to abrogate justice, and the parable, with the restraint vital to a parable, leaves the reader to struggle with the tension. The parable is consistent in its own frame of values: twice it is said that the younger son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found (vv. 24, 32). The reader might have expected, on the literary principle of end stress, that the final phrase would have been “was dead, is alive” on the assumption that no condition is worse than death, no condition is better than life.