HE THEN BEGAN to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. 2At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. 5He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.
6“He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
7“But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.
9“What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10Haven’t you read this scripture:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
11the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12Then they looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.
Original Meaning
JESUS’ ALLEGORY OF the wicked tenants continues his response to the leaders’ challenge of his authority (11:27–33) and brings matters to a head. Like the allegory of the sower in 4:1–9, it drives the plot forward and prepares the reader for what follows. What happens to Jesus should come as no surprise, given the leaders’ hostility. But the allegory allows us to see these events from the perspective of God’s long and turbulent relationship with Israel.
The allegory resembles the clever trap Nathan set for David with his story of the ewe lamb (2 Sam. 12:1–15). Nathan caught David in his web of adultery, murder, and lies with his stern, “You are the man!” Jesus catches the chief priests, teachers of the law, and elders in a similar trap. They were the major landlords in Israel and should naturally sympathize with the plight of the owner in the story.1 A story about willful and murderous tenants would raise the ire of any landholder—until they realize that Jesus’ allegory targets them. They are the vile, incorrigible, deadbeat tenants of God’s vineyard.2 It mirrors the real-life story of their rejection of God’s prophets, such as John the Baptizer, and their venomous plotting against God’s Son. Like David, they know their guilt—“they knew he had spoken the parable against them” (12:12). Unlike David, they do not repent when confronted with it.
Familiarity with Old Testament images helps one see that the figures in the allegory are transparent metaphors. The vineyard is a symbol of God’s relationship to the chosen people Israel, and the description of the building of the vineyard has striking parallels with Isaiah 5:2.3 Since the hedge, winepress, and tower have no significance in the later development of the story, these details are only included to recall to mind the Isaian context. In Isaiah’s allegorical love song, the care lavished by God on the vineyard contrasts with the people’s ingratitude and lack of fruitfulness (see Isa. 5:1–7; note how this passage is followed by a series of woes).4 The friction between the vineyard owner and the tenants may reflect the real world of absentee landlords,5 but the story is an allegory of God’s troubled relationship with Israel that is nearing its climax (see also 3:14; Jer. 12:10).
The later church, from its perspective after Jesus’ death and resurrection, quite naturally identified the tenants as Israel or the leaders of Israel. Jesus’ original audience, however, would not have made this connection immediately. Snodgrass suggests that the first hearers would have initially thought of the Romans as the tenants, whom God was allowing to maintain murderous control over Israel.6 As the allegory unfolds, they become aware that their initial assumptions are false and must be revised.
The sending of the servants and their callous rejection turn the tide. The word “servant” is a frequent designation in the Old Testament for the prophets whom God sent to the people.7 Jeremiah 7:25–26, which figures prominently in Jesus’ interpretation of his actions in the temple, is an apt commentary:
From the time your forefathers left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets. But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their forefathers.
Nehemiah 9:26 also reflects this theme:
“But they were disobedient and rebelled against you; they put your law behind their backs. They killed your prophets, who had admonished them in order to turn them back to you; they committed awful blasphemies.”
And one finds in 2 Chronicles 36:15–16 (cf. 24:18–19) the same argument:
The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.
The servants’ treatment in the allegory surely called to mind the ill-treatment of the prophets. The abuse of the servants in the allegory becomes progressively worse. The first is beaten and sent away (12:3), the next is struck on the head and treated shamefully (12:4), and the last is killed (12:5). We know the fate of only two relatively insignificant prophets from Scripture—Zechariah son of Jehoida, who was stoned (2 Chron. 24:20–22), and Uriah, who died by the sword (Jer. 26:20). Jeremiah was beaten and put in stocks (Jer. 20:2), but later apocryphal legends about prophets such as Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and Habakkuk had them killed. Popular wisdom in the time of Jesus believed that prophets inevitably were rejected and suffered a martyr’s fate (see Matt. 5:12; 23:31–39; Luke 13:31–33; Acts 7:52; 1 Thess. 2:15; Heb. 11:36–38). The unusual word to describe the fate of one of the servants, the one who is “struck … on the head” (kephalioo, Mark 12:4), may allude to specifically the fate of John the Baptizer, who was beheaded (apokephalizo, 6:16, 27). Jesus has just brought up the issue of John’s authority and the leaders confess in private their rejection of him (11:30–32).8
The allegory reaches its denouement after the servants fail to collect the fruit. The owner has one more card up his sleeve. He will send the son “last of all.” He is identified as a “son, whom he loved” (an idiom for an “only son”), which recalls the voice from heaven identifying Jesus as “my Son, whom I love” (1:11; 9:7). The son is on a different level from the servants, and the owner sends him because he assumes that the tenants will “respect him.”9 The son’s mission is the same as that of the servants before him. The owner gives the tenants every opportunity to repent and to pay their rent—to give him the required fruits in due season (see Ps. 1:3). Evidence from Qumran (4QFlor 1:11, citing 2 Sam. 7:11, and 1QSa 2:11–12, on Ps. 2:7) suggests the reference to the son could have been understood messianically by the audience.
