Once again, Jesus spoke to them in parables:
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Greek — tap a word ↓
Kai palin ho Iēsous apokritheis eipen autois en parabolais legōn
The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Parable of the Banquet
Matthew 22:1–14 — The Parable of the Banquet. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
Once again, Jesus spoke to them in parables:
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Greek — tap a word ↓
Kai palin ho Iēsous apokritheis eipen autois en parabolais legōn
“The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Greek — tap a word ↓
hē basileia tōn ouranōn Hōmoiōthē anthrōpō basilei hostis epoiēsen gamous tō autou huiō
He sent his servants to call those he had invited to the banquet, but they refused to come.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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kai apesteilen autou tous doulous kalesai tous keklēmenous eis tous gamous kai ēthelon ouk elthein
Again, he sent other servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and fattened cattle have been killed, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Greek — tap a word ↓
Palin apesteilen allous doulous legōn Eipate tois keklēmenois Idou hētoimaka mou to ariston mou hoi tauroi kai ta sitista tethymena kai panta hetoima deute eis tous gamous
But they paid no attention and went away, one to his field, another to his business.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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de Hoi amelēsantes apēlthon men hos eis idion ton agron de hos epi autou tēn emporian
The rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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de hoi loipoi kratēsantes autou tous doulous hybrisan kai apekteinan
The king was enraged, and he sent his troops to destroy those murderers and burn their city.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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de Ho basileus ōrgisthē kai pempsas autou ta strateumata apōlesen ekeinous tous phoneis kai eneprēsen autōn tēn polin
Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited were not worthy.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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tote legei tois autou doulois men Ho gamos estin hetoimos de hoi keklēmenoi ēsan ouk axioi
Go therefore to the crossroads and invite to the banquet as many as you can find.’
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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poreuesthe oun epi tas diexodous tōn hodōn kai kalesate eis tous gamous hosous ean heurēte
So the servants went out into the streets and gathered everyone they could find, both evil and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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Kai ekeinoi hoi douloi exelthontes eis tas hodous synēgagon pantas hous heuron te ponērous kai agathous kai ho gamos eplēsthē anakeimenōn
But when the king came in to see the guests, he spotted a man who was not dressed in wedding clothes.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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de ho basileus Eiselthōn theasasthai tous anakeimenous eiden anthrōpon ekei ouk endedymenon gamou endyma
‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ But the man was speechless.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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Hetaire kai legei autō pōs eisēlthes hōde mē echōn gamou endyma de Ho ephimōthē
Then the king told the servants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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Tote ho basileus eipen tois diakonois Dēsantes autou cheiras kai podas ekbalete auton eis to to exōteron skotos ekei estai ho klauthmos kai ho brygmos tōn odontōn
For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
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gar Polloi eisin klētoi de oligoi eklektoi
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
⚙ Matthew opens with a participle, not a topic: ἀποκριθεὶς, "having answered." Ellicott takes the word to imply a connection with what has gone before, and reads the parable as an answer to the thoughts stirring in the listeners; Barnes says the real answer refers to what was passing in their minds rather than to anything spoken; Pulpit reduces the idiom to "took occasion to observe." Benson ties the parable tightly to the vineyard of chapter 21. Our sources disagree about who is still standing there: Pulpit follows Mark in having the Pharisees leave, so that this parable is spoken to disciples and crowd, while Gill argues the Pharisees remained (appealing to v. 15). That disagreement matters, because a parable spoken to opponents is an indictment and one spoken to disciples is a warning, and this parable does both. The plural παραβολαῖς over a single story is left unexplained by the text; Pulpit offers two guesses and commits to neither.
