When read in context, this comes off as nothing short of a terrifying political thriller. And as such, we should not be shocked to learn that this is the moment when Yeshua/Jesus purposefully signs His own death warrant—not at His mock trial but here with a terrible accusation, made in parable form against the Jerusalem power-brokers.
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12 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 11 this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” 12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
Here we are in Mark chapter twelve and one of the most explosive confrontations in the entire Bible. After this, the Chief priests, scribes, and elders that we mentioned last week will decide that legal action is in order. As I also talked about last week, these three groups would have been the makeup of the Sanhedrin, aka the supreme court of the Jews and I believe this was an official-ish delegration sent to question Him about the liberties He had taken the day before in driving out those who were buying and selling, their animals, overturning the tables of the money-changers and the stools of those who sold pigeons. If you missed that episode, you will want to check out the archives because chapters 11 and 12 are a unit and every incident is part of a larger whole that cannot be properly understood separately.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.
Let’s review everything quickly: Day 1, the entry into Jerusalem where Yeshua rides into town on a dedicated donkey’s colt, goes into the Temple, looks around and promptly leaves. These were both prophetic actions hearkening back to what was expected when a king would return from battle, would be paraded into the city, and would culminate the day with a visit to the Temple and sacrifices. Yeshua only looked around and inspected the place, which didn’t bode well. They spent the night in Bethany. Day 2, Yeshua is hungry and goes to a fig tree out of season, one with no edible fruit on it (just like the Temple the night before) and declared judgment that no one would ever eat of it again. Then they went to the Temple where Yeshua performed a prophetic act of judgment against the worldly and corrupt nature of what it had become, and stayed to teach people afterward. They left and spent the night in Bethany. Day 3, they got up and made their way to Jerusalem, passing that same fig tree, now withered so badly that the roots are even withered away. Yeshua looks toward the Temple and tells them that when they pray for the wickedness within the current Temple to end (the mountain tossed into the sea) that they do so with clean hearts full of forgiveness. Then they enter the Temple, where Yeshua’s authority and the source of His authority to disrupt the commerce within the Temple is challenged. He refuses to answer unless they admit to their official position on whether or not John the Baptist’s ministry was from God, and legitimate, or from men, and illegitimate. Realizing that however they answer will spell disaster for them, they tell Him that they just don’t know and are effectively silenced. Yeshua immediately follows up with the following parable.
Oh, but before I read it, it has to be seen within the context of Isaiah 5:1-7, “Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!”
If you remember from my series on Isaiah and the Messiah, Isaiah 1-39 is all about, “Clean up your idolatrous, oppressive, faithless act or else I am going to send the Babylonians to destroy you.” Everything after that is dealing with their post exilic reality so that they can return to the Land again. Isaiah 5 is a prime example of these pre-exile warnings. Israel and Judah are being compared here to an unprosperous vineyard—it produces fruit, but wild, nasty fruit, despite being given every advantage imaginable. Good placement in the Land, jealously protected, preparations made for a glorious harvest—but what Yahweh received was not what He had put into it. Instead of fertile, cultivated vines producing a superior vintage, He might as well not have even bothered because he would have gotten the same results from vines growing wild out in the wilderness! What’s the verdict? Yahweh is going to remove all special treatment, all protections, rain—in order words, foreign conquest. Yahweh demands justice and righteousness from His people but when we behave oppressively and shed blood, then folks are going to cry out against us and they will be heard. And frankly, things haven’t changed. Yahweh will always have these same standards—just look at Matthew 25 and see how the sheep and goats are judged and by what criteria. It’s Isaiah 5 all over again and this was a big deal in Yeshua’s day as well which is why He tells this related parable, but this time not against all of the Jews—just the leadership which is leading them astray and oppressing them and treating the Temple like a business opportunity and some sort of national shrine that will keep them safe.
12 And he began to speak to them in parables.
Who is “them”? It isn’t just those who are challenging Him—this has all been in front of the “people” of whom His accusers were too scared to give their true opinion about John in front of. But, this is the first spoken parable since Mark seven when He spoke about what truly defiles a man—that was when He was responding to the Pharisee’s challenge over hand-washing. Before that, we had the Parable of the Sower, which is more typical of what we think of as a full-blown parable. He has spent many chapters being open with His disciples, preparing them for His crucifixion and the parables went out the window and were replaced by a series of prophetic actions, meant to be proofs of His identity as the Yahweh-Warrior and Messiah, Lord of the Temple, etc. Now, He has been challenged and He will teach as He always does with outsiders—in parable form.
“A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country.