The tenants recognize the son as the heir and wickedly want his inheritance for themselves (see 15:10; Pilate recognizes the Pharisees’ envy of Jesus). Defiance mixed with cunning proves to be their final undoing. They become snared by their own clever plot (Job 5:13; 1 Cor. 3:19). They mistakenly assume that the owner is now dead and foolishly hope that killing the heir will give them sole ownership of the vineyard.10 After they assassinate the son, they throw his body outside and leave him unburied. To refuse to bury a corpse was an incredible offense in the ancient world.
Jesus concludes the allegory with a pointed question: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do?” He does not wait for their answer but gives it himself. The owner suddenly changes from one who is seemingly impotent to one who can exact revenge. He is now the Lord of the vineyard, who will destroy the tenants who killed his servants and son. But the Lord is not through. He will give the vineyard to others. Although the true heir is rejected and killed, the inheritance still belongs to him and his community. Jesus terminates the confrontation with a citation from Psalm 118:25, the psalm that the crowd chanted when Jesus entered the city (Mark 11:9–10). This psalm explains that the one who is rejected (the same verb, apodokimazo, is used in Jesus’ first prediction in 8:31) and murdered will be vindicated (12:9–10; cf. Ps. 118:22–23). The block of stone that the builders discarded becomes either the cornerstone or the capstone of a new structure.11 The image implies a new temple.12 Mark’s readers will understand that Jesus is the stone of stumbling that the psalmist talked about.
The final quotation, “The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (12:11), attributes Jesus’ condemnation of the temple to God’s work. The tenants’ destruction, the giving of the vineyard to others, and the transformation of a rejected stone into the capstone are marvelous to the ones who have eyes to see God’s plan. The impotent animal sacrifices in a fruitless, racist, chauvinistic, stone structure will end. The Son whom these leaders will put to death will be raised by God and will become the locus of salvation.
Jesus’ allegory is a riddle, but the leaders do not need coaching to see that they are its target. They understand its implications, which only heightens the enormity of their guilt. Jesus has told the disciples that the high priests and teachers of the law in Jerusalem will kill him (9:33). Now he tells the rulers, albeit in an allegory, that they will kill the Son. That they move ahead with their plot means that they carry it out with malice aforethought. They are like the demons who recognize Jesus as a threat who has come to destroy them (1:24), but rather than submit to him they try in vain to destroy him. Jesus’ enemies bide their time because they fear the reaction of the fickle crowd more than they fear God (11:18; 12:12). Mark does not present Jesus despised and rejected by the people of Israel but by the leaders of the people.
This allegory has Christological significance. It reflects Jesus’ full consciousness of his Sonship in relation to the Lord of the vineyard and his full awareness of his impending death at the hands of the authorities.13 Those who question the authenticity of the allegory tend to question both possibilities.
Bridging Contexts
IN INTERPRETING THIS allegory one needs to focus on the three key moments. Each is marked by direct discourse: when the frustrated landlord decides to send his son to collect the fruit; when we overhear the tenants ponder their situation and decide to kill the heir; and when Jesus asks, “What then will the owner … do?” These three moments unlock the meaning of the allegory.
The owner’s forbearance. We listen in on the thought processes of the vineyard owner who has prepared a vineyard but has reaped only insults in the form of battered and murdered servants. He finally decides to send his beloved (= only) son, thinking, “They will respect my son.” After the brutal reception of his servants, this action seems imprudent, if not downright foolhardy. Why does the owner think that his son will be treated any differently from his servants? As an allegory about God’s relationship with Israel, however, the landlord’s musings say something about the nature of God. It recalls the Old Testament theme of God’s long-suffering patience and unrequited love, expressed most poignantly in Hosea (Hos. 2:2, 14–20; see also Jer. 3:11–14).14 Carlston terms it “the blessed idiocy of grace.”15
The allegory reveals God’s continuous pursuit of humans, no matter how often the overtures meet with rejection. The landlord’s optimism in sending his son represents God’s endless hopefulness and constant effort to bring sinful people to their senses. God fully expects the people to produce fruit and exercises forbearance when they renege on their obligations (Rom. 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), and what seems to be utter foolishness in sending prophet after prophet and finally a beloved Son to a pack of murderers. What may look like foolishness to worldly wisdom, however (1 Cor. 1:18–25; 3:18–20), reflects the love and wisdom of God.
