MATTHEW 13:44: HIDDEN TREASURE - PART 1

The Hidden Treasure (Matthew 13:44)

This parable is illuminated by Matthew 6:20-21 where the same word "treasure" is used: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth...For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

The first thing to do is look at the physical picture of what is happening. In the days before banks, it was quite a usual practice for someone to bury their valuables in the ground to keep them from any thieves or marauding soldiers. The original owner of the treasure either forgot where he had buried it or, more likely, died without telling anyone else. 

Now why was the man digging around in someone else's yard? He was probably a tenant farmer or a servant to the owner who was preparing the soil for planting. 

France notes that there is an unusual switch from the past tense to the present tense at the end of this story: “He goes and sells and buys.” This makes the story more vivid and highlights the joy of his discovery. We will discuss the obvious moral issue of the man not revealing his discovery to the rightful owner in a later post when we look at the “immorality” of some of Jesus' parables.

As an interesting contrast to this parable, consider Erskine Caldwell's semi-comical novel (and later movie) God's Little Acre.  The farmer in the story has a certain plot of land in which he believes a treasure has been buried. At the same time, he has set aside one acre in which all profits of that area are dedicated to God. As he is randomly digging for the treasure, he continually moves the boundary of God's acre so that any treasure will go to himself rather than God. At the end of the book, he has moved God's acre to a swamp to ensure that he will never have to give anything at all to God.  This story itself is an interesting parable that we might want to consider as it applies to ourselves.