The kingdom of heaven is like a man, a merchant, seeking fine pearls; on finding one pearl of extremely great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Matthew 13.45–46
In the academy, the parable of the Pearl of Great Price is typically read as a Christian allegory of discipleship, and the focus is on the person who chooses to seek the kingdom.1 The merchant is the “metaphorical model for the disciple of Jesus,”2 and the pearl is the gospel, the good news of the kingdom.3 The merchant is not only making an investment in the good news; he is “sacrificing” everything he has in order to obtain it. Thus, his action is “radical”4 (a term requisite for New Testament interpretation today). For these academic commentators, Jesus himself is the teller of the parable, but not its referent.
For pastors who spend more time in pulpits than at lecterns, the interpretation is still based on allegory, but the focus tends to be less on the person doing the seeking than on Christ as both subject and object of the search. For these interpreters, “The man who is searching for the pearls is, of course, Jesus himself. He is the sower who went out to sow. He is the one who scattered the sons of the kingdom throughout the world, as he tells us. He is the one who planted the mustard seed in the field.”5 Or, “Christ is the Pearl of Great Value, and we are the merchant seeking for happiness, for security, for fame, for eternity. And when we find Jesus, it costs us everything.”6
The more homiletic readings also tend to veer away from a direct focus on Jesus and instead sound the themes of sin and redemption. One pastor proposes, “Perhaps I am the Pearl of Great Price,” a point reinforced by the fact that the “pearl is born in great suffering and pain, when a foreign speck of sand enters the environment of the shell,” and this image “is used as a picture of sin coming into the environment of our world and like an annoying, irritating foreign substance caus[ing] harm.”7 In another variant, we are told: “The pearl here is the Church. We are strangers here on this earth, but God is transforming us into the image of His Son. We, as His Church, have been purchased with the blood of Christ. There is great pain involved in producing the pearl, as Christ went through great pain to produce the Church.”8
All of these interpretations are viable. The text, especially detached from its literary and historical contexts, opens to multiple views. Allegorical readings can speak to eternal truths and ultimate longings. Yet the point these allegorical interpretations make is also obvious. Such readings rarely produce a challenge and rarely offer a surprise; rather, they confirm standard Christian views.
A second problem with the traditional allegories, beyond their confirmatory rather than challenging messages, is that they cannot convey what a parable would have meant to its original audience. Allegories require keys, so that readers know that the elements given in the tale correspond to very particular elements on the outside. As these allegories were developed much later, that original audience would not have had the key.
With this parable, the allegorical interpretations create yet a third problem. They threaten to turn the kingdom to which the merchant and pearl are compared into a commodity or an obsession. For some readers, the kingdom, like the pearl, can be “bought,” usually through sacrifice; this makes the kingdom a commodity. Others concentrate on the seeking and make the pearl, and so the kingdom, an obsession.
Resisting the immediate move to allegory—a resistance perhaps suggested by the failure of the allegorical readings to agree with one another—we investigate what the merchant and the pearl suggest with regard, respectively, to social roles and objects of value. Recognizing both the merchant’s search for multiple pearls and his unexpected decision to purchase only one, we might find a reading that allows us to recognize what is of ultimate importance for ourselves as well as for our neighbors. Realizing that once the merchant obtains his pearl of utmost value, he is no longer a merchant, we might discover a challenge to our own identity.
A healthier way of reading the parable begins by deallegorizing both the merchant and the pearl, persists by recognizing the exaggerated absurdity of the merchant’s actions, and addresses how the parable raises questions of surprise, identity, and ultimate concern.
Despite most English translations, Matthew 13.45 in Greek does not state, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant.” Matthew’s initial identification of the protagonist is not “merchant,” but “a person (anthropos).”9 Thus we have the redundant appositive, “a person, a merchant” or, in the more mellifluent gendered terms, “a man, a merchant.” The simplest interpretation of this normal Greek expression is that the second term delimits the person to a merchant category. Yet the phrasing also opens the initial interpretation to any person. It also subtly suggests that the protagonist is not God seeking us or even Jesus seeking his own. Finally, and even more subtly, it shows the fellow’s identity to be potentially unstable. He is a person, but that he is a merchant is a secondary category. He will stay a person, but he may not stay a merchant.
The appositive formulation is common Matthew’s parables. The person who sowed weeds among the wheat in the earlier parable is “an enemy, a man” (13.28)—and so, at least for the parable, not the Devil or an evil spirit. In 13.52, Jesus states that a scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven is like “a man, a householder” (the NRSV offers “master of the household”; the KJV comes closer to the Greek with “a man that is an householder”).
In 18.23 Jesus compares the kingdom to “a man, a king, who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.” The same formulation appears in several other parables: 20.1 (the landowner in the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard), 21.33 (the landowner whose tenant farmers kill his servants and his son), and 22.2 (the king who gave a wedding banquet for his son). Each usage resists the allegory. The parable has a meaning beyond itself, as most if not all stories do. But not every householder or king need immediately be seen as a cipher for God, not every merchant is the disciple, and not every pearl is the Christian gospel.
Our man is a “merchant”; the underlying Greek is emporos, whence the English “emporium.” The Greek term has the connotation of a wholesaler, and perhaps one who markets through agents items consumers do not need at prices they cannot afford. Whereas in the previous parable the man who serendipitously finds treasure in the field (13.44) could be any lucky person, the “merchant” is not just “everyone”; he has a profession, and he is already engaged in that profession by his seeking of merchandise. The parable could be cast with a different protagonist, for example, a king who gives up his throne in order to win a larger kingdom, a warrior who trades his sword for a sharper blade, the widow who sells a stand of fruit trees in order to purchase a vineyard. The general structure or form (or potato) might be the same—seeking, finding, focusing, risking, selling, buying—but the connotations necessarily differ.