⚙ The kingdom "was likened" (aorist passive Ὡμοιώθη) to an event: a king makes a wedding for his son and his guests will not come. Ellicott says the king is none other than God and the wedding that between Christ and his Church, and notes with JFB that the bride never appears, JFB adding that her absence is by design, since the parable is about guests and a garment. Pulpit hears condescension in the doubled dative "a man, a king." The invitation is issued twice to the same people, who are throughout κεκλημένοι, the standing invited; Ellicott and Pulpit read the first sending as prophets and the Baptist, while JFB and Benson place the second after the resurrection, when (JFB) only then could it be said with strict propriety that all things were ready. The strongest lexical warrant for that lies in v. 4: τεθυμένα is the perfect passive of θύω, the verb of sacrifice, and Geneva records that the word is commonly used in sacrifices, since feasts usually began with them. JFB reaches for 1 Corinthians 5:7, Pulpit for John 6:51. Then the refusal divides in two, and the sources are unanimous about the division: careless neglect (ἀμελήσαντες, and Henry's multitudes perishing through mere carelessness) and wanton outrage (ὕβρισαν, which Ellicott glosses as the wanton infliction of outrage). JFB names them contemptuous scorners and bitter persecutors. Benson identifies the second class with the scribes, Pharisees and chief priests, which is application, not parse.
⚙ The king ὠργίσθη, passive: he is made angry by an injury to himself. Pulpit records that the leading uncials lack "having heard." On the armies our sources are more confident than anywhere else in the unit: JFB and Pulpit both style the Romans God's armies on the analogy of Isaiah 10:5, and Cambridge says the soldiers of Titus literally achieved the purposes of God. Benson passes on Doddridge's candid admission that the sack of a city cannot fit inside the interval of a cooling dinner, so the clause stands by prolepsis. Then the parable turns outward. διεξόδους τῶν ὁδῶν is, in Ellicott's literal rendering, the openings of the ways, where there was a greater probability of meeting wayfarers; Barnes reads the Gentiles as those commonly regarded by the Jews as living in highways and hedges; Cambridge locates the meeting places of the nations at Rome, Antioch and Corinth. The gathered company is πονηρούς τε καὶ ἀγαθούς, and Pulpit notices that the bad are named first, to show the infinite graciousness of the king. Geneva states the tension the last movement will resolve: the general calling offers the gospel to all men, but those who enter in have their life examined. Ellicott and Cambridge both liken the hall to the dragnet of Matthew 13:47.
⚙ The king comes in θεάσασθαι, a verb Ellicott glosses as inspecting and Pulpit as gazing upon with intent to see the real nature of a thing. What he sees is a man not ἐνδεδυμένον a wedding garment. The sources supply a custom and then divide over its meaning. Ellicott holds the framework probably presupposes the Oriental custom of providing garments for guests at a royal feast; Benson supplies Homer and Diodorus and Doddridge; Barnes cites Genesis 45:22, 2 Kings 10:22 and Esther 6:8; Cambridge says the master of the feast himself provided the robe, so that there was no excuse; Pulpit is the honest dissenter, granting that traces of the custom exist but are "not very convincing." On what the garment is, Gill answers flatly the righteousness of Christ; Henry pairs imputed righteousness and the sanctification of the Spirit as both alike necessary; Ellicott calls the imputed-righteousness and baptismal answers at once too narrow and too technical and reads the garment as holiness; Benson quotes Calvin refusing the dispute altogether, since faith cannot be separated from good works nor good works proceed except from faith; Pulpit surveys Augustine's "faith with love" and declines to settle it. The man is ἐφιμώθη, muzzled, the same verb Matthew uses of the silenced Sadducees at 22:34, and Geneva presses the image to a halter about the neck. He is bound and thrown into the darkness that is outside, and Matthew's fixed formula of weeping and grinding teeth closes the scene. Then v. 14, which Barnes insists is the inference from the whole parable and not only from the garment, and which Poole reads as the doctrine that not all whom God calls externally are saved, but those alone who, belonging to the election of grace, are found at the judgment having on the wedding garment.
