Prodigal Son. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the parables of Jesus in the Bible and appears in Luke 15:11-32. Jesus shares it with his disciples, the Pharisees and others. In the story, a father has two sons. The younger son asks the father for his inheritance, and the father grants his son's request. However, the younger son is prodigal and squanders his fortune, eventually becoming destitute. The younger son is forced to return home empty-handed and intends to beg his father to accept him back as a servant. To the son's surprise, he is not scorned by his father but is welcomed back with celebration and fanfare. Envious, the older son refuses to participate in the festivities. The father tells the older son you are ever with me, and all that I have is yours, but thy younger brother was lost and now he is found. It is the third and final part of a cycle on redemption, following the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin. In Revised Common Lectionary and Roman Rite Catholic Lectionary, this parable is read on the fourth Sunday of Lent; in the latter it is also included in the long form of the Gospel on the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year C, along with the preceding two parables of the cycle. In the Eastern Orthodox Church it is read on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. The parable begins with a man who had two sons, and the younger of them asks his father to give him his share of the estate. The implication is the son could not wait for his father's death for his inheritance, he wanted it immediately. The father agrees and divides his estate between both sons. Upon receiving his portion of the inheritance, the younger son travels to a distant country and wastes all his money in extravagant living. Immediately thereafter, a famine strikes the land; he becomes desperately poor and is forced to take work as a swineherd. When he reaches the point of envying the food of the pigs he is watching, he finally comes to his senses: And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. Luke 15:17-20, King James Version This implies the father was hopefully watching for the son's return. In most versions of Luke, the son does not even have time to finish his rehearsed speech, as the father calls for his servants to dress him in a fine robe, a ring, and sandals, and slaughter the fattened calf for a celebratory meal. The older son, who was at work in the fields, hears the sound of celebration, and is told about the return of his younger brother. He is not impressed, and becomes angry. He also has a speech for his father: And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf; Luke 15:29-30, King James Version The parable concludes with the father explaining that because the younger son had returned, in a sense, from the dead, celebration was necessary: It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found; Luke 15:32, King James Version The opening, A man had two sons is a storyteller's trope and would immediately bring to mind Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, and Esau and Jacob. Jesus then confounds the listeners' expectations when the younger son is shown to be foolish. While a number of commentators see the request of the younger son for his share of the inheritance as brash, even insolent and tantamount to wishing that the father was dead, Jewish legal scholar Bernard Jackson says Jewish sources give no support to that the prodigal, in seeking the advance, wishes his father dead. The young man's actions do not lead to success, he squanders his inheritance and he eventually becomes an indentured servant, with the degrading job of looking after pigs, and even envying them for the carob pods they eat.