Parables of Jesus
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50 free Parables of Jesus trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jesus rarely answered a hard question with a rule. He told a story instead: a farmer scattering seed, a father watching the road, a landowner whose tenants turn violent. These short tales are some of the best-known passages in the Bible, and they have left their mark on everyday English, from idioms to the names of laws. This quiz works through the parables people look up most often, including the wicked tenants, the two sons, the ten virgins, the lost sheep, the sower, the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, along with the shorter kingdom parables. Questions cover what happens in each story, who was listening, how Jesus explained it, and where a few famous phrases come from. It is pitched for Sunday school classes, middle school groups and family quiz nights as well as adults brushing up before Bible study. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess teaches the story.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son, the word 'prodigal' refers to which trait of the younger son?
Wildly wasteful
Wildly wasteful is what 'prodigal' means, from the Latin prodigus. The word has nothing to do with leaving or coming home: it describes how the son burned through his share of the estate.
Q 02In Jesus's parable of the talents, a master going away trusts three servants with amounts of what?
Money
Money, and a lot of it: one talent was worth about 6,000 days' wages. The English sense of 'talent' as a gift to be used most likely grew out of this story.
Q 03Which phrase for a final chance comes from Jesus's parable of workers hired late in the day?
The eleventh hour
The eleventh hour was when the final workers were taken on, with about an hour of the working day left. They still received a full day's pay, which is the sting of the story.
Q 04In Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, robbers attack a man on the road from Jerusalem to which city?
Jericho
Jericho sits far below Jerusalem, and the winding road down to it was notorious enough for ambushes to be called the 'Way of Blood'. Jesus's first hearers would have known the danger.
Q 05In Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son, the penniless son takes a job feeding which animals?
Pigs
Pigs were forbidden food under Jewish law, which made tending them a humiliating job. The son grew hungry enough to envy the pods they ate.
Q 06In Jesus's parable of the sower, which creatures eat the seed that falls by the roadside?
Birds
Birds devour the roadside seed before it can take root. It is the first of four kinds of soil in the story, and only the fourth yields a harvest.
Q 07In Jesus's parable of the lost sheep, how many sheep does the shepherd leave behind to find one stray?
99
99 stay in the wilderness while the shepherd hunts for a single stray. The scene inspired the Victorian hymn 'The Ninety and Nine', written by Elizabeth Clephane in 1868.
Q 08In Jesus's parable of the two builders, the foolish man's house falls because he built it on what?
Sand
Sand gave the house nothing to hold on to when the rain, floods and wind came. The story closes the Sermon on the Mount, as a warning to act on what Jesus had just taught.
Q 09Good Samaritan laws, named after the helper in Jesus's parable, protect people who do what?
Give emergency aid
Give emergency aid in good faith and these laws shield you from being sued if it goes wrong. The aim is to stop fear of a lawsuit from making bystanders walk past.
Q 10Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to which tiny seed that grows taller than every garden herb?
Mustard
Mustard, probably black mustard, can reach about 9 feet from a proverbially small seed. Jesus used it to picture a kingdom with a tiny start and a huge finish.
Q 11In Jesus's parable of the wicked tenants, the tenants kill the vineyard owner's son hoping to seize what?
His inheritance
His inheritance was the prize: with the heir dead, they reasoned, the land would be theirs. The owner had already sent two groups of servants, who were beaten, stoned or killed.
Q 12Jesus caps the parable of the wicked tenants with a psalm: the stone the builders rejected became what?
The cornerstone
The cornerstone, in the words of Psalm 118. The rejected stone stands for the murdered son, and the religious leaders listening understood that the story was aimed at them.
Q 13After Jesus told the parable of the wicked tenants, what did the chief priests want to do to him?
Arrest him
Q 21In Jesus's parable of the ten virgins, what reply do the latecomers hear through the shut door?
"I don't know you"
"I don't know you" is the bridegroom's whole answer to their knocking. Jesus drew the moral at once: keep watch, because nobody can say on which day the Son of Man will come.
