Summary Matthew has used the technique of allegory to reinterpret the traditional parable.91 When compared with the original parable of Jesus, allegorizing involves a real innovation. It furnished the most important of its metaphors—that of the master—with new meaning by applying the parable no longer to God but to Jesus. Only Jesus, the narrator and original “commentator” on the parable who was now absent, could preserve it from the misunderstanding of speaking of a “hard” God who demands that