⚙ Read only against itself, this parable is built out of one root said five ways. The invited are κεκλημένοι, called; the slaves go to call them; the slaves are sent again to call whomever they find; and the last line says many are κλητοί. Everything turns on that verb, and the parable never once says the call failed. What fails is the answering. Two things follow that the commentators mostly keep apart. First, the parable is symmetrical in its refusals but not in its remedies: those who would not come are judged for not coming, and the one who came is judged for what he was not wearing, which means attendance is no more the qualification than absence is. Second, and this is where I think the Greek presses harder than the standard expositions: the feast is described twice as ready (v. 4, v. 8) and the victims as already sacrificed (perfect passive, v. 4), while the guest's garment is the one thing in the story whose provision is never narrated. The sources rightly infer, from Eastern custom and from the king's anger, that a robe must have been offered, and Pulpit is honest that the evidence for the custom is thin. The text's own silence is therefore load-bearing: the parable will say precisely who killed the oxen and who lit the fire, and it will not say who was to clothe the guest. What it does say is that when asked, the man had nothing to answer, and that the king called him ἑταῖρε, the same word Jesus gives Judas in the garden (Matthew 26:50, a rare term, only three verses in the New Testament). I take the parable to be aimed not at the man who stayed home with his field and his trade but at the man already reclining in the hall who assumes that being inside is the same as being clothed. That reading is fallible and offered to be tested: the parable ends on election (ἐκλεκτοί), and it does not tell us how the chosen got their clothes.
Not a verse but a machine reading, offered to be tested: the parable names who slaughtered the oxen and who lit the fire, and never names who was to clothe the guest.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
⚙ The noun γάμος (G1062) carries this unit, appearing at vv. 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, and it is rare in the Greek New Testament: the Verifier records it in only 16 verses in all. The same word stands at the Cana wedding (John 2:1-2), at the shut door of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:10), at the seating dispute of Luke 14:8, and at the marriage of the Lamb where an angel says "Blessed are those who are invited" (Revelation 19:7, 19:9), where the second shared lexeme is καλέω, the very verb of this parable. Ellicott sends the reader to Revelation 19:7-9 for the identity of the bride, and observes that the bride is withheld here; JFB says her absence is deliberate, since the parable must teach about guests and a garment.
Matthew 25:10 · John 2:1 · Luke 14:8 · Revelation 19:7 · Revelation 19:9
basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G1062 γάμος, rare at 16 verses in the New Testament, at Matthew 25:10, John 2:1-2, Luke 14:8, Revelation 19:7 and 19:9, with G2564 καλέω (140 vv) shared in the Luke and Revelation links. The lexeme is genuinely rare and all refs are New Testament, so a verbal tier was available; it is deliberately declined, because γάμος is the ordinary name of the institution and its recurrence across wedding narratives is a shared motif, not one passage quoting another.
⚙ Verse 13 closes with a formula Matthew repeats almost word for word: ἐκεῖ ἔσται ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων. The Verifier finds the same rare lexemes at Matthew 8:12 (where the outer darkness is first named, with βασιλεία and υἱός also shared), 13:42, 13:50, 24:51, 25:30 and Luke 13:28. κλαυθμός stands in only 9 verses and ὀδούς in 11, so this is a set phrase and not a coincidence of common words. Ellicott states that the description here is reproduced from Matthew 8:12 and in part from 13:50; JFB cross-refers 8:12 and 25:30; Barnes reads it of the future punishment of the hypocrite. Matthew 25:30 also shares δοῦλος with this unit three times over.
Matthew 8:12 · Matthew 13:42 · Matthew 13:50 · Matthew 24:51 · Matthew 25:30 · Luke 13:28
basis: Verifier: shared rare Greek lexemes G2805 κλαυθμός (in 9 vv) and G3599 ὀδούς (in 11 vv) with G1563 ἐκεῖ (94 vv) at Matthew 8:12, 13:42, 13:50, 24:51 and Luke 13:28; G1401 δοῦλος (118 vv) thrice at Matthew 25:30. A repeated Matthean formula, all refs within the New Testament.