In today’s English, “merchant” has a generally positive connotation, which may be surprising given the at-best ambivalent character of the most famous “merchant” in English literature, Shylock, who is usually incorrectly identified as the “merchant of Venice” (the title character is Antonio). We think of “merchants” as socially respectable, perhaps a step up from “salespeople” and two steps up from “peddlers.” We like the idea of “merchandise,” which sounds better than “stock.” The term also has a bit of a nostalgic ring to it—merchants were the independent shopkeepers who formed the “chamber of commerce.”
Such positive connotations all but disappear when the term is heard in its biblical context. Just as comparing the kingdom to yeast, which has negative connotations in the rest of the New Testament, might have gotten a rise out of the audience, so comparing the kingdom to a merchant of any sort might have been a tough sell.
Granted, biblical word studies are often tedious; they are frequently the contributions of nervous graduate students who, lacking imagination, nevertheless have the capability of using a concordance. Frequently the word studies serve to show the nuances of a term; even more frequently, the results are uninteresting. With our merchant, a bit of an interest is maintained, since the term in the Bible, and elsewhere in antiquity, generally has negative connotations.
The only other place emporos appears in the New Testament is in the book of Revelation, and the description is not complimentary. Depicting the Roman Empire as a whore, Revelation 18.3 connects the “kings of the earth” who have “committed fornication with her” to the “merchants of the earth” who “have waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” These same merchants “weep and mourn” for Rome, since “no one buys their cargo anymore” (18.11; see also 18.15–23). These emporoi are decadent; they are not related to the “kingdom of heaven” save by being very far removed from it.
Merchants receive similarly dismissive treatment in the Septuagint. Aside from a few neutral references to the appropriate setting of prices (e.g., Gen. 23.16), emporoi sell Joseph into slavery (Gen. 37.28), fill Solomon’s overextended coffers (1 Kings 10.15, 28; 2 Chron. 1.16), sell other Israelites into slavery (1 Macc. 3.41; 2 Macc. 8.34), and epitomize transgression. As Sirach 26.29 states, “A merchant (emporos) can hardly keep from wrongdoing, nor is a tradesman (kapelos) innocent of sin.” Merchants are not to be trusted to provide honest responses (Sir. 37.11), although the sage does state that one should not be ashamed of taking profit from them (42.5).
The bulk of the other references concern foreign traders (e.g., Isa. 23.8; Bar. 2.23; Ezek. 27 passim; 38.13). The merchant is thus a boundary crosser, with all the ambivalence that that activity creates—he can be trespassing, or he can be forging alliances. He is socially suspect. He deals in what is not truly of value; his trade is not in land or family or truth; his trade is in moveable, fungible property.
Not only are merchants regarded with some suspicion; the entire enterprise of high-end trade receives a negative verdict in the biblical tradition. The Greek term for “marketplace” is emporion, “business” is emporia, and “doing business” is emporeuomai; it is almost impossible to find a positive biblical connotation to any of these terms. According to John 2.16, Jesus thrusts all the merchants out of the Jerusalem Temple, and as he does, he tells “those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’” For similar negative uses, see Deuteronomy 33.19; Isaiah 23.17; and Ezekiel 27.3.
In Matthew’s parable of the Wedding Banquet, one of the guests who refuses the king’s invitation to the banquet does so for his business connections: “But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business” (emporia; 22.5). The Septuagint agrees; all eleven uses have negative connotations (Isa. 23.18 (twice); 45.14; Ezek. 27.13, 15, 16, 24; 28.5, 16, 18; Nah. 3.16).
Even the doing of high-end business is suspect. James 4.13 condemns those “who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business (emporeuomai) and making money.’” Similarly, 2 Peter 2.3 warns against those who “in their greed . . . exploit (emporeuomai) you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.”
The Septuagint follows suit. The verb is used for the deceptive dealings of Shechem with Jacob and his sons, following the rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah (Gen. 34.10, 21). In Genesis 42.34, Joseph uses it to test his brothers to see if they will deliver Benjamin to him. Second Chronicles 1.16 and 9.14 employ the term in speaking of Solomon’s coffers. Hosea 12.1 and Ezekiel 27.13, 21 utilize emporeuomai to describe exploitative international trade, including slavery. The most famous use is in Amos 8.6, where the prophet accuses the wealthy of “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” It is only in Proverbs 3.14 and 31.14 that the verb has positive connotations, but in these passages is it predicated of Woman Wisdom. Perhaps only in the wise hands of a supernatural woman is engaging in high-end trade a good thing.
Despite these negative uses, a few commentators nevertheless insist, “Merchants were generally held in high regard by Jews.”10 However, the rabbinic sources used to support the claim are late and the references are less to wholesalers than to rabbis who are engaged in local trade. The high-priestly families who were engaged in such business ventures were by no means held in high regard by the majority of the population; to be obscenely wealthy was not likely to win popular support, a point confirmed by all the parables that begin, “There was a rich man who . . .”
