Key Highlights
- The phrase ‘the eleventh hour’ originally comes from the Bible.
- In Matthew 20:1-16, in the ‘Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard’, a landowner hires workers at various times of the day to work in his vineyard.
- At the end of the 12-hour workday, workers hired at the eleventh hour receive the same wages as those hired earlier in the day — suggesting that God’s grace applies in the same way to all, and that it is not based on the length of an individual’s service or effort.
- “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen,” concludes the parable.
- In contemporary usage, ‘the eleventh hour’ means the latest possible moment, or the moment when it is almost too late.
