“The very last penny”
Luke 12:58–59
Cultural referenceSettledJesus
…you will not get out until you have paid the very last penny. (Luke 12:58–59 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A figure of speech for 'paying in full.'
The cultural key
The coin is the quadrans, Rome's smallest, worth one sixty-fourth of a day's wage. The scene is a debt case: adversary, judge, guard, debtor's prison, where you stayed until family scraped the debt together. Settling on the road, before the courthouse, was the only smart move for a poor man. Luke's coin is the lepton, half a quadrans, the smallest coin in circulation (the widow's coin, Luke 21:2); Matthew's debtor owes to the last quadrans, Luke's to something smaller still. The accounting gets stricter in translation.
Recovered meaning
Reconcile while you still can: pressed to its conclusion, unresolved conflict becomes a prison with an exact and merciless accounting.
Parallels: Matthew 5:25–26