About this passageTold to a crowd, immediately after someone in it asks Jesus to settle an inheritance dispute with his brother. The gospel introduces it as a parable in its own words. The man in it has done nothing wrong by the standards of his trade — a good harvest, more storage, a plan for the years ahead.
He spoke a parable to them, saying, “The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’
He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” ’
“But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
In plainer words
A farmer has a harvest so good he has nowhere to put it, so he decides to pull down his barns and build bigger ones, and then to take it easy for years. That night he dies, and the story asks whose the grain is now. The charge against him is not wealth and it is not planning. It is that he counted on time he had not been given.
A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.