The Greek noun agros (ἀγρός) means a field, a piece of land, or the open countryside — agricultural land used for farming or pasture. It appears over 35 times in the New Testament and is the setting for some of Jesus' most important parables and teachings. The agros is where treasure is hidden (Matthew 13:44), where wheat and tares grow together (Matthew 13:24–30), where the prodigal son feeds pigs (Luke 15:15), and where the body of Judas was found (Acts 1:18–19).
In Jesus' parables, the agros (field) is consistently the arena of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is like treasure hidden in a field (Matthew 13:44) — hidden in the ordinary, unremarkable ground of everyday life, requiring a willing person to sell all and buy the field. The field of wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24–30) is this age — a world where good and evil grow together until the final harvest. Jesus declares in Matthew 24:40 that in the last days "two men will be in the field (agros): one will be taken and the other left." The field is the world; the harvest is the end of the age (Matthew 13:38–39). Boaz's field in Ruth — where Ruth gleaned — is an Old Testament agros that foreshadows the redemption narrative embedded in agriculture itself: the Kinsman-Redeemer provides grain from his field for the foreigner.