Reference: Hireling
Easton
a labourer employed on hire for a limited time (Job 7:1; 14:6; Mr 1:20). His wages were paid as soon as his work was over (Le 19:13). In the time of our Lord a day's wage was a "penny" (q.v.) i.e., a Roman denarius (Mt 20:1-14).
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Watsons
HIRELING. Moses requires that the hireling should be paid as soon as his work is over: "The wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night unto the morning," Le 19:19. A hireling's days or year is a kind of proverb, signifying a full year, without abating any thing of it: "His days are like the days of a hireling," Job 7:1; the days of man are like those of a hireling; as nothing is deducted from them, so nothing, likewise, is added to them. And again: "Till he shall accomplish as a hireling his day," Job 14:6; to the time of death, which he waits for as the hireling for the end of the day. The following passage from Morier's Travels in Persia, illustrates one of our Lord's parables: "The most conspicuous building in Hamadan is the Mesjid Jumah, a large mosque now falling into decay, and before it a maidan or square, which serves as a market place. Here we observed, every morning before the sun rose, that a numerous band of peasants were collected with spades in their hands, waiting, as they informed us, to be hired for the day to work in the surrounding fields. This custom, which I have never seen in any other part of Asia, forcibly struck me as a most happy illustration of our Saviour's parable of the labourers in the vineyard in Matthew 20; particularly when, passing by the same place late in the day, we still found others standing idle, and remembered his words, 'Why stand ye here all the day idle?" as most applicable to their situation; for in putting the very same question to them, they answered us, 'Because no man hath hired us.'"