⚙ The king's address in v. 12 is Ἑταῖρε (G2083), a vocative the Verifier finds in only 3 verses of the New Testament. One of them is Matthew 26:50, Jesus in the garden: "Friend, why have you come?" Another is Matthew 20:13, the householder to the grumbling laborer. Ellicott and Pulpit both cross-refer 20:13, and Pulpit notes that it was thus that Christ addressed Judas, adding that the term here has something of distrust and disapprobation in it; Barnes prefers to render it "companions" and warns that the word does not imply friendship; Gill wonders whether it is ironical. The Verifier also links Matthew 26:50 by κρατέω, the seizing verb of v. 6 here, which in that verse is turned on Jesus himself.
Matthew 20:13 · Matthew 26:50
basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G2083 ἑταῖρος, very rare at 3 verses in the New Testament, at Matthew 26:50, with G2902 κρατέω (46 vv) and G5119 τότε (158 vv) also shared; Matthew 20:13 is the third occurrence of the lexeme and is cross-cited by Ellicott and Pulpit. All refs are New Testament.
⚙ Luke 14:12 shares with v. 4 the rare noun ἄριστον (G712, only 3 verses) and the verb καλέω, and Luke 14:8 shares γάμος; Luke 14:16-24 tells a story of an invitation, refusals about a field and business, and a sending into the streets. Whether it is this story is exactly what our sources fight about. JFB says flatly it is a different parable, recorded by Matthew alone. Cambridge says it differs in context, special teaching and many details. Pulpit adds that Luke's was spoken earlier, in another locality, with a different object, and notably lacks the wedding garment. Poole reports that the discrepancy has made various interpreters think Matthew placed his out of order, and answers that he knows no reason why our Saviour may not have used the same parable twice. Because the relationship is disputed among the sources, this thread claims only the lexical contact, not identity of parable.
Luke 14:8 · Luke 14:12
basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G712 ἄριστον (rare, in 3 vv) and G2564 καλέω (140 vv) at Luke 14:12, and G1062 γάμος (16 vv) with G2564 καλέω at Luke 14:8. The lexical contact is real, but JFB, Cambridge and Pulpit hold the Lukan parable to be a different discourse while Poole allows a repetition, so no quotation or identity is claimed and the tier is held at thematic.
⚙ The feast of v. 4, with its slain beasts and its sent servants and its cry from the crossroads, stands on a prophetic pattern our sources name without hesitation. Benson sends the reader to Isaiah 25:6 and Isaiah 55:1-2; Ellicott says the fatlings point, under an imagery which Isaiah had already used at 25:6, to the spiritual blessings Christ came to offer; Pulpit compares the invitation of Wisdom at Proverbs 9:1, where beasts are killed, servants are sent and the call goes out from the highest places; Gill identifies this dinner with the feast of fat things for all peoples at Isaiah 25:6 and the furnished table of Proverbs 9:2, and with the free invitation of Isaiah 55:1-2. Because these are Hebrew texts and this one is Greek, no shared Strong's number can exist between them, and none of them is quoted here by a citation formula, so the link is pattern and motif only.
Isaiah 25:6-9 · Isaiah 55:1-2 · Proverbs 9:1-6
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so shared Strong's numbers are impossible by construction and a verbal tier is excluded. Basis is a shared pattern recorded independently by Benson (Isaiah 25:6, 55:1-2), Ellicott (Isaiah 25:6), Pulpit (Proverbs 9:1) and Gill (Isaiah 25:6, Proverbs 9:2): a feast of rich food spread by God, beasts slaughtered, servants sent, a free call to all. No citation formula appears in the BSB text of this unit.
