The Rich Fool
Read the parable
- Luke 12:13-21 Primary account
Context
A man in the crowd asked Jesus to make his brother divide the family inheritance — rabbis were commonly asked to arbitrate such disputes under the inheritance laws of Deuteronomy 21. Jesus refused the role of judge and instead warned, "Take heed, and beware of covetousness", telling of a landowner whose fields produced so abundantly that his only problem was storage. Bigger barns were a rational business plan; God's verdict on it that very night was not what anyone expected.
Meaning
The farmer's soliloquy — my fruits, my barns, my goods, my soul — exposes a life curved entirely inward, with no reference to God or neighbor. His folly is not wealth itself but treating goods as security for his soul and assuming he owned his years: "this night thy soul shall be required of thee". A man's life "consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." The parable warns everyone who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God, and it introduces Jesus' teaching on anxiety and treasure in heaven that follows.
Go deeper
Two free lessons walk through the parables as a whole: The Parables of Jesus and Interpreting the Parables.