The Parable of the Wedding Feast is one of the parables of Jesus and appears in the New Testament in . It directly precedes the Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14:15âÂÂ24. In the Gospel of Matthew, the parallel passage to the Gospel of Luke's Parable of the Great Banquet is also set as a wedding feast ().
In New Testament times, a wedding was a very sacred and joyous thing. Some even lasted up to or more than a week. When Jesus told this parable, many people were able to understand the picture he was trying to create because he used a Jewish wedding â specifically, a Seudat Nissuin â as the setting of the story.
Luke 14:11 says "Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted"; this saying is also found in and . It is similar to .
Bede notes that in practice, "not every one who exalts himself before men is abased; nor is he who humbleth himself in their sight, exalted by them". So the parable must be "understood typically".
The German theologian Friedrich Justus Knecht ( 1921) gives the typical Catholic interpretation of this parable:
Roger Baxter in his Meditations, reflects on this passage, writing: