Parable of the Friend at Midnight

Text and Content

This parable appears only in Luke 11:5–8 and has no parallel in the other Gospels. When one of the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1), Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer, and this parable follows immediately afterward.

A friend who is traveling arrives at a man's house at midnight, and the man has nothing to set before him. He goes to a neighboring friend and asks to borrow three loaves of bread. The neighbor replies that the door is already shut and that his children are in bed with him, so he cannot get up and give him anything. Jesus says that even if the neighbor will not get up simply because the man is his friend, "yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." The parable is followed by the saying "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." The passage concludes by observing that if even evil fathers give good gifts to their children, "how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" (Luke 11:5–13).

Background

In first-century Palestine, it is generally understood, an ordinary family often slept together in a single room. Getting up at midnight to unbolt the door was therefore a troublesome matter that would wake the entire household. At the same time, hospitality toward a visiting guest was regarded as a weighty obligation.

The Greek word rendered "importunity," anaideia, originally means "shamelessness" or "lack of shame," and it occurs only here in the New Testament.

Significance in the Wider Canon

This parable forms a pair with the Parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1–8), also found in Luke. Both parables concern prayer, and both feature a person who grants a request reluctantly. They argue from the lesser to the greater: if even such a person eventually grants the request, how much more will God do so. The saying about asking, seeking, and knocking also appears in Matthew 7:7–11. The difference is that Matthew says the Father gives "good things," whereas Luke says He gives "the Holy Spirit."

Interpretation and Issues

• Whose shamelessness? Traditionally, the word has been read as referring to the persistence of the one asking, and the parable has been understood as a teaching to pray with perseverance. Some scholars, however, point out that the referent of the Greek pronoun is ambiguous. They read the passage as saying that the sleeping neighbor gets up to avoid losing face, in which case the focus of the parable falls on the character of the one who grants the request.
• Likeness or contrast? Many interpreters do not regard God as being like the annoyed neighbor but instead read God as standing in contrast to him: unlike the neighbor who grants the request reluctantly, God gives willingly.
• Emphases in different traditions: The Pentecostal tradition tends to focus on the prayer for the Holy Spirit in 11:13 and to emphasize praying to be filled with the Spirit. The Reformed tradition tends to view prayer as a means of grace ordained by God and to emphasize the goodness of the Father who gives to those who ask.
• What the text does not say: The text does not say how many times the man knocked or how long he waited. Some allegorical interpretations have taken the three loaves to represent the Trinity or similar ideas, but the text itself does not indicate any such meaning.

In the Korean Church

In Korean Protestant churches, this parable is frequently cited as a text encouraging persistent prayer in sermons for early morning prayer meetings, special early morning prayer meetings, and committed prayer periods. It is also sometimes presented as a model of intercessory prayer, since the man made his request not for his own need but for the friend who had come to him.