Joachim Jeremias—whose Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus was written in the 1960s—provides most of the data on merchants from which contemporary commentators and homilists draw. The problem is that his timing is anachronistic. Jeremias proposes to discuss “trade in Jerusalem before AD 70,”11 but he offers no contemporaneous sources for how Jews understood merchants. Discussing “the merchant himself” from our parable, his primary sources are Lamentations Rabbah, the Tosefta, and the two Talmuds. His references to wholesalers are from Pesikta Rabbati, Exodus Rabbah, and Lamentations Rabbah. These texts range from about 250 through to 700 or even 800 CE. Although they may well contain material dating to Second Temple times, the argument needs to be made, not presupposed. Nor is there anything in these contexts about “high regard” per se. Perhaps Jeremias took the “high regard,” or in his words “great respect,” from the notice that “even priests engaged in commerce.”
In my more cynical moments, I do wonder if Jeremias, who was so assured that Jews at the time of Jesus appreciated commerce, was reflecting his own stereotypes rather than assessing ancient sources. Then again, such thoughts on my part would be uncharitable.12
The ten references to emporoi in Antiquities and War conform generally to the Septuagintal uses. The same usage holds for the dozen or so references in Philo. Josephus mentions one “merchant,” a certain Ananias, who teaches the women of the court of Adiabene according to the ancestral ways of the Jews13 and so confirms the association of merchants with people who work outside the land of Israel.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant . . .” Funny business at best; bad marketing for a parable. Jesus has caught my attention, but I’m not sure I’m going to like the product he is selling.
In the allegorical readings, the pearl is the most desirable thing one could have and thus it must symbolize the Christ, or the gospel, or the kingdom itself. That is not quite what the parable says. The “kingdom of heaven” is not compared to the pearl, it is compared to the merchant who, seeking fine pearls, sells all he has for one fabulous item. To restrict the analogy to the pearl eliminates the provocation of the parable.
To regard pearls as just a very fine type of jewelry also sells the parable short. The parable does not describe the merchant as searching for “fine jewels”; it is specific in the item sought. Pearls are not like any gem; they have unique properties that the parable may well exploit.
According to Pliny, pearls held the “topmost rank among all things of price.”14 Their price was, literally, above rubies. They are jewels that the majority of the population of the Roman Empire would never have seen, save in artistic depictions. The rich man who ignored Lazarus may have had a few pearls (they look nice on purple); the Whore of Babylon likely had more. But a shepherd or a carpenter, or the population of Nazareth—no pearls.
Yet Pliny’s statements on pearls could be informative for our parable. For example, Pliny, and following him a number of other Latin writers, recounts that Cleopatra wagered her lover Marc Antony that she could consume ten million sesterces (today more than million dollars) at one banquet. For the desert course, her servants put before her a single plate with a pool of vinegar on it. Taking off one of her matching set of pearl earrings, she put the jewel into the vinegar, watched it dissolve, and then swallowed the residue. The Latin satirist Horace recounts a similar story: “The son of Aesopus [a famous actor of Cicero’s day] took a fine pearl from the ear of Metella and dissolved it in vinegar, with the apparent intention of swallowing a million sesterces in a lump. How is he any saner than if he were to throw that sum into a swift river or a sewer?”15 Conspicuous consumption—the accurate use of this term—holds for swallowing a pearl. I’m surprised that biblical scholars have not cited this story in order to form a contrast to Jesus’s feeding the five thousand with a few pieces of bread.
Aside from price and use by the uberwealthy, several other attributes of pearls could contribute to an interpretation that took the specificity of pearls seriously. For example, pearls are produced from oysters, a nonkosher animal, although the pearl itself would not be forbidden to halakhically observant Jews. This may be one of the reasons they are not mentioned in the scriptures of Israel, while other precious stones, such as rubies (Isa. 54.12; Ezek. 27.16), emeralds (e.g., Ezek. 28.17; 39.10), and sapphires (e.g., Exod. 24.10; 28.18), are. There are no undisputed references to pearls in either the Masoretic text or the Septuagint. The NRSV translates Job 28.18, part of a paean to Wisdom, as, “No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal; the price of wisdom is above pearls,” but the Hebrew term rendered “pearls” (p’ninim) means “jewels.” The Septuagint removes the reference to any jewel.
Second, pearls are among the few jewels produced from a living creature (coral is another). With this focus, the parable could speak to the importance of the natural world, or of creativity, or of how a creature so small and so distinct from human beings—and yet so alive—could create an object of such beauty. Oysters can naturally produce a pearl; human beings cannot.
Third, pearls are formed when the oyster, to protect itself from a foreign object such as a grain of sand lodged between its mantle and shell, coats the object with nacre, the same substance that creates the expanding shell. The analogy of the creation of a pearl to the shedding of tears is thus apt. Considering the means by which the pearl is formed, interpretations could move toward the valuation of certain forms of suffering, the indifference of others to it, or even schadenfreude. Rarely however do biblical scholars comment on the source of the pearl, perhaps because the ancients did not; Pliny suggests that pearls are the children of shells.16 These matters rest rather in the hands of homilists, such as those who see the grain of sand as sin or as testing on this earth.
Pearls do appear elsewhere in the Gospel tradition, but their relevance to the understanding of the parable beyond the matter of value is negligible. The Sermon on the Mount exhorts, “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you” (Matt. 7.6). Readers might therefore see the pearl in the parable as comparable to what is holy, and so the allegorical readings do receive some support. Yet rarely is the connection between the Sermon on the Mount and the parable developed. If the pearl is the kingdom or eternal life, then it cannot be “given” by one person to another. If the pearl is the gospel message, then it has to be proclaimed to all (Matt. 28.19) and so should not be withheld. Moreover, the parable’s plot resists connection of the parable in Matthew 13 to this warning in Matthew 7, for the merchant in the parable is not about to throw away his one magnificent purchase.
