Bible Discoveries

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells everything that he has, and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44, NASB® 95)

Jesus likens the kingdom to a man who finds treasure (see on 6:19) hidden in the field. Treasure might denote the place where valuables are kept (2:11), but here it is the valuable thing itself. In a day when places for keeping things safe that we take for granted (like the safe deposits in banks) did not exist people had to make their own arrangements. One method they employed was to bury their valuable possessions (as did the unprofitable servant who hid his talent, 25:25). If anyone did this before going off on a journey and failed to return, the possessions remained there and might be found later through a chance discovery like that in this parable. So too, in frequent wars, people would hide valuables to keep them from looting soldiers, and sometimes the owners would not survive. The field might be a piece of ground used for growing crops or grazing animals, but the term sometimes denotes country as opposed to city, so we cannot insist on the location being a farm or the like. When anyone found treasure like this, the legal position appears to have been that the finder was entitled to keep it.105 But acquiring legal title to such a find was not always straightforward. If the finder was an employee, his employer could argue that he was acting as his agent, especially if the employer happened to own the land where the find was made. And if he was his employer’s agent in “lifting” the treasure, then the treasure belonged to the employer. This will be the reason the man hid the treasure instead of “lifting” it straightaway; if he “lifted” it before the field was his, it might be argued that when he did the “lifting” he was acting as the owner’s agent. By buying the land before “lifting” the treasure, he removed all possibility of dispute. It is in this connection that we should understand the man’s buying the field (that he had to sell all he had to buy it indicates that he was a poor man). Sometimes it is objected that it was not a very honest thing for a man to do to buy up a field in which he knew there was treasure. But in the first instance, Jesus does not say that he kept his knowledge hidden; we cannot say for sure that he did not disclose it. And in the second, the legal position was that the find belonged to him, but buying the field was the surest way of making his possession absolutely secure.106 In any case Jesus is not dealing with the morality or the legality of the man’s action, but making the point that there can be treasure such that it is worth selling everything in order to possess it. So with membership in the kingdom.

Jesus says that the man was very happy over his discovery; finding treasure must surely be a joyful experience. The Greek here could mean “in his joy” (NRSV) or “joy of it” (i.e., the treasure; cf. Knox, “for the joy it gives him”), but in practice there is no significant difference. The man’s joy leads him to go off and buy the field, even though this means that he must first sell all he has. Jesus is not saying that a man may buy his way into the kingdom; that would fly in the face of all his teaching. The selling of all he has is rather a way of bringing out the truth that one should count all well lost for the sake of the kingdom.107 It may not appear to be riches from the world’s point of view, but membership in the kingdom has superlative value.

105, “Ownership of landed property is acquired by means of money, deed and possession … objects which are usually lifted can be acquired by hagbahah only” (B. Bat. 86a); hagbahah is defined in these terms: “(Lit., ‘a lifting7), a legal form of acquisition consisting in the lifting up of the object to be acquired” (Soncino B. Bat, p. 784). This means that in a case like that of buried treasure the man who found it had only to “lift” it to acquire legal title to it.
106, See the discussion by Derrett, Law, pp. 1-16.
107, “When a man will venture nothing for Christ’s sake, we must draw the sorrowful conclusion that he has not got the grace of God” (Ryle, p. 152).

Citation

Morris, L. (1995). 13. In The Gospel according to Matthew. Eerdmans.