In Jesus’ parable today, a servant owes his king an astronomically large debt, literally (in the original Greek) “ten thousand talents.” A talent was an ancient measurement of weight equaling something like seventy-five pounds. If these talents were owed to the king in silver, in the ancient world that amount would equal roughly 150,000 years’ worth of day labor. That’s something akin to several billion dollars today. It represents an unpayable personal debt.
