The Watchful Servants
Read the parable
- Mark 13:32-37 Primary account
- Luke 12:35-40 Parallel account
Context
Jesus closed the Olivet Discourse in Mark with this picture of a householder traveling to a far country, leaving his servants with assigned work and the porter commanded to watch. The Romans divided the night into four watches — even, midnight, cockcrowing, and morning — and Jesus names them all: the master may return in any of them. Luke's parallel adds servants with loins girded and lamps burning, awaiting their lord's return from a wedding.
Meaning
"Of that day and that hour knoweth no man" — therefore watch. Watching is not idle sky-gazing but each servant doing his appointed work, dressed for action, with the lamp lit, so that the master's arrival at any hour finds the household ready. Luke adds the astonishing promise that the returning lord will gird himself and serve the servants he finds watching, and Luke adds that the coming will be as unannounced as a thief breaking in; Mark says simply that the master may come suddenly. The command is universal: "What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch."
Go deeper
Two free lessons walk through the parables as a whole: The Parables of Jesus and Interpreting the Parables.