For a second New Testament reference, 1 Timothy 2.9 instructs, “Women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes.” Not only does this verse confirm the already potentially negative image of the merchant; it also suggests that those who sell pearls (i.e., merchants) are not living according to the ideals of the kingdom. In 1 Timothy, the pearl is just an ostentatious piece of jewelry and as such has the power to prompt sin. No wonder this same letter notes, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (6.10).
The same negative view of accessorizing with pearls appears in Revelation, and there in conjunction with the merchants of the earth. Revelation 18.12–13 details the “cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet . . . and human lives” for which the merchants will weep. Revelation 18.16 describes Babylon the Whore, the “great city . . . adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls.” Whereas in the final New Testament reference, pearls are described as adorning the heavenly Jerusalem (21.21), these heavenly pearls are no more comparable to the pearls known on earth as is the gold that paves the new Jerusalem’s streets: “The twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass.”
Along with the potentially negative connotations of both merchants and pearls, the merchant’s action should also be assessed. On the one hand, he differs from the “person” (anthropos) in the previous parable, the Treasure in the Field, in that he was actively seeking something. He may already be closer to the kingdom in that he recognizes there is something he wants or needs, but he does not at present have. The merchant, unlike the fellow in the field, is not satisfied with the status quo.
However, how as well as what the merchant seeks is also of relevance to the interpretation of the parable. In his seeking, the merchant is not an obvious epitome of wisdom. First, he changes course midstream: seeking fine pearls, he gives up his quest not when he has a sufficient number of pearls, but when he finds only one. Thus it is incorrect to state, “He finds exactly what he is looking for”17 or to read the parable in light of people who are “terribly earnest about finding an ultimate meaning for their lives, and they may spend years and substantial resources in their quest.”18 The merchant was not looking for “meaning”; he is looking for a commodity that he will remarket. Nor is he looking for that one special pearl. Rather, once he finds the magnificent pearl, he liquidates his holdings and buys it.
Whether his “seeking” is necessarily positive is another issue commentators typically do not address. In Matthew 6.33, Jesus says to his disciples, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” However, the first verb would be better translated “seek” (zeteo); it is the same verb that opens the description of the merchant: he is “seeking” (zetounti). Next, in 7.7–8, Jesus assures his disciples, “Seek (zeteite), and you will find . . . for . . . everyone who seeks finds.” Although the Sermon on the Mount does not make explicit what the disciples are to seek, the context suggests that the object is the kingdom of heaven (cf. 7.21: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven”).
The merchant both seeks and finds. But the merchant is seeking pearls, not the kingdom. He wants a commodity he can purchase, not an ethic by which to live, a Christology through which to worship, or a soteriology by which he can be assured of salvation. Like the disciples, he invests all of his resources to obtain what he seeks; unlike the disciples, he does not give to the poor or forsake his former life; rather, he sells “all he has” (panta hosa eichen) to purchase one pearl of great value. Nor does he end up with what he was initially seeking: he finds one pearl of great value, not lots of pearls.
The phrase panta hosa eichen, which also appears in Matthew 13.44 and 18.25, suggests that the merchant sold more than just his merchandise. It indicates all possessions—his home, food, clothing, provisions for his family if he had one. As Matthew 18.25 states regarding the unforgiving servant: “His lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions (panta hosa eichen).” The unforgiving servant’s possessions go to pay off a debt; the merchant’s go to purchase a pearl. The former case concerns the needs of others; the latter concerns only the merchant’s own desire.
Our merchant has obtained his desire: a beautiful object, but one that cannot nourish, shelter, or clothe. R. T. France is one of the few commentators who gets this point: “Unlike the man in the previous parable, who could presumably live off his treasure once he had secured it, this dealer, though initially a man of some substance, is apparently impoverishing himself to acquire something supremely valuable which he could admire and display but could not live off unless he sold it again.”19
Claims that the merchant acts to obtain the pearl “in a serious and reasonable way”20 and that because he is “uniquely sensitive to the value of the pearl,” he “wisely invested all he has to purchase it”21 are correct only if taken to mean that the merchant does whatever he needs to do to obtain what he wants. Whether it is reasonable or wise to liquidate everything he owns is another issue. New Testament scholar M. Eugene Boring understates in suggesting that what the merchant did “may not have measured up to everyone’s understanding of common sense.”22 Reading the merchant as involved in what might be called venture-capital or market speculation, theology professor Pheme Perkins states, “Most of us cannot imagine taking such risks.”23 The modern analogy would be to put all one’s eggs in a single basket, but at least an egg can be breakfast. Then again, there is nothing in the parable that suggests the one pearl is obtained as an investment.
A later rabbinic tale, known popularly as “Joseph Who Honors the Sabbaths,” suggests that what the merchant has done is foolhardy rather than reasonable or prudent. The Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 119a, recounts how a certain wealthy gentile heard from Chaldean fortune-tellers that “Joseph-who-honors-the-Sabbaths” would come to obtain all his property. To protect his personal wealth, the gentile “went, sold all his property, and bought a precious stone” with the proceeds, which he set in his turban. As he was crossing a bridge, the wind blew his turban off and cast it into the water, where a fish swallowed it. The fish was subsequently caught and brought to market late on the Sabbath. The fish seller brought the fish to Joseph-who-honors-the-Sabbaths, who bought it. Opening the fish, Joseph found the jewel, which he sold “for thirteen roomfuls of gold denarii.” The moral: “He who lends to [i.e., expends money for] the Sabbath, the Sabbath repays him.”24 Again the merchant is associated with a gentile, and again the merchant’s actions are risky, if not foolish.
