The Parable of “The Lost Son”

A few months ago I was studying Modern Hebrew verb forms when I came across an interesting bit of information that led me to some deeper scripture study and, later, to create this blog post. One of the best features of the dictionary I was reading, Barron’s 501 Hebrew Verbs, is that it includes a list of examples of common phases or sayings related to each verb. On this occasion I was reviewing the verb leh-eh-VOHD (לֶאֱבוֹד), which means “to lose, be lost, perish, stray, die, cease.” At the bottom of the page I came across a phrase from the New Testament that caught my attention. It was the Hebrew term for the Lord’s parable of The Prodigal Son, הבן האובד (ha-ben ha-oh-VEHD), which literally means The Lost Son.

I had never come across this unique interpretation before. After some thought and rereading of this well-known parable, I discovered that I like the Hebrew Language title much more than I do the English one. I know this is just one person’s opinion, but I’ll give a few reasons why I prefer the Hebrew language interpretation as The Lost Son.

Reason #1: For me, at least, this parable has much more to do with the youngest son's state of being (at first lost, then found) than it does the particulars of his misbehavior (the prodigal part), so I think the Hebrew title captures best what was at stake for the young man in this parable and, by way of personal application, for us. We could substitute any number of our own misdeeds for what this child has done, and the core themes of repentance, forgiveness, redemption, and God’s immeasurable grace and graciousness would still play out the same in the story. So the fact that he was prodigal (“irresponsibly or extravagantly wasteful”, according to the dictionary definition) really has little to do the parable’s key message(s).

Also, it’s apparent that the source of the father’s worry isn’t that that his child has spent away his portion of the family’s hard-earned inheritance. The father doesn’t mention this point once throughout the whole narrative. As with any conscientious parent who has observed his children’s behavior over the years, this father certainly knew what his boy would do with the inheritance once he gained control of it. In contrast, the Lord twice emphasizes that the father’s focal concern was that his son had fallen into a lost state of spiritual death. The former source of his pain and later source of his joy was that “this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” (See Luke 15:24 and 32.) Instead of focusing the reader’s attention on this central point, the English title, The Prodigal Son, tends to place it specifically on the child’s character flaws, as opposed to the condition his spiritual deficiencies have led him to.

Reason #2: The title The Lost Son speaks to a significant doctrinal truth that the English title leaves out – that being lost in the spiritual sense is equivalent to finding ourselves in a state of pending separation from God and our expanded Eternal family unless we turn back through repentance. I remember one occasion when I became lost in a public place as a very young child. The few minutes of separation from my parents that I experienced were extremely frightening and disorienting.  The irony is that I was surrounded by people, but because all of them were strangers I still felt immeasurably alone. This event reminds me that perhaps the most defining element of being lost is finding oneself surrounded by the unfamiliar (i.e., unconnected to family), which in a literal and spiritual sense is what happened to The Lost Son. The root of the word unfamiliar originates from the Latin familiaris, which means “domestic, private, belonging to a family, of a household". 

Through his misdeeds, the younger son had cut himself off from his father’s household, and consequently found himself lost in a state of literal and spiritual unfamiliarity. As with all of us, his need to be connected to someone or something while in exile was so strong that he “he went and joined himself to a citizen of that (far) country” (ibid., vs. 15) in a type of false-familiarity. In the end, though, it was no substitute for the full association and sense of belonging that he had previously enjoyed with his family. After an undefined time in his lost condition, the child finally “comes to himself” and is later reinstated to his former position via several symbolic tokens of royalty. (See vs. 17 and 22, and Genesis 41:42)