What the five, two and one talents in Matthew 25 really meant, measured in wages, weight and today's terms.
A talent in the Bible was a unit of weight, not a coin. In New Testament times, a talent of silver equaled about 6,000 denarii, and a denarius was a day's wage for a laborer (Matthew 20:2). That puts one talent at roughly 20 years of work. So in the parable of the talents, the servant who received "only" one talent was handed something like a lifetime of earnings.
Before coins were common, people paid in metal by weight. The talent was the largest unit, roughly what a man could carry. The Hebrew word is kikkar, meaning something round, probably for the round disks or ingots of metal. The Greek word is talanton, from a root meaning a balance or something weighed.
Scripture lets us calculate the Old Testament talent. In Exodus 38:25-26, 603,550 men each gave half a shekel, for a total of 100 talents and 1,775 shekels. That works out to 3,000 shekels per talent. Most reference works put that at about 34 kilograms, around 75 pounds.
By the time of Jesus, Greek and Roman money was in everyday use, and a talent was reckoned as 60 minas or 6,000 drachmas. Estimates of its weight vary by region and period, usually somewhere around 20 to 26 kilograms.
| Unit | Equals | Approx. days of wages | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lepton ("small copper coins") | 1/128 denarius | a few minutes | Mark 12:42, the widow's two small copper coins |
| Assarion ("penny") | 1/16 denarius | under an hour | Matthew 10:29, two sparrows |
| Denarius | 1 denarius | 1 day | Matthew 20:2, the vineyard workers |
| Drachma ("silver coins") | about 1 denarius | 1 day | Luke 15:8, the lost coin |
| Stater ("shekel") | 4 drachmas | 4 days | Matthew 17:27, the coin in the fish |
| Mina | 100 drachmas | about 100 days | Luke 19:13, the parable of the minas |
| Talent | 60 minas = 6,000 drachmas | about 6,000 days | Matthew 18:24; 25:15 |
Names in parentheses are the English Standard Version (ESV) renderings. Values are approximate and varied across the ancient world.
A denarius was a fair day's pay for a laborer. A talent was about 6,000 denarii. A worker who rested on the Sabbath and the feasts might work around 300 days a year, so one talent was close to 20 years of wages.
To translate that into today's money, multiply 6,000 by a day's pay. At $100 a day, one talent is $600,000. At $150 a day, it is $900,000. At $200 a day, it is $1.2 million. The exact figure depends on whose wages you use, but the scale is clear: a talent was a fortune for an ordinary person.
You can also price a talent by the value of its weight in silver at today's market price. That method produces a much smaller number, often in the tens of thousands of dollars, because silver was far more valuable relative to a day's labor in the ancient world than it is now. A gold talent would be worth many times more than a silver one. For understanding the parable, the wage method gets closer to what Jesus' listeners would have felt.
| Servant | Received | Approx. days of wages | Approx. years of wages | Returned |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | 5 talents | 30,000 | about 100 | 10 talents |
| Second | 2 talents | 12,000 | about 40 | 4 talents |
| Third | 1 talent | 6,000 | about 20 | 1 talent, unused |
Three things stand out. First, the master was extraordinarily generous to all three servants. Second, the master calls five talents "a little" (Matthew 25:21), which tells us how much more he has in store for the faithful. Third, the servant with the smallest amount still held more than most people would earn in decades. His problem was never that he had too little.
The money in verse 18 is called argyrion, the ordinary Greek word for silver money, which is why most scholars think these were silver talents. Some modern translations say "bags of gold" to help readers feel the size of the gift.
In English, "talent" usually means a natural gift, like a talent for music. That meaning came from this parable. For centuries Christian teachers applied the talents to God-given abilities, and eventually the word itself came to mean ability. It is a good reminder that the parable is about more than money, and also that, in the story itself, the talents were very real money.
For what the parable means and how it applies to stewardship today, read The Parable of the Talents: Meaning, Context and Lessons. For the retirement side, see The Parable of the Talents and Your Retirement Plan. For the whole chapter, see the Matthew 25 summary.
Measured by wages, a New Testament talent was about 6,000 days of a laborer's pay, close to 20 years of work. Multiply 6,000 by a modern day's wage to get a rough picture: at $150 a day that is $900,000. Measured only by its weight in silver, it is worth far less, because silver bought much more labor in the ancient world.
About 6,000. In the Greek system a talent was 60 minas, a mina was 100 drachmas, and a drachma was roughly equal to a Roman denarius.
Five talents is about 30,000 days of wages (roughly 100 years), two talents about 12,000 days (roughly 40 years), and one talent about 6,000 days (roughly 20 years). Even the one-talent servant received a fortune.
Estimates vary. The Old Testament talent of 3,000 shekels is usually put at about 34 kilograms (around 75 pounds). The Greek talent of New Testament times is often estimated at about 20 to 26 kilograms (around 45 to 57 pounds).
A talent could be measured in either. In Matthew 25 it was most likely silver: verse 18 calls the buried talent his master's "money," and the Greek word there, argyrion, literally means silver. Some modern translations say "bags of gold."
About 60 million denarii, or roughly 200,000 years of a laborer's wages. Jesus chose an amount no servant could ever repay, and set it beside a fellow servant's debt of 100 denarii (Matthew 18:28).
A mina was one sixtieth of a talent, about 100 days' wages. The parable in Luke 19 uses minas, a much smaller sum than the talents of Matthew 25.
The modern meaning grew out of this parable. Christian readers applied the talents to God-given abilities for so long that the word itself came to mean natural ability.
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