33 “Hear another parable. There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country.
The chief priests of the Temple have just tried to pressure Jesus into explaining where his teaching authority comes from, he uses their earthly fear of John’ the Baptists fame to make them stop questioning. Then he gives a parable about two sons, one who does the work required by their father but said he wouldn’t and the other who said he would do the required work but doesn’t, this is to illustrate the sinful people who do repent versus the religious authorities who do not. Now Jesus is going to give a parable that demonstrates his relation to God the Father, the behaviour of the Old Covenant people until now and the repercussions for future disloyalty to God.
An estate owner, so a wealthy man with property plants a grapevine garden. He sets a boundary around it, builds a winepress to turn the harvest fruit into its final product, builds a tower and let tenants live on it while he himself goes away to a foreign country. God the Father is the estate owner, the boundary is the old covenant, the fruit are the body of people and the tenants are the authorities like the Pharisees and Priests. God gave authority to Moses and the Elders in the Old Testament, he delegated his authority to them, God of course is not actually absent but this is a pedagogical teaching method of letting the Israelites stand by themselves. This is illustrated in the parable as the estate owner leaving the country.
34 When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit;
Fruit needs to be harvested and there are seasons where that happens, when harvest season approaches the estate owner, far from the home country, sends servants to the tenants in the garden to harvest his fruit. It was typical of old agrarian societies to have a wealthy land owner, have people live on a land and work it. They get a place to live, they get fed and perhaps even glean a little of the harvest but the bulk of the harvest goes to the owner of it, in the parable the landowner, the character representing God the Father. In order to keep watch over his agrarian investment he would need to send messengers and servants between himself and the land if he did not go there himself.
35 and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.
The tenants see the servant coming and beat one, murdering another and stoning one. This is of course the prophets, almost all of which after being sent to check on God’s human grape garden were brutally martyred.
36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them.
God the Father of course didn’t stop sending his prophets to correct his people and call them to repentance, neither does the landowner in the parable. Unfortunately the tenants keep doing the same as before, murdering them, stoning them and beating them.
37 Afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
After all these horrific events where the servants have been murdered, stoned or beaten the landowner decides that if he sent his son, surely they would not act the same way. Maybe there was some mistake and the tenants are just horrifically confused about what is going on. This notion of sending a son is an ancient custom since all ancient societies perceive a son to be the perfect representation of a father, its essentially the same as the father going himself. It also adds a layer of immense trust, a son is the inheritor of the fathers property and status, by sending your son you are trusting the receivers with your legacy. The son in the parable is of course, The Son of God, Jesus himself.
38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’
When the evil and murderous tenants see the son coming their way, instead of saying this immense trust and mercy being extended by the landowner they see it as an opportunity to take even more ill gotten gains. The entire time they have been killing the servants, by implication, they have been hoarding the fruits of the harvest for themselves. Now they see the son and their immediate thought is “let us kill him and have his inheritance”.
39 And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
The tenants seize the son of the landowner, casting him outside the vineyard and kill him. Jesus himself will be killed outside of the city so this is where we get into the prophetic future portion of the parable, as none of this has happened yet.
40 When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
When the owner arrives, what will he do with those tenants? It’s a simple question that Jesus posits to his audience, including priests and Pharisees. This is likely pointing to the Middle Coming which occurs in 70 AD, destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, this is implied by the New Covenant taking over the old in the following verse.
41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”
His audience responds that of course the landowner will put the murderous tenants to a miserable death and put new tenants in charge of the this garden. Ones who are obedient and give him the harvest of the fruits whenever it is required. So the Old Covenant authorities will be punished and the New Covenant tenants will take over.
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
Jesus now quotes from the Psalms of David. Psalm 118. This is a messianic psalm as Jesus uses it to point toward himself, he is the stone that the builders reject yet this very stone will become the foundation stone of a New structure. A New Covenant.
43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.
Now Jesus explains the meaning of the parable, because of their rejection of him the entirety of the Kingdom of God will be taken away from them. Their authority will be null and void. It will be given to a nation instead. This is fascinating as this basically says the Gentiles themselves will be given the authority, something very tough to hear from a Jewish nationalist perspective which all the priests and Pharisees were.
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.
46 But when they tried to arrest him, they feared the multitudes, because they held him to be a prophet.
Upon hearing all of this the Chief Priests and Pharisees are completely aware that Jesus is speaking about them. There is no misunderstanding. Just like the moment with John the Baptist that we started off with as a contextual reference the Jewish authorities do not seem to be too worried about God’s judgement at all but about the earthly worries. They want to outright arrest him but fear the people who perceive Jesus to be a prophet. They themselves do not have a thread of an idea that God is involved at all. They see this all as a game of politics.
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