The rich man asked this because his success had become a problem to solve. His barns were full, and he wanted a plan to keep everything. Barnes says, "He was anxious and perplexed. Riches increase thought and perplexity." Notice who he talked to. He "thought within himself" (Luke 12:17), and every possession is "my": my fruits, my barns, my goods, my soul (Luke 12:17-19). Gill observes that "he consults himself only," thinking neither of God, nor of his poor neighbors, nor of his own soul. Matthew Henry says that "instead of thanking God for it, or rejoicing to be able to do more good, he afflicts himself."

He answered his own question: "This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods" (Luke 12:18). Then he planned to tell his soul, "thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry" (Luke 12:19). But his own answer was not the last word. "God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Luke 12:20). Jesus closed the parable: "So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God" (Luke 12:21).

"Bestow" in the KJV means to store or put away. Barnes explains it as "To place, to hoard, to collect," and notes that the Greek word for "fruits" covered all the produce of the earth, grain as well as fruit. That is why the ESV says "crops."

Jesus told this parable to the crowd right after a man asked Him to settle an inheritance (Luke 12:13-16). The story answers the warning that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" (Luke 12:15).

The rich man's harvest was not the problem. Jesus says simply that his ground "brought forth plentifully" (Luke 12:16). The problem was a heart that saw only itself in the blessing. Matthew Henry writes, "The more men have, the more perplexity they have with it."

The parable sets the man's private planning against God's view. He thought he had settled his future for "many years" (Luke 12:19), but God had not been part of his thinking. A few verses later Jesus tells His disciples what to do with possessions instead: "Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens" (Luke 12:33). Barnes explains that the man who is not "rich toward God" (Luke 12:21) has "no riches laid up in heaven."