The king noticed one guest who was not dressed for the wedding and asked him to explain himself. The question gave the man room to answer, but it also brought out that he had no answer to give. Barnes explains that it was the custom for the one who made the feast to prepare robes for the guests, which "renders the conduct of this man more inexcusable." Even "Friend" is not warm here. Barnes says the word means companion and "does not imply friendship," and Gill suggests it was said "either in an ironical way, or because he professed to be a friend of God and Christ." Gill hears in "how camest thou in" the question of which way he came in, "intimating, that he climbed up some other way."

"And he was speechless" (Matthew 22:12). The man offered no excuse at all. Then the king said to the servants, "Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 22:13). Jesus closed the parable with one sentence: "For many are called, but few are chosen" (Matthew 22:14).

Barnes explains that in ancient times kings and princes gave changes of clothing to their friends and favorites, and refusing such a gift showed great contempt (Genesis 45:22; Esther 6:8). Festival garments were mostly long white robes, and the host commonly prepared them for the guests.

The word "Friend" is hetairos, a comrade or companion (Thayer). The same address, "Friend," is spoken to a grumbling worker in another parable (Matthew 20:13) and by Jesus to Judas at the betrayal (Matthew 26:50). "Speechless" translates ephimothe, from phimoo, to muzzle; used of people, it means to reduce to silence (Thayer). Matthew uses the same verb two scenes later, when Jesus "put the Sadducees to silence" (Matthew 22:34).

Jesus tells this parable about "the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 22:2). It shows a King whose welcome is wide. When the first guests refused, He sent His servants to the highways to gather "as many as ye shall find," bad and good alike (Matthew 22:9-10). But the same King also looks at His guests. The invitation is free, but it is not careless.

The commentators read the wedding garment in slightly different ways. Gill says it is "the righteousness of Christ," given to the guest rather than made by him. Matthew Henry agrees that "those, and those only, who put on the Lord Jesus ... have the wedding-garment," and adds that "the imputed righteousness of Christ, and the sanctification of the Spirit, are both alike necessary." Barnes applies the man's silence to every hypocrite: "So it will be with all hypocrites." However they read the garment, the text is plain: the man came in without what the king required (Matthew 22:11-12).