Matthew 20:12

heir grievous complaint. οὗτοι, these, with a workman's contempt for a sham-worker. ἐποίησαν. Some (Wetstein, Meyer, Goebel, etc.) render, spent = they put in their one hour: without doing any work to speak of. The verb is used in this sense (e.g., Acts 15:33), and one is strongly tempted to adopt this rendering as true to the contemptuous feeling of the twelve-hour men for the one-hour men. Kypke remarks against it that if ἐποίησαν had been meant in this sense = “commorati sunt,” the word ὧδε = ἐν τῷ ἀμπελῶνι would have been added. Perhaps the strongest reason against it is that the one-hour men had worked with such good will (that goes without saying) that even prejudiced fellow-workers could not ignore the fact. So we must take ἐποίησαν = worked. τὸ βάρος, τὸν καύσωνα : these the points of their case: not that they had worked hard while the others had not, but that they had borne the burden of a whole day's work, and worked through the heat of the day, and now came to be paid, weary and sweat-stained. (Some take καύσωνα as referring to the sirocco or south-east wind; hot, dry and dust-laden. On the winds of Palestine, vide Benzinger, Heb. Arch., p. 30.) What was one hour in the late afternoon, however hard the last comers worked, to that! And yet they are made equal (ἴσους)! Surely good ground for complaint!