This coming Sunday is the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The parable is not  unique to Jesus – consider this passage from Sirach 11:18-19

¹⁸ A man may become rich through a miser’s life, and this is his allotted reward: ¹⁹ When he says: “I have found rest, now I will feast on my possessions,” He does not know how long it will be till he dies and leaves them to others. 

It is possible Jesus’ parable finds its roots in Sirach even if it is not directly dependent upon it. The parable stands within the Wisdom tradition of Israel in which it is held that having or seeking wealth can be a person’s downfall (cf. Ps 49:1-20; Sir 31:1-11 – as well as outside the canon of Scripture in 1 Enoch 97:8-10; 98:3).

The parable warns against covetousness (12:15) and greed (12:21), set with the larger framework of the dispute over inheritance and a series of sayings concerning anxiety over the necessities of daily life, such as foot and clothing (12:22-31). The immediate context is the dispute and the declaration by Jesus that the measure of a person’s life does not consist of the abundance of his or her possessions.