The tenants’ foolishness. The tenants’ soliloquy reveals their mental process: “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” Their foolishness reminds us of the wealthy farmer’s soliloquy in Luke 12:18–19, who just as vainly says:
“This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”
Foolish hopes lead to foolhardy behavior. The tenants may stupidly believe that when they kill the heir the vineyard will become ownerless property that they can then commandeer. Like the rich fool, they do not take any account of God.
This aspect of the parable bridges easily into our contemporary setting. It says something about the foolish hubris of those in every age and in every walk of life who think that they can seize control of everything in their lives and push God out of the picture. Did these tenants really believe that by killing the son they could become the owners of the vineyard? Apparently so. Do humans think that by erasing God from their lives they can take control of their earthly and eternal destinies? Apparently so. The allegory reveals the utter foolishness of sinful rebellion against God. It also reminds us that we are only the servants in the vineyard, not its lords or its owners.
The owner’s wrath. Jesus’ concluding question, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do?” is the climax of the story. The answer to this question is not obvious from what precedes. The owner seems to be rather ineffectual and weak. Perhaps he will do nothing because, as the tenants gambled, he is impotent and can do nothing. It helps to recognize, however, that the owner represents God in this allegory. Obviously, God is not powerless. God has shown inordinate patience, but the conclusion reveals the prophetic warning that God will not be patient forever.
When one interprets this allegory against the backdrop of the larger story of God’s relations with Israel, one recalls the biblical axiom that God’s kindness is meant to lead to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Isaiah records God’s warning, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations—a people who continually provoke me to my very face” (Isa. 65:2–3a). Continual rebellion will meet with certain judgment (65:7). But God will not destroy all Israel; a remnant will be saved (65:8–16). In Jesus’ parable the vineyard is not destroyed but given to others. Who those others are is unclear, and this ambiguity leads to the final point to be discussed in bridging the contexts.
The owner’s optimism in giving the vineyard to others. One should be careful not to interpret this allegory as explaining the rejection of Israel in favor of a Gentile Christian church. Jesus used this allegory to confront his opponents with their sin and to call them to account, not to put the people of Israel in a bad light. In the same way as Jesus warns Judas at the Last Supper that he knows about his plans to betray him in hopes that Judas might rethink what he is about to do or repent (14:17–21), Jesus warns these chief priests, teachers of the law, and elders. He knows the murderous plans they have hatched in their hearts; perhaps they will repent. In Mark’s context, this allegory is not about God’s rejection of Israel, but about the defiance of the leaders.
Comparing this allegory with its inspiration in Isaiah 5:1–7 also helps one avoid the pitfall of interpreting it as pointing to the rejection of Israel. In both allegories, God is the owner of the vineyard who fails to receive the fruit that is due. In Isaiah, the owner does not reap a harvest because the vineyard did not produce an adequate one;16 the vineyard in Jesus’ allegory produces fruit, but the wicked tenants withhold it from the owner. In Isaiah, the judgment falls on the vineyard; in Jesus’ allegory, judgment falls on the tenants, and the vineyard is given to others.
This comparison reveals that Jesus singles out the tenants, the leaders who comprise the audience, not Israel as a people, for condemnation. We must therefore be careful not to interpret this allegory as a story about evil Israel who rejected the prophets and killed God’s Son. Jesus directs it against Israel’s leaders; and they acknowledge this fact: “Then they looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them” (12:12).
These leaders will not repent and cannot produce the fruit of the kingdom. Instead, they are intent on securing a kingdom for themselves. They have turned the temple, God’s house of prayer, into their own personal cash cow. And they will move quickly to eradicate anyone who challenges their prerogatives. These high priests, elders, and teachers of the law are the faithless tenants who rejected prophets such as John and engineer the death of the Son, and they stand in contrast to the naive and vulnerable crowd.
Jesus fills the crowd with awe. But the crowd has no full understanding of who he is and is easily swayed by the unscrupulous masters of the temple. In the Passion narrative, the crowd becomes their unwitting pawns. Violence begets only violence, however, and the wicked tenants will meet destruction. The conclusion from Psalm 118:22 suggests that God will appoint new leaders to tend the vineyard, Israel. The allusive references to “the builders” and the rejected capstone will make more sense after Jesus predicts the temple’s demolition: “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down” (13:2). Jesus implies that God will raise a new temple not made with hands, and it will be cemented by a rejected capstone. The quotation has parallels with the classic plot of Cinderella or the Ugly Duckling, except it has divine dimensions. One’s response to the Son will be decisive for one’s own fate.
Tolbert helpfully points out that “typology by its very nature encourages a more generalized application: any group in power that obstructs the fruitfulness of God’s good earth is a manifestation of the evil tenants of the vineyard.”17 Frequently, one reads parables as making a devastating point about someone else, whereas they may be more applicable to us. Readers and listeners tend to identify with the heroes or “good guys” in a story. Since most have heard the story before, they distance themselves from the guilty parties who stubbornly, maliciously, and selfishly want everything for themselves.