Readers familiar with the Jesus tradition will hear in this rabbinic account an echo of another story, that of the miraculous payment of the Temple tax. In Matthew 17.27, Jesus advises Peter that “we” should not give offense to others by refusing to pay the annual half-shekel tax to the Jerusalem Temple. To obtain the money for the payment, Jesus advises Peter: “Go to the sea and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me.” This is a lesson that in literal terms is not likely to be repeated.
Back to our merchant. Whether what he does is risky or wise, foolhardy or dedicated, he has gained a pearl of enormous value. In the gaining, he has not only fulfilled a desire he did not know he had; he has also changed his identity. He had been looking for fine pearls, but he buys only one. By finding that pearl of ultimate worth, the merchant stops being a merchant. Thus he redefines himself, and we must see him anew as well. What is he? What do we make of his example? What does a former merchant “do” with a pearl? How do we locate ourselves in the parable?
Commentators rush in to provide answers and so to tidy up a very messy story. The following are a series of settings into which the merchant and the pearl have been placed or, better, mounted.
The version of the parable in the Gospel of Thomas begins the domestication: “Jesus said, ‘The Father’s imperial rule is like a merchant who had a supply of merchandise and then found a pearl. That merchant was prudent [or shrewd]; he sold the merchandise and bought the single pearl [or the pearl alone] for himself.’ So also with you, seek his treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm destroys” (76).25 The advice does work on the literal level: pearls do not decay. It also controls the allegory: the treasure is not something physical; it is the Gnostic ideal; the pearl/treasure is eternal. Finally, this merchant is less prodigal than his Matthean counterpart in that he sells his “merchandise” and not “everything.” For so-called Gnostic texts, in which a pearl can be special knowledge, as epitomized by the “Hymn of the Pearl” in the Acts of Thomas, the reading is expected; the parable, with its potential to challenge, humor, and surprise, has become an obvious allegory.
Modern commentators also domesticate the parable by constraining its meaning to a recognizable Christian value. One of the more popular tropes academic interpreters employ for describing Matthew 13.44–46, the parables of the Treasure in the Field and the Pearl of Great Price, is that of sacrifice. Commentator Craig Blomberg says: “Quite simply, true disciples are those who recognize that God’s kingdom is so valuable that it’s worth sacrificing whatever it takes to be its citizens.”26 This approach takes seriously the merchant’s full liquidation of his assets as well as the parable’s interest in finances. But immediately full liquidation becomes charitable donation. For example, in discussing this parable, Blomberg begins with an account of students at St. Petersburg Christian University in Russia who pooled resources in order to help a classmate pay for passage to return home for a funeral. Then these analogies begin. The merchant is the true disciple, his goods are sacrificial offerings used to aid a fellow disciple, and the pearl is the railway ticket, the gratitude of the recipient, or whatever is seen to promote Christian virtue.27
The language of “sacrifice” is not culturally part of the merchant’s repertoire; neither financial investment nor commercial liquidation is necessarily a sacrifice. Matthew states that the merchant sold his goods, not that he suffered any loss. “The price paid is not a sacrifice, but an exchange of something lesser for something greater.”28 Had the parable suggested that the merchant felt a sense of loss over what he exchanges, the language of sacrifice would be present. Had the parable indicated that the merchant suffers want by going without, again, sacrificial language might be appropriate. From a theological perspective, had the parable indicated that the sacrifice was on behalf of another or designed to establish or restore relationships or had served to mark a holiday, expiate guilt, or offer thanksgiving, again, the metaphor of sacrifice would fit. But the parable offers none of these prompts, and the emporos does not conjure up sacerdotal or sacrificial connotations. The language of “investment” rather than sacrifice could have also been applied to the merchant’s action, but that has a less positive connotation when it comes to religious values.
Other commentators assure us that the interpretation of the parable has nothing to do with money, or the mundane, at all. Repeatedly, we hear: “Metaphors aren’t meant to be pressed down to every last detail, and analogies all break down at some point. Most people, in fact, don’t give up anywhere close to everything that they have in order to enter the kingdom.”29 Ironically, the quote already presumes an interpretation related to full divestment, since it speaks of those who “give up . . . everything.” Even as commentators affirm that the merchant as well as the fellow who found treasure in the field “take a radical step in order to obtain something of greater value,” they also affirm “if the two parables meant to challenge listeners to renounce their own possessions (sell everything you have; see Matt. 19.21), they would be bizarre.”30 Somehow, when Jesus really is being “radical,” we conclude he cannot be saying exactly what he seems to be saying. Thus the parable cannot mean anything literal with regard to economics. Allegory enters again: “We have an infinitely valuable pearl,” which amounts to “great knowledge of scripture and the hope for God’s kingdom, the ‘new covenant’ (Matt. 26.28).”31 Although not importing the language of sacrifice, this move away from economics is also a move away from the parable, which is replete with economic indicators.
