"Virgins," and why this translation says girls. Parthenos does mean a virgin, and it is the word at 1:23's quotation of Isaiah. But in a wedding context it is simply the ordinary word for an unmarried young woman — the bridal party — and English "virgins" now carries a weight of sexual reference the parable does not use: nothing in the story turns on chastity, and the difference between the two fives is oil. KJV ASV read "virgins," NIV "virgins" with "bridesmaids" in some editions, NWT "virgins." This translation reads girls and puts the word in the note, which is the reverse of the usual practice and is stated so the reader can weigh it.

Foolish and sensible. Mōrai and phronimoi — and phronimos is the Gospel's word for practical shrewdness, used of the man who built on rock (7:24), of the serpents the disciples are told to imitate (10:16) and of the "faithful and sensible slave" eleven verses before this chapter (24:45). It is not intelligence; it is foresight about how things actually work.

⚠ The bridegroom is late, and everyone falls asleep. Read v5 carefully: "while the bridegroom was taking his time" — chronizontos, the same verb the wicked slave used as his excuse at 24:48 — "they all became drowsy and slept." Both groups. The parable does not fault the sleeping, which is worth stating because the moral drawn from it is usually vigilance: what separates the two fives is a decision taken before the waiting began, and the sleep is common ground. Note too that the sensible ones refuse to share, and are not criticized for it: some things cannot be lent at the last minute, which is the parable's actual claim.

The door. Ekleisthē hē thyra — and then "I do not know you," which is the formula from the end of the Sermon (7:23), where it also answers people calling him "Lord, lord." ⚠ And v13's closing imperative is grēgoreite, stay awake — the exact word chapter 24 ended its own argument on (24:42), which chapter 24's note said would return here. The Byzantine text adds "in which the Son of Man comes" to the end of v13; the earliest manuscripts do not have it, and KJV's "wherein the Son of man cometh" is that addition.

The amounts are not modest, and English has lost the word. A talent was a weight of silver worth roughly six thousand denarii — about twenty years of a labourer's wages. So the smallest share here is two decades of income, and the largest is a century of it; the dictionary entry for this word was written at 18:24, where the debt was ten thousand talents. ⚠ Note what English did with it: "talent" in the sense of a natural gift descends from this parable — the metaphor is so old it has swallowed the coin, and modern readers hear "use your abilities" in a sentence about money. The Greek says silver, and v27 says bankers and interest.

"To each according to his own ability." Kata tēn idian dynamin — the distribution is unequal and calibrated, and the two who invested get identical commendations (vv21, 23 are word-for-word the same). The reward is not proportional to the amount returned. That is the parable's answer to the obvious complaint about unfairness, and it is easy to miss because the sentences are so alike that the eye skips one.

⚠ And the third slave is not simply lying about his master. He calls him sklēros — hard, harsh, the word for unyielding — "reaping where you did not sow," and the master's reply does not deny it: "You knew that I reap where I did not sow?" He argues from the slave's own premise rather than correcting it. Whether the master is meant to be an accurate picture of God, or deliberately not (a reading that takes the parable as an indictment of an exploitative system, with the buried talent as refusal rather than sloth) has been argued at length; the library sets out both and notes that the framing sentence at v14 is "it is like a man going abroad," not "like God." The charge finally laid is not dishonesty but fear — "I was afraid" (v25) — and the verdict names laziness, though what the slave actually did was take the one action that guaranteed no loss.

The line that came from chapter 13. "To everyone who has, it will be given" (v29) is the principle stated bare at 13:12, in the explanation of why he speaks in parables — and chapter 13's note said this story would build an entire narrative around it. Here it is, with the accounting attached.

Not a parable, quite. It opens with one simile (a shepherd separating a flock) and then stops being figurative: there is a throne, and a verdict, and the criteria are itemized. Matthew has put it at the end of the last discourse, and it is the last thing Jesus teaches in this Gospel before the passion begins.

Sheep and goats, and why they are separated at all. Eriphoi are young goats, and mixed flocks were normal — goats were often penned separately at night because they are less tolerant of cold. So the image is a routine evening task, not a dramatic one, which is part of its force. Note that the animals are not separated by appearance: a shepherd knows which is which, and neither group in the story does.

The six items, and their ordinariness. Food, water, welcome, clothes, care in sickness, a visit in prison. ⚠ There is nothing religious in the list — no belief, no worship, no confession — which is the single most commented-on fact about the passage, and this translation prints the list plainly and lets it stand.

⚠ "One of these least ones of my brothers" — the crux, and a detail the shelf can settle. Elachistos is the superlative of mikros, "least" or "smallest," and Matthew has used the mikros family of the vulnerable inside the community (18:6, 10, 14) and adelphos, "brother," of disciples (23:8). Hence the two readings: (1) the least are the poor and afflicted generally, so the nations are judged by their treatment of the needy; (2) the least are Christ's own disciples — the missionaries of 10:40-42, where a cup of cold water given to a "little one" is rewarded — so the nations are judged by how they received the messengers. ⚠ One textual detail cuts against tidiness in either direction: v40 says "these least ones of my brothers," and v45, giving the same verdict in reverse, says only "these least ones," dropping the qualifier. The library reports the readings, prints the asymmetry rather than harmonizing it, and does not vote.

And the thing both groups say. ⚠ "When did we see you?" — asked by the righteous at v37 and by the cursed at v44, in almost the same words. Neither group knew. That is the point the structure is making and it is made by symmetry: the surprise is mutual, and nobody in the scene was keeping score.

The asymmetry in v41 is deliberate and easy to miss. The blessed inherit a kingdom "prepared for you from the founding of the world"; the cursed go into a fire "prepared for the devil and his angels." The two destinations are not described as symmetrical preparations, and the second one names a different intended occupant. Whatever weight that carries, it is in the text.

⚠ Aiōnios. The adjective of aiōn, an age. It is applied to both outcomes in the same sentence (v46), which is the strongest argument that whatever it means, it means the same thing twice. But what it means is genuinely contested: "everlasting" in duration, or "of the age to come" in quality — the Greek Old Testament uses it of things that demonstrably ended (the Aaronic priesthood, the Passover ordinance), and the New Testament uses it of life that is emphatically unending. The shelf mostly reads "eternal" or "everlasting" and does not flag the question; NWT reads "everlasting."

⚠ And kolasis. Not the ordinary word for punishment (timōria, retribution) but a word whose root sense is pruning, and which in some Greek usage carries the idea of correction rather than mere penalty — though by the first century it is used plainly of punishment, and 1 John 4:18 pairs it with fear. KJV ASV read "everlasting punishment," NIV "eternal punishment," NWT "everlasting cutting-off," which is a doctrinal rendering (the Watch Tower Society denies conscious eternal torment) and is flagged as one — it is defensible from the root and is not what the word plainly means in first-century use.

Where that leaves the sentence. ⚠ These two words are the textual ground of a very old three-way argument: eternal conscious punishment (the majority historic reading); annihilation, where the punishment is everlasting destruction rather than everlasting experience; and the universalist reading, where kolasis is remedial and aiōnios is age-qualified. Each has held serious readers from the early centuries on — Augustine argued the first at length precisely because others around him held the third. The library's job here is to say what the Greek does and does not settle: it puts one adjective on both destinies, it chooses a noun that is not the standard word for retribution, and it does not define either term. This translation prints "eternal punishment" and "eternal life," flags both words, and does not vote.

And the last thing he teaches. After five discourses, the final criterion is not doctrine, or vigilance, or productivity — the three previous parables were about all three. It is whether anyone got fed. The library will observe that and leave it.