Jesus lulled his first listeners into a trap by relating a story about an absentee landlord’s problems with rebellious tenants—something they had to put up with in real life. Then he turned the tables on them so that they realized that they were the evil tenants refusing to yield fruit to God. The parable will be most effective if, in retelling it, it somehow boomerangs back into the face of listeners as they suddenly realize it is speaking about them. Jesus’ parables sound so safe, like Nathan’s story of the ewe lamb. Then he springs the trap and catches his listeners in their guilt: “You are the man!” This allegory does more than condemn evil leaders who lived some two thousand years ago; it applies to us. The story of God’s relationship with a disobedient and rebellious people has not changed much. The judgment that fell on them can fall on us if we, as leaders, fail in our stewardship. We must therefore analyze in what areas we have failed to yield fruit to God, how we may have rejected and mistreated God’s servants (3 John 9–10), and how we continue to reject God’s Son (Heb. 6:6).
Contemporary Significance
THE WORLD OF the wicked tenants is a world much like ours. It is filled with wanton violence. When threatened, these tenants know no restraint and strike out violently. They stop at nothing to get what they want. It is a world that breaks contracts without blinking. They do not care that they have agreed to fulfill certain obligations; they intend to do whatever they please. It is a world that knows no sense of right and wrong. They believe that whatever achieves their ends is right, no matter what it costs others. Therefore, they greedily seize for themselves what is not theirs. They do not forget who owns the land; they simply intend to take it over for themselves by any means. Their covetousness knows no bounds as they greedily grab more than their share of everything. This unbridled will to power leads them to say, “Mine is the power, the kingdom and the glory.”
This story reminds me of what happens every summer when I put up a hummingbird feeder. One hummingbird always attempts to take it over as his very own private feeder. The bird chases off any other hummingbird that dares to venture near. It requires constant vigilance. It is like watching World War I dogfights as the bird darts back and forth pursuing dozens of trespassers through tree branches and swearing his outrage in hummingbird chirps. The bird only stops when exhausted and rarely takes time to perch and drink at “his” feeder. But it is not “his” feeder. It is mine. I bought it. I prepared the mixture of water, sugar, and red food coloring. I risked my neck hanging it up on a tree branch to draw all the hummingbirds, not just this one.
The imperious hummingbird behaves like many humans do in God’s vineyard, only our similar behavior does not cause God much amusement. Covetousness makes humans want what they should not have. It then makes them think that this desire should be fulfilled at all costs. Other persons become things to exploit, and our own desires become our god.
The tenants live in a self-centered, cutthroat world with no awareness of God or God’s judgment. They want to establish themselves as the lords of their little world. They reject the reality that they are creatures of God who live in God’s vineyard. God, however, stands in the way of their self-absorbed plans. Killing God’s messengers sent to remind them of this reality gives them a false sense of security, but their defiance only secures their final destruction.
When they kill the heir, they have not won; they still must deal with God. To many today, God may sometimes seem to be like an absentee landlord, and a foolish one at that—easily betrayed and cheated. The owner in the parable loses his servants, his son, and seemingly his vineyard. People in our world get away with injustice, oppression, and murder. God’s messengers continue to be rejected, mocked, beaten, and killed. There seems to be no accountability for sin.
All is not as it seems, however. God sends the servants and the Son in hopes of bringing people to repentance (Rom. 2:4). The rejections and murders reveal God as a tragic figure who suffers with humankind. They also reveal the blind folly of evil. People think that they can get away with it, but God’s judgment will inevitably come. Sometimes one can see this judgment clearly manifest in history with the downfall of a nation’s evil leaders, sometimes not. The parable assures us that God will win even when it seems that he has lost. Those who reject God’s claims on their lives and God’s call to repentance will always be the losers even when it seems as if they have won. They sow the seeds of their own destruction.
The parable particularly applies to the church today. Israel was chosen by God to fulfill God’s gracious purposes for the whole world. God equipped them specially for the task, but the leaders mistook that assignment as special privilege and wanted to be accountable only to themselves, not to God. If one asks what fruit God requires from us today, the answer comes from what immediately precedes and follows the parable (12:13–17, 28–34): God requires that our place of worship be a house of prayer for all nations (11:17). God also requires our community to be a forgiving one (11:25). We are to render to God what belongs to God (12:17). We are also to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (12:30), and our neighbors as ourselves (12:31). In other words, God expects the vineyard, God’s people, to be an accepting, prayerful, forgiving, devoted, and loving fellowship built around his Son, the one stone that binds everything together. When it becomes something other than that, it courts God’s judgment.