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a person found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matt. 13.44)
Noting that Jesus addresses the Pearl of Great Price as well as the immediately preceding parable of the Treasure in the Field, or the parable of the “Lucky and Potentially Dishonest Man” (13.44) only to the Twelve (13.36), other commentators see in the two parables the theme of discipleship. The connection to discipleship is by no means impossible, but it is Matthew’s contextualization that evokes it, not the parable itself. Like the Gospel of Thomas, Matthew’s Gospel too has begun the interpretive process.
Whether Jesus told the parables together or Matthew combined them cannot be determined. The combination, however, makes logical sense, and Matthew is a logical editor. The parables share common ideas, characterizations, and results. Both depict a person who sells all that he has to purchase something desired. Both also present a gap between the desire and the fulfillment.32 The man in the first parable has to sell his goods in order to purchase the field where the treasure is hid. The merchant is seeking pearls; upon finding one special pearl, he liquidates his assets to purchase it.
However, the distinctions between the two parables should not be ignored. For example, the first parable focuses on the logical actions of any person who finds a treasure; the actions are in the present tense. The second parable begins with any person, but then delimits that person to one particular man, and it presents his actions in past tenses: aorist, imperfect, and perfect.33
Most readers can identify with the man in the field in the first parable; identifying with the merchant requires more effort. We can all be the person who, serendipitously, finds a treasure; indeed, more than a few of us perhaps dream of being this person (those who purchase weekly lottery tickets or play bingo may be particularly amenable to this connection). As far as we know, the man who obtains the lucky find had not been spending his life seeking “treasure.” But few of us are wholesalers seeking fine pearls, and fewer still would sell everything in order to buy one of them.
Differences between the Treasure in the Field and the Pearl of Great Price continue when the two parables are read in relation to other comments in Matthew’s Gospel. This text, like the Gospel of Thomas, had already begun the interpretation, and the domestication, of Jesus’s words. Attentive readers will associate the good fortune of the man in the field with Jesus’s warning in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (6.19–21). A buried treasure is an earthly treasure; it can be lost.
Matthew then reinforces the allegorical interpretation for the first parable. The association of treasure and kingdom of heaven that began in the Sermon on the Mount is repeated at the end of the parables discourse: “Therefore every scribe who has been discipled for the kingdom of heaven is like a person, a master of a household, who casts out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (13.52). This last line of the discourse returns readers to the practical and so the economic. It is an echo of Matthew 12.35, “A good person out of his good treasure casts out good, and an evil person out of his evil treasure casts out evil.” It is also an echo of the parable of the treasure, both with its redundant “a person” and by its concern for an image with economic weight. The term “cast out” also requires assessment. For Matthew, one does not store up in the treasury or the treasure; one “casts out” (ekballo) from it. As with a demon—the term is technically used in exorcisms—possessions on earth are to be cast out, not stored up.
For Matthew, the two parables are about discipleship, just as for Thomas the pearl is about knowledge. Allegory again prevails, and the literalness of the parable, with its focus on a merchant, merchandise, and selling and buying, becomes overshadowed.
In the effort to remove the two parables from having any substantive interest in economics, let alone from suggesting that total divestment is commendable, commentators often adduce Matthew 19.16–29 along with the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19.1–10 to argue that Jesus does not expect people to abandon everything. The first set of verses offers Matthew’s take on a story we have already seen in Luke: the account of the potential disciple who seeks from Jesus information on eternal life. For Luke’s Gospel, the man’s questions provide resonance to the opening frame of the parable of the Good Samaritan; Matthew’s version, in a different narrative context, has different implications.
In Matthew 19.16, a person asks Jesus, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (see the discussion of the same wrong question that elicits the parable of the Good Samaritan in Chapter 2). Jesus corrects the questioner by moving his focus from “eternal life” to entering “into the life” and then from the singular deed to the plural: “Keep the commandments.” When the interlocutor persists, “Which ones?” Jesus responds with the second half of the Decalogue as well as Leviticus 19.18 on loving neighbors.
The interlocutor claims to have fulfilled all these commandments but, still dissatisfied, asks a third question, “What do I still lack?” Although some interpreters see the young man as infected with a neurotic works-righteousness that has him attempting to pile up good deeds in order to earn his heavenly reward, more productive would be to query the young man’s insistence that he really does “love his neighbor as himself.” Were he to do this fully, he might not be economically rich, because he would have used more of his funds to help the poor or set up his house as a place of refuge for the homeless. More productive also would be to recognize that Jesus does suggest a possible next step. Jesus again refocuses the man’s attention: he advises, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (19.21).
“Aha,” think not a few commentators, “only to this young man does Jesus issue his call to perfection with its attendant divesting.” Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, does not give up his home or wealth (so Luke 19.1–9),34 nor does Martha sell her home (Luke 10.38–42). Ignored in these apologia is the fact that Matthew promotes such perfection: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5.48). Moreover, this perfection may well relate to divesting. Just as the merchant sells all he has to purchase the pearl, so Peter and his associates “have left everything and followed” Jesus (19.27). Their profit margin is enormous, for in response to this initial investment, they will sit on thrones, serve as judges over all Israel, “receive a hundredfold, and . . . inherit eternal life” (19.29). Similarly, Paul states, “For we rejoice when we are weak and you are strong. This is what we pray for, that you may become perfect” (2 Cor. 13.9).
Jesus did not tell all his followers to sell what they have and join the ranks of the destitute. Nevertheless, he appears to have found this lifestyle the best way of laying up treasure in heaven. Just as Paul did not mandate that all followers of Jesus be celibate, as he was, he advised that celibacy, including continence in marriage, is the preferable behavior, given that “the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7.31). So also Jesus: divesting is not required, but it is preferred.
