Losing your job

And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.

In the parable, men are still standing in the marketplace at the eleventh hour, and asked why they are idle they answer, because no man hath hired us. The story takes it for granted that being out of work is usually about no one hiring.

Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.

A steward hears he is losing his position and does the arithmetic aloud: not strong enough to dig, too ashamed to beg. Jesus puts the panic and the shame in the man's own mouth before the parable goes anywhere else.

And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter. And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.

Widowed and foreign, Ruth goes out to glean behind the reapers because that is the work open to someone with no land. The narrator calls landing in Boaz's field her hap, her chance, and only later suggests there was more to it.

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.

The law behind Ruth's gleaning: landowners were forbidden to reap the corners of a field or strip a vineyard bare, because the leftovers belonged to the poor and the stranger. Provision was built into the harvest rather than left to goodwill.

After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth; And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.

Paul reaches Corinth with no support, finds Aquila and Priscilla, themselves displaced when Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, and works with them because they share a trade. His living came from tentmaking, beside people who had also lost their place.

For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.

Paul reminds the Thessalonians that he worked night and day so as not to be a burden to them while he preached. He calls it labour and travail, not something lightly carried.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

The race is not to the swift, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the skilled: time and chance happen to them all. It is a flat denial that outcomes track merit, written by someone who had watched closely.

And Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king’s prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison. But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph’s hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it. The keeper of the prison looked not to any thing that was under his hand; because the LORD was with him, and that which he did, the LORD made it to prosper.

Joseph, falsely accused, loses his post in Potiphar's house and lands in prison. The text says God was with him there, and then describes years of running that prison for someone else before anything changed. Favour did not mean a quick exit.

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

An old man's testimony that he has never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. It is what one person saw in one lifetime, set in a psalm about the long view. Taken as a guarantee it fails, and other psalms record that failure.