⚙ Verses 6 and 7 rehearse a sequence the Hebrew historians had already written: God sends his messengers again and again, they are mistreated and killed, and the city is burned. 2 Chronicles 36:15-19 has all four beats, including the burning of the house and the city; Nehemiah 9:26 sums it as casting the law behind their backs and killing the prophets; Jeremiah 7:25-26 has the persistent sending of the servants the prophets and the stiffened neck, and 7:34 the ceasing of the voice of the bridegroom and the bride, which is the note this parable strikes in reverse. Ellicott, Cambridge, JFB, Barnes and Pulpit all read v. 7 of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and JFB and Pulpit both invoke Isaiah 10:5 for the principle that a foreign army can be God's rod. The Old Testament contact is pattern, not quotation: no formula introduces it and, being Hebrew against Greek, no shared lexeme can be computed.
2 Chronicles 36:15-19 · Nehemiah 9:26 · Jeremiah 7:25-26
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew): shared Strong's numbers cannot exist, so a verbal tier is excluded. Basis is the shared four-beat pattern (repeated sending of servants, mistreatment, killing, burning of the city) present in all three Hebrew texts and in Matthew 22:3-7, together with the commentators' uniform reading of v. 7 as the destruction of Jerusalem. No citation formula appears in the BSB text.
⚙ The wedding garment of vv. 11-12 is, on the reading our sources share, something given rather than owned. JFB says the language is drawn from Zephaniah 1:7-8, where the LORD prepares a sacrifice, bids his guests, and punishes all such as are clothed with strange apparel, and then hears in the garment the joy of Isaiah 61:10, "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation." Zechariah 3:3-5 stages the transaction itself: the filthy garments taken away, clean ones put on, by another's hand. Barnes and JFB both appeal to Genesis 45:22 and Esther 6:8-9 for the robe bestowed by a king, and Ellicott to the wardrobes of Eastern princes and to Isaiah 64:6 for the filthy rags worn instead. This is a figural reading, and it is the one the tradition holds: Gill, Henry, Cambridge and Benson all take the garment as given, not made. Pulpit is the useful dissenter on the alleged custom and Ellicott on the dogmatic shortcuts, and neither denies the figure.
Isaiah 61:10 · Zechariah 3:3-5 · Zephaniah 1:7-8
basis: A figural reading of the garment, cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew) so no shared Strong's lexeme is computable and a verbal tier is excluded. Widely held rather than novel: JFB names Zephaniah 1:7-8 and Isaiah 61:10 explicitly, Ellicott names Isaiah 64:6 for the filthy rags. The Zechariah 3 link is the machine's addition to their list and is offered as pattern only. The separate question of whether kings actually issued festal robes is flagged in its own thread and is not load-bearing here.
⚙ Almost every expositor of vv. 11-12 supports the reading "a robe was offered and refused" by appeal to an Oriental custom of presenting festal garments, and the texts they cite are these. Barnes lists Genesis 45:22, 2 Kings 10:22, Esther 6:8 and Esther 8:15 and says that to refuse such a present was an expression of highest contempt; JFB cites Genesis 45:22 and 2 Kings 5:22 while conceding the custom is "nor clearly proved" (so the printed text) and calling it presupposed rather than demonstrated; Ellicott appeals to the wardrobes of Eastern princes and to Jehu's assembly at 2 Kings 10:22; Benson goes outside Scripture entirely, to Homer's Odyssey and to Diodorus on Gellias the Sicilian. Pulpit is the dissenter who should be heard: he grants the traces in Genesis 45:22, Judges 14:12, 2 Kings 5:22 and 2 Kings 10:22 but judges them "not very convincing," and offers a Roman parallel (cenatoria in Martial) instead. ⚙ None of these passages describes a wedding, and none describes a garment issued at the door of a feast. The link is flagged, not because the verses are doubtful, but because they are routinely made to carry an inference about first-century banquet practice that they do not state.
Genesis 45:22 · 2 Kings 10:22 · Esther 6:8-9
basis: Contested provenance. The alleged custom of providing wedding garments is asserted by Ellicott, Benson, Barnes, Cambridge and JFB on the strength of Genesis 45:22, 2 Kings 5:22, 2 Kings 10:22, Judges 14:12 and Esther 6:8, but JFB concedes it is not clearly proved and Pulpit calls those very traces not very convincing. Cross-Testament in any case (Greek to Hebrew), so no shared Strong's lexeme is computable and no verbal tier is possible. Flagged so that the reading of vv. 11-12 is not treated as resting on a settled historical datum.
