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Parable of the Wedding Feast

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1025100

Parable of the Wedding Feast

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Parable of the Wedding Feast

The Parable of the Wedding Feast is one of the parables of Jesus and appears in the New Testament in Luke 14:7–14. It directly precedes the Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14:15–24. In the Gospel of Matthew, the parallel passage to the Gospel of Luke's Parable of the Great Banquet is also set as a wedding feast (Matthew 22:1–14).

In New Testament times, a wedding was a very sacred and joyous thing. Some even lasted up to or more than a week. When Jesus told this parable, many people were able to understand the picture he was trying to create because he used a Jewish wedding – specifically, a Seudat Nissuin – as the setting of the story.

Luke 14:11 says "Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted"; this saying is also found in Luke 18:14 and Matthew 23:12. It is similar to Matthew 18:4.

He spoke a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the best seats, and said to them, "When you are invited by anyone to a marriage feast, don't sit in the best seat, since perhaps someone more honorable than you might be invited by him, and he who invited both of you would come and tell you, 'Make room for this person'. Then you would begin, with shame, to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may tell you, 'Friend, move up higher.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

He also said to the one who had invited him, "When you make a dinner or a supper, don't call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back. But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; and you will be blessed, because they don't have the resources to repay you. For you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous."

— Luke 14:7–14, World English Bible

Bede notes that in practice, "not every one who exalts himself before men is abased; nor is he who humbleth himself in their sight, exalted by them". So the parable must be "understood typically".

The German theologian Friedrich Justus Knecht (d. 1921) gives the typical Catholic interpretation of this parable:

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