rather than joy among them. Somebody else is rejoicing and the angels are the ones who see it — which is the same figure both parables have been drawing, the one who lost the thing and went to look.
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