Which owed him an hundred pence. — Here the calculation is simpler than in Matthew 18:24. The “hundred pence” are a hundred Roman denarii (the denarius being equal to sevenpence-halfpenny), a hundred days’ wages of the labourer and soldier, enough to provide a meal for 2,500 men (John 6:7). There is a considerable truthfulness in the choice of such a sum, which has, perhaps, been too little noticed. Had our Lord been seeking simply a rhetorical antithesis between the infinitely great and the infinitely little, it would have been easy to select some small coin, like the denarius, the as, or the quadrans, as the amount of the fellow-servant’s debt. But to the fishermen of Galilee the “hundred pence” would appear a really considerable sum, and when they came to interpret the parable they would thus be led to feel that it recognised that the offences which men commit against their brothers may, in themselves, be many and grievous enough. It is only when compared with their sins against God that they sink into absolute insignificance.
He laid hands on him. — We are shocked, and are meant to be shocked, by the brutal outrage with which the creditor enforces his claim, but it doubtless was but too faithful a picture of what the disciples had often witnessed, or, it may be, even practised. We are tempted to ask whether this really represents any phenomena of the spiritual life. Can a man who has really been justified and pardoned become thus merciless? The experience of every age, almost of every household, shows that the inconsistency is but too fatally common. The man is not consciously a hypocrite, but he is as yet “double minded” (James 1:8), and the baser self is not conquered. In the language of the later teaching of the New Testament the man’s faith is not one which “worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6). He is justified, but not as yet sanctified.