The elder son did not know his brother had come home. He had been "in the field," and as he drew near he "heard musick and dancing" (Luke 15:25). So he called a servant and asked what it all meant. He asked a servant outside instead of going in to his father. Barnes says this eldest son "is designed to represent the Pharisees who had found fault with the Saviour," the ones who murmured that Jesus "receiveth sinners, and eateth with them" (Luke 15:2). Gill sees the same picture: like the Scribes and Pharisees who sometimes spoke to Jesus' disciples instead of to Him (Mark 2:16), the elder son speaks to a servant instead of to his father. Gill adds that the question shows how self-righteous people are ignorant of the truths of the gospel.

The servant answered plainly: "Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound" (Luke 15:27). The answer made the elder son angry, "and would not go in." So his father came out and "intreated him" (Luke 15:28). The son complained that he had served many years and never received even "a kid" to make merry with his friends (Luke 15:29-30). The father answered, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine," and said it was right to rejoice, "for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:31-32). The parable ends there, without telling us whether the elder son went in.

Jesus told this parable, with the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver, to the Pharisees and scribes who murmured because He welcomed sinners (Luke 15:1-3). The verb for "asked" is epunthaneto, "he inquired." The phrase "what these things meant" reads in Greek ti an eie tauta, literally "what these things might be." The servant's word "safe and sound" means, as Barnes explains it, "in health."

This question opens the last scene of the three parables in Luke 15. Each parable ends in joy over something lost and found: the shepherd says "Rejoice with me" (Luke 15:6), the woman says the same (Luke 15:9), and the father says "It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad" (Luke 15:32). Jesus says this joy is the joy of heaven "over one sinner that repenteth" (Luke 15:7, 10). The servant's answer puts the father at the center: the feast is held "because he hath received him."

The elder son's question shows how God's grace can look strange to people who have stayed close to home. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary says this part of the parable shows "the kindness of the Lord, and the proud manner in which his gracious kindness is often received." Yet the father goes out to the elder son just as he ran to the younger (Luke 15:20, 28). The God Jesus describes seeks both the son who wandered and the son who stayed.