The merchant in the parable does what the young man cannot, but the disciples can—he divests from everything he owns for the new treasure whose value perhaps only he can see, since no one else has found, or bought, or held on to this pearl. (What the pearl’s original owners did with the funds the merchant provided them is not the concern of the parable; perhaps this excess of cash prompted them to give to the poor as well, but I doubt it.) Moreover, he purchases that pearl, just as the man in the previous parable purchased the field. Had the parable talked about barter, serendipitous find, or unexpected gift, the economic focus would not be as strong.35
The Gospel tradition does not expect everyone to sell all they have, but it does expect some to do this. Jesus appears to have set up a two-tiered system: some of his followers divest all; others keep their own finances, but dedicate them to the concerns of the mission (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, providing hospitality to the apostle, etc.).
Perhaps the parable really does speak to the use of money. Much of the rest of the tradition does. So does the prevailing negative use of words dealing with merchandising.
Along with the move to allegorize the parable away from the economic, another domesticating move is to understand Matthew 13.45–46 in terms of “detachment,” defined as “the essence of Christian spirituality.”36 The merchant in this interpretation finds “freedom from absorption in the attractions, pleasures, and concerns of this world—not because these are bad in themselves, but because believers have been caught by a vision of God’s love and God’s future that simply relativizes all these things.”37 I am not seeing in the merchant’s quest a vision of divine love or a focus on the future, but perhaps I am too literal. He is looking for pearls and he finds something beyond the normal pearl. If he’s looking for love, he’s looking in all the wrong places. Nor am I seeing a “relativizing” of items other than the pearl; divesting is not relativizing. Although reading the parable for what it says about relativizing is probably better than reading it with a view toward sacrifice, this interpretation still fails to get at the challenge of the text even as it risks devaluing the pearl.
Other commentators resist the merchant’s unexpected purchase long enough to provide closure to the parable. At the same time that he correctly observes that the merchant’s “extraordinary commitment [to] dispose of all that one has to buy the pearl is to make a drastic and life-changing act,”38 commentator Arland Hultgren also assures readers that he “will probably sell [the pearl] on the retail market and make a good profit.”39 David Buttrick similarly notes, “In order to survive he will have to sell the pearl anyway.”40 The parable stops with the purchase of the pearl, and we should leave it there. Unlike the story of the prodigal and his brother, there are no lingering questions or unresolved relationships. There is no reason to engage in what Klyne Snodgrass calls a “violation of narrative time” in order to find meaning or challenge in the parable.41 Our merchant was in search of fine pearls; he found the one that surpassed all the rest, and he bought it. He changes his focus from the many to the one, and he stops looking.
To conclude that the pearl is only of value if it is resold and thus that it has no “ultimate value” is to read the pearl only as a commodity. To conclude that the kingdom’s “corrupting power is the desire to possess it”42 is again to commodify the kingdom, even as the reading resists the claim.43
The kingdom is not the pearl, and it is not the merchant. The kingdom is what comes after “it is like”: the kingdom is like a merchant who seeks pearls and who, upon finding what he was not expecting—the greatest of the great—makes every effort to attain it. To reduce the kingdom of heaven to a thing, whether the pearl or the merchant, is also an act of commodification. To commodify the kingdom is to dismiss the import of an individual’s ultimate concern. The merchant has found what he wanted, although until the moment of the find, he did not realize his true desire. He has reconceptualized both his past values and his future plans; the “magnitude of the life change” is paramount; he is no longer what he was.
When it comes relating the parable of the Pearl of Great Price to the kingdom of heaven, we have a man in the wrong profession. We have the wrong target of his initial search—a luxury item that few can afford; it has lachrymose and nonkosher origins; its purchase requires a use of funds that could have been given to the poor. We have the wrong result of the search—the merchant finds something he was not seeking. He thought he wanted “fine pearls”; it turns out, he had incorrectly assessed his desire and his goal. To obtain his pearl he engages in a risky and seemingly foolish venture of divesting. We have the wrong result—the merchant has spent everything he has on a pearl, an item with no practical value. Once he purchases it, he is no longer a merchant. And therein lies the challenge.
By the standards of the status quo—whether in first-century Galilee or twenty-first-century America—the merchant has acted in a reckless manner. The merchant, however, sets up alternative standards not determined by society, but determined by something else, whether his own desires or a heavenly prompt. He really is “countercultural.” He defines his treasure in his own terms. He is able to recognize what for him has true value, and he can do what he needs to do in order to obtain it. The pearl the merchant obtains is not simply the best of the lot, the one among the many. It is qualitatively different, singular, exemplary; it points beyond the concept of “pearl” to something new, something heretofore unseen and unknown. There is a transcendent quality, a mystery, to this pearl. And so the parable provokes.
Our erstwhile merchant first raises questions of our own acquisitiveness.44 We are continually seeking, whether the object is fine pearls, a new job, another degree, or spiritual fulfillment. But each time we find our goal, it turns out to be ephemeral. There is always a new necklace, a new career, a new form of study, a nagging sense that we have not done what we need to do. We flit from desire to desire, never permanently fulfilled, always somewhat discontent. The merchant’s actions show that knowing one’s pearl obviates all other wants and desires.
Will we know what we truly want when we see it? The merchant has removed himself from the realm of buying and selling, seeking and finding, wanting and wanting more. Not only can the cycle be broken; the merchant demonstrates that one can step out of it entirely.
