<p>20:3&nbsp;<em>And he went out about the third hour and saw others</em>- Here is an insight into how the Lord &lsquo;foresees&rsquo; potential workers / believers, but it is over to them if they respond to the call given. Truly God and His Son are in search of man.</p><p><em>Standing idle</em>- The Greek&nbsp;<em>argos</em>&nbsp;definitely means &lsquo;lazy&rsquo; and isn&rsquo;t a particularly positive word to use about someone (Some young widows became&nbsp;<em>argos</em>, gossiping and interfering where they ought not because they had nothing better to do, 1 Tim. 5:13; Cretans were rumoured to be lazy,&nbsp;<em>argos,&nbsp;</em>Tit. 1:12). The word means literally a non-worker. These men hadn&rsquo;t been hired because they were lazy. The ones the Master was so eager to use were in fact not very good workers, in fact they were non-workers. The hard workers obviously had a problem with the acceptance of these men, and their being treated on the same basis as themselves. This section thus continues the theme begun in chapter 18 and developed throughout this set of material which this parable concludes- see on 19:1. The hard workers equate with the disciples who didn&rsquo;t want to accept or forgive the &ldquo;little one&rdquo;, the man who would not forgive others their inadequacies and ended up condemned, the big debtor who refused to forgive others their minor debt to him. This parable finishes with the harder workers rebuked and possibly even rejected- and these lazier ones accepted. The point is that the harder workers were disciplined / rejected because of their despising of their weaker brethren.</p><p>If we insist on reading&nbsp;<em>argos</em>&nbsp;as meaning strictly those without work, then another challenging lesson is presented. All human endeavour and achievement is a standing around doing nothing- compared to the ultimate achievement of harvesting for the Lord, of working with the Lord in His work of bringing people to eternity and to ultimate existence.</p><p><em>In the marketplace</em>- The Lord&rsquo;s preceding usage of this term had been in the context of the work of preaching. He had spoken of how His disciples were like children in marketplaces appealing to others to respond to His message (11:16). But in this parable, the men in the marketplace were inactive and lazy. And yet at the end of the parable, these are the ones who are more acceptable than those who work harder but reject the lazy workers. The similar usage of &ldquo;the marketplace&rdquo; in these two parables suggests that whilst it is the Lord&rsquo;s followers who appeal to other children, their &lsquo;fellows&rsquo; in humanity, it is also the Lord personally who works through them to make the appeal.</p>