⚙ The parse of v. 13 gives ἐξώτερον (G1857) as a comparative adjective: not merely outer darkness but the darkness that is further out. JFB catches the force: the expression is emphatic, the darkness which is outside. Ellicott sets the contrast concretely, the bridal chamber with its lights and mirth against the midnight darkness outside the palace; Cambridge calls it the dark dungeon outside the brightness of the banqueting hall. The Hebrew Scriptures supply the two halves of the image separately: Isaiah 8:22 the driving into darkness and gloom for those who would not hear, and Psalm 112:10 the wicked who sees and gnashes his teeth. Neither is quoted here, and the link across the Testaments cannot be lexical.
Isaiah 8:22 · Psalm 112:10
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so shared Strong's numbers are unavailable and a verbal tier is excluded. Basis is shared motif: exclusion into darkness (Isaiah 8:22) and the gnashing of the wicked's teeth (Psalm 112:10), the two elements Matthew joins in the formula of v. 13. No citation formula appears in the text; the Matthean formula's own verbal chain is recorded in the separate Matthew 8:12 thread.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
⚙ The parable is not about a feast in general but about a wedding made for the son, and every sending, every refusal and every sentence is measured by that dative. Ellicott says the king is none other than God and the wedding that between Christ and his Church, the redeemed and purified Israel, and sends us to Revelation 19:7-9; Pulpit lists John 3:29, 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 5:23 and Revelation 19:7 for the same union; JFB, quoting Trench, says the Lord here reveals himself in clearer light as the central Person of the kingdom, his race royal, himself at once the King and the King's Son, and reads Psalm 45 as the marriage consummated in Messiah; Gill makes the Father the one who contracts the marriage and presents the bride; Poole calls the marriage the exhibition of the covenant of grace. The rare noun γάμος ties the scene to Cana and to the marriage of the Lamb. This is the apostolic reading, held in common by Ellicott, JFB, Gill, Poole, Pulpit, Benson and Henry alike.
Revelation 19:7-9 · Ephesians 5:23-27 · Psalm 45:6-7
⚙ The sharpest christological word in the unit is a participle: τεθυμένα, perfect passive of θύω (G2380), the verb of sacrifice. Geneva's marginal note records that the word is commonly used in sacrifices, and that feasts and banquets usually began with sacrifices. The perfect says the victims lie already slain, which is why the herald's message is not "come and help" but "everything is ready." JFB draws the line himself, to 1 Corinthians 5:7, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore, let us keep the feast," and then to John 6:51, the living bread which is his flesh given for the life of the world; Pulpit says the great Sacrifice has been offered, the Victim slain. Read this way the gospel call is an announcement about a completed action, and every refusal in vv. 3-6 is a refusal of something finished rather than of something proposed. The tense is sourced; the weight placed on it here is the machine's.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8 · John 6:51
⚙ One guest is destroyed not for coming but for how he came. The tradition is remarkably united on the direction of the logic, if not on the label: the garment comes from the giver. Cambridge says the festive robe was provided by the master of the feast himself, so that there was no excuse; Benson says a robe was offered but refused, and adds Calvin's point that God requires holiness in order to our receiving the benefits of the gospel but is graciously pleased to work it in us by his Holy Spirit; Gill names it outright as the garment of Christ's righteousness, the clothing of wrought gold in which the saints are brought into the king's presence; Henry insists the imputed righteousness of Christ and the sanctification of the Spirit are both alike necessary, and that no man has the wedding garment by nature or can form it for himself; JFB asks what it can mean but putting on the Lord Jesus, the Lord our Righteousness, and hears behind it Isaiah 61:10. Ellicott resists both the baptismal and the imputation answers as too narrow and reads the garment as the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), which is a real difference of doctrine inside a shared figure. ⚙ What the text itself supplies is only this: the man had nothing to say. The king's question was answerable if he had provided his own clothing, and he was muzzled.