Second, and of greater challenge, should we be, indeed can we be, like the erstwhile merchant, who is, to use another economic term, willing to go “all in,” not for a gamble but for an ultimate concern? His is an act not of sacrifice, because we do not know the extent to which he previous valued what he sold (note: “sold,” not “gave away”), and we do not know if he suffered any loss. Nor has he sacrificed in any religious sense. Nor again does he demonstrate the relative value of all his other possessions; he does not simply place the one pearl ahead of everything else. The issue isn’t relative value; it’s all or nothing. Thereby, the parable asks: Can we assess what is of ultimate value in our own lives, not simply in terms of relativizing, but in terms of ultimate concern? More, it asks: Are we willing to step aside from all we have to obtain what we want?
Third, we know what is of value for the erstwhile merchant, who now, no longer a merchant, might be called “the man who possesses the magnificent pearl.” Along with challenging all readers to determine our own pearl, the parable asks if we know what is of ultimate concern to our neighbors.
On Monday evenings during the school term, I either teach or facilitate a Divinity course at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, where Tennessee’s death row is located. The first year I taught at Riverbend, the class—twelve Riverbend inmates and twelve Vanderbilt students—studied the Gospel of Matthew; after all, Matthew’s Gospel contains the parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which talks about visiting people in prison.
When discussing Matthew 13.45–46 with my students—some candidates for ordination, others serving life sentences—I asked: What is your pearl of supreme value? For what would you sell everything you own? To use Hultgren’s words, for what would you “make a drastic and life-changing act”?45 The divinity students mentioned the church. But the commentators are correct: most people do not sell everything they have for the sake of the church. Despite the plausible claim that Matthew’s Gospel encourages such perfection, the Gospel also recognizes two types of disciples, the itinerants who take to the road and the householders who provide them support.
One student in the Graduate Department of Religion mentioned the doctoral degree. The desire for a Ph.D. was for her an irritant of sorts. She had already earned a Master’s of Divinity and had planned to go directly for the Ph.D. in New Testament, but life intervened. She married a pastor, had children, and served as the minister’s wife (a professional role). She continued her education whenever she could—seeking pearls on Amazon, the History Channel, or in online courses. Her husband discouraged her; he already had a Doctorate of Ministry (D.Min.) and felt that one doctor in the family was sufficient. She persevered. Seeking more information, she came across the website of Vanderbilt’s Graduate Department of Religion and decided to apply. Not only was she accepted; she was awarded funding.
For various and very good reasons, entering the program coincided with the end of her marriage. That night she explained, and here I paraphrase: “I never expected to find myself here, but when the graduate-school offer came, I did what I needed to do to accept it. I gave up my home and my status as ‘minister’s wife’; I took out loans; I took back my original name. I do not know what will happen at the end of this program, but that does not matter. I am doing what is right for me. I have my pearl.” Most of us, I suspect, would not have had the courage to change our lives, our identities, for the sake of what we most want; we may not even know what the final goal is. This student showed the daring, the courage, that many of us might lack. She redefined herself.
One of the Riverbend students responded with the single word, “Freedom.” He would do what it takes—confession to rather than denial of his crime, anger management courses, psychological tests, and so on—in order to increase his chances of parole. He realized what he wanted, freedom, only when he realized he did not have it. When and if he obtains it, he intends to break the cycle of crime and incarceration. With his sentence flattened or pardon granted, he is no longer the “insider” or the “criminal,” but the “free man” who needs to form his own new identity. When I drove home that evening, with the searchlights and the barbed wire reflecting in my rear-view mirror, I realized that this student’s “pearl” is something I take for granted.
Another Riverbend student said, “Safety.” He will invest all he has in order to ensure that he will not be knifed in the chow line or attacked in the shower. Again, his pearl is something that I had not considered.
And a third said that when he came into prison, he lost all that he had—his property, his clothing, but also his identity, his dignity. He had to construct his own pearl, layer by painful layer, tear by tear, and see what was really important.
Here is one final interpretation. I do not think it is quite what Jesus had in mind, but it does fit the question of ultimate concern. The word for “pearl” in Greek is margarita, a recognition that can bring new meaning to the expression “pearly gates.” When I mentioned this translation in class, one of my students, a recovering alcoholic, explained how the margarita, the drink, was her pearl of complete value. She sold everything—home, food, family—for the drink. And so we ask: Do we take stock of our priorities? What is our image of the kingdom? What, really, do we want? The parable consequently asks us if searching for pearls, searching for commodities or multiples or stuff, is worth pursuing. It is good to know that there may be something out there, beyond our imagination, that demands our recognition of its ultimate value. It is good to know if our definition of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven is healthy or harmful. Not all pearls on the market are cultured; some are fake, although their cost can be exceptionally high as well.
Jesus, the historical Jesus, cared about prioritizing. In light of the inbreaking of the kingdom of heaven, which is already here as his followers found manifested in his presence and yet to come as manifested by the full presence of justice, we are forced to act. We are forced to determine what we must do to prepare for this new reality. What do we keep and what do we divest? How would we live if we knew ultimate judgment was coming on Tuesday? What are our neighbors’ ultimate concerns, and what are ours? Once we know that material goods will only collect rust or dust, and once we know that the only thing that counts is treasure in heaven, surely we must find a new way to live.
Attending to the anomalies of the story, refusing to allegorize in order to domesticate, challenging our acquisitiveness and our sense of what is truly of value, the parable disturbs. That is what parables should do.