Q 22In Jesus's parable of the ten virgins, what do the wise ones tell the foolish to do about their lamps?
Go and buy more
Go and buy more, the wise ones say, fearing that sharing would leave all ten lamps dark. While the foolish are away at the dealers, the procession arrives and the door is shut.
Q 23In Jesus's parable of the lost sheep, how does the shepherd bring the stray home once he finds it?
Arrest him, because they saw that the murderous tenants stood for them. They held back only out of fear of the crowds, who regarded Jesus as a prophet.
Q 14In Jesus's parable of the wicked tenants, the landowner digs a winepress in his vineyard and builds what?
A tower
A tower completes a description lifted from an Old Testament song about a vineyard that yielded only wild grapes. Hearers who knew that song could guess the story would end badly.
Q 15In the parable of the wicked tenants, what does the landowner say on sending his son?
They will respect my son
"They will respect my son" proves a fatal misjudgment: the tenants throw him out of the vineyard and kill him. Jesus told the story in the Temple during the final week before his own death.
Q 16In Jesus's parable of the two sons, what does the first son do after telling his father 'I will not'?
Changes his mind and goes
Changes his mind and goes, which makes him the one who did his father's will. The second son says 'I'm going, sir' and never turns up.
Q 17After the parable of the two sons, Jesus said which groups were entering God's kingdom before the priests?
Tax collectors and prostitutes
Tax collectors and prostitutes had believed the preaching that the leaders ignored, Jesus said. Like the first son, they began with a 'no' and ended by doing what was asked.
Q 18Jesus ended the parable of the two sons by accusing the priests of refusing to believe which preacher?
John the Baptist
John the Baptist 'came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn't believe him', Jesus told them. Moments earlier the same men had refused to say whether John's baptism came from heaven.
Q 19In Jesus's parable of the ten virgins, what did the five foolish ones fail to bring for their lamps?
Oil
Oil ran short because the bridegroom was so late, and nobody would lend them any. The story's point is readiness: the wait may be longer than you planned for.
Q 20In Jesus's parable of the ten virgins, at what time does the cry go up that the bridegroom is coming?
Midnight
Midnight is when the shout comes, after every one of the ten has dozed off. Even the wise ones slept; what set them apart was the spare supply they had packed.
On his shoulders
On his shoulders, rejoicing, is how the story puts it. A shepherd carrying a sheep this way became one of the most common images of Christ in the catacombs of Rome.
Q 24Jesus ends the parable of the lost sheep by saying heaven has more joy over whom than over the righteous?
One sinner who repents
One sinner who repents brings more joy than a crowd who need no repentance, Jesus says. He told the story to critics who grumbled that he welcomed disreputable people and ate with them.
Q 25Between the lost sheep and the Prodigal Son, Jesus tells of a woman who sweeps her house hunting for what?
A silver coin
A silver coin, a Greek drachma, is one of ten she owns. When she finds it she calls her friends in to celebrate, just as the shepherd does over his sheep.
Q 26In Jesus's parable of the sower, some seed sprouts but is choked by which plants growing around it?
Thorns
Thorns stand for the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches, Jesus explained: a promising start can still be crowded out.
Q 27According to Matthew, where did Jesus sit to tell the parable of the sower to a huge crowd?
In a boat
In a boat, because the crowd had grown so large that he needed room. Everyone else stood on the beach to listen, which gave him a floating pulpit.
Q 28In Jesus's own explanation of the parable of the sower, who snatches away what was sown by the roadside?
The evil one
The evil one comes and takes what was sown in the heart, in Matthew's wording; Mark's version names Satan. The sower is one of the few parables Jesus decodes point by point for his disciples.
Q 29When Jesus explains the parable of the sower to his disciples, what does he say the seed stands for?
The word of God
The word of God is the seed, and the four soils are four kinds of listener. That is why the story is sometimes called the parable of the soils: the seed never changes.
Q 30In Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, a priest ignores the wounded man; who passes by second?
A Levite
A Levite, from the tribe that assisted the priests in the Temple, also crosses to the other side. Two respected religious figures fail before a despised outsider stops to help.