What meaning would the loss of a drachma coin in Jesus’ parable have to his listeners? A drachma coin Jesus told the parable of a woman who after losing one of the ten drachmas she possessed took a lamp and swept her house carefully until she found it again. (Luke 15:8-10) In Jesus’ day, a drachma was worth almost a day’s wage, so the monetary loss Jesus illustrated was not trivial. Yet, the scene he described was true to life for other reasons. Some reference works indicate that women often used coins as ornaments. Jesus may thus have alluded to a coin that was part of a cherished heirloom or part of a woman’s dowry. Whether this was the case or not, losing one of her ten coins would understandably make the woman extremely anxious to recover it. The houses of common people in Jesus’ day, moreover, were designed to keep out as much light and heat as possible. They had few, if any, windows. The floors were usually covered with straw or dried stems of various plants. If a coin was dropped, it would be hard to find. “Hence,” says one commentator, “when a comparatively small article, like a piece of money, was lost in such a place, the lighting of a lamp, and the sweeping of the house, were the most natural means to be used for its recovery.”
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 10:55:59 +0000
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