Isaiah 61:10 · Romans 13:14 · Zechariah 3:4
⚙ The parable's most unsettling christological note is a single vocative. Ἑταῖρε occurs in only three verses of the New Testament, and one of them is Matthew 26:50, where Jesus says it to the man kissing him in the garden. Pulpit makes the connection explicitly and hears in it distrust and disapprobation; Barnes warns the word does not imply friendship and renders it "companions"; Gill takes it as ironical or as addressed to one who professed to be a friend of God. ⚙ Reading the two scenes together, the machine's own suggestion, the parable's judgment scene is voiced in the register of betrayal rather than of trial: the sentence falls on an intimate, at the table, and the king speaks it in the vocabulary of fellowship. This pairing is not asserted by any of our sources as a typology; only the lexical contact is sourced, and Pulpit alone draws the Judas line.
Matthew 26:50 · Matthew 20:13
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
⚙ Sources and uncertainties specific to this unit. Text. Three places in the BSB base text are contested and our commentators name them. At v. 7 Pulpit reports that the Sinaitic, Vatican and other authorities omit ἀκούσας, "heard thereof," and judges it a probable gloss; the BSB reflects the shorter reading. At v. 10 Ellicott notes that some of the most ancient manuscripts give "the bride-chamber (νυμφών) was furnished," and thinks it looks like a gloss, while Pulpit lists the Sinaitic and Vatican for νυμφών and follows Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort in weighing it, but keeps the received text; the BSB's "wedding hall" renders γάμος. At v. 13 both Ellicott and Cambridge report that "Take him away" is wanting in many of the best manuscripts (Cambridge: "Omit, on the best MS. authority"), and Gill records its absence from the Vulgate, Syriac, Arabic and Munster's Hebrew Gospel while noting it stands in all the ancient Greek copies he had; the BSB does not print it. Interlinear. The supplied word list for v. 13 shows the article τὸ twice, at indices 14 and 15, before ἐξώτερον σκότος; this reflects the Greek construction τὸ σκότος τὸ ἐξώτερον, in which a second article governs the attributive adjective, rendered in the list out of its English order. Several glosses in the list are placeholders (". . ." or "vvv") where the interlinear carries no separate English word; those cells are not evidence about the Greek. Sources. Matthew Henry's entry is a single block on 22:1-14 and is therefore repeated identically under every verse of this unit; Poole's per-verse entries all read "See Poole on Matthew 22:14," so his substance is available only at v. 14, and his 22:14 entry is itself capped here. Gill's entries at vv. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and Pulpit's at v. 11 are capped in the brief, so material beyond the excerpt cap was not consulted. What is uncertain. The Eastern custom of providing garments to guests, on which the standard reading of vv. 11-12 depends, is asserted by Ellicott, Benson, Barnes, Cambridge and JFB, but JFB concedes it is not clearly proved (his printed text reads "nor clearly proved") and Pulpit calls the alleged traces in Genesis 45:22, Judges 14:12, 2 Kings 5:22 and 2 Kings 10:22 "not very convincing." The identity of the wedding garment is openly disputed in our own sources (Gill: imputed righteousness; Henry: imputation and sanctification together; Ellicott: holiness, rejecting both baptism and imputation as too narrow; Benson, via Calvin, refusing the dispute), and this synthesis does not settle it. Whether Luke 14:16-24 is the same parable is likewise disputed (JFB, Cambridge and Pulpit say no; Poole allows repetition). Benson relays Doddridge's admission that v. 7 must be read as prolepsis, since the destruction of a city cannot fit the narrative interval. No formula quotation of the Old Testament appears in the BSB text of this unit, so every Old Testament thread here is tiered thematic or typological and none is tiered verbal.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)