The Jews, or at least the scholars, were very familiar with the concept of Israel as the unfruitful vineyard of Isaiah, but they would have immediately been struck with the current application of this story. Absentee landlords were a huge problem in Judea, Galilee and Transjordan. For close to three hundred years, as we see written in the Zenon papyri, wealthy families would buy land off of struggling subsistence farmers, lease the land back out to the former owners and have them work it in exchange for a cut of the crops. There was a lot of this going on in the fertile Jordan Valley. Of course, the everyday Jews listening to this would immediately side with the tenants—which many of them were, and the chief priests, scribes and elders would immediately side with the absentee landlords—who would take advantage of someone else’s misfortune and snatch up the lands that they could not afford to pay taxes on, in addition to their obligation to tithe. They would improve the land and then leave. Especially the high priestly family of Annas—they were disgustingly wealthy and owned a lot of land. Remember, money was land and critters.
2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard.
At this point, the non-elites are grumbling and the elites are nodding. Yes, this is normal life in first century Israel. But, of course, we know it can’t be that easy. I want to draw your attention to the word servant, which is repeatedly used in Scripture to refer to prophets. This is our first sign that there is much more to this story than meets the eye:
Jer 7:25-28 “From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers. “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.”
Jer 25:4-5 “You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the Lord persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, saying, ‘Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds, and dwell upon the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers from of old and forever.”
Amos 3:7-8 “For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”
Zech 1:6 “But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? So they repented and said, ‘As the Lord of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us.’”
3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed.
It would have been shocking for tenants to actually do this, even if they wanted to because they were not the legal owner and the military could have been called in to enforce collection which, in the real world, probably would have happened right away but we are faced with this insanely long-suffering landowner who is going to try to be merciful again and again—except, of course to these pitiful servants. It’s like the original series of Star Trek and guys keep being sent down to the planet in red shirts. It won’t end well.
4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully.
At this point, the people listening would be shocked that he would send yet another servant, but I think they see here a reference to John the Baptist, the prophet who of course had just recently had his head cut off by Herod Antipas. It was just too pointed and specific a reference to ignore. John’s death was huge news and seemingly everyone except the leadership saw him as a prophet sent by God and perhaps even Elijah who was to come. This, coupled with reports that Yeshua Himself was John raised from the dead, or one of the other prophets, changed everything and now they are listening intently and beginning to commiserate with the servants instead of the tenants.
5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed.
This was the history of their ancestors, being sent prophet after prophet as Yahweh tried to reason with them and call them back to Himself. Eventually, their violence, oppression, idolatry, and refusal to receive Yahweh’s servants led to their slaughter and exile at the hands of the Babylonians—despite having seen the exact same thing happen to their northern brothers and sisters in Israel a mere one hundred and fifty years before. John had really harsh words for the first-century Jewish leadership. He called them snakes and vipers and warned them not to put their trust in genealogy to save them. It hadn’t done their ancestors any good.
Neh 9:26 “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies.”
2 Chron 36:15-16 “The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no remedy.”
Specifically, we have Scriptural references to this happening. Of course, Jeremiah was treated horribly but survived. Elijah was chased by Jezebel, who slaughtered the prophets of Yahweh. We have a reference to a prophet named Uriah in Jeremiah, and Zechariah son of the High Priest in 2 Chronicles–
Jer 20:2 Then Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the house of the Lord.
Jer 26:20-23 There was another man who prophesied in the name of the Lord, Uriah the son of Shemaiah from Kiriath-jearim. He prophesied against this city and against this land in words like those of Jeremiah. And when King Jehoiakim, with all his warriors and all the officials, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death. But when Uriah heard of it, he was afraid and fled and escaped to Egypt. Then King Jehoiakim sent to Egypt certain men, Elnathan the son of Achbor and others with him, and they took Uriah from Egypt and brought him to King Jehoiakim, who struck him down with the sword and dumped his dead body into the burial place of the common people.
2 Chron 24:20-22 Then the Spirit of God clothed Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, and he stood above the people, and said to them, “Thus says God, ‘Why do you break the commandments of the Lord, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has forsaken you.’” But they conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Joash the king did not remember the kindness that Jehoiada, Zechariah’s father, had shown him, but killed his son. And when he was dying, he said, “May the Lord see and avenge!”
This story was particularly sad because King Joash was practically raised by Zechariah’s father, the High Priest, after being rescued from the slaughter of Athaliah against the entire royal family, making herself the illegitimate Queen. It is very hard, near impossible, to refuse to use the power we have when we are confronted and threatened. It’s something Yahweh deals with in me all the time. Some days more successfully than others. It’s why I have never said yes to leadership opportunities when they are offered. I know myself too well. I am not ready yet.
6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
It is so important to read the Parables experientially, as though you are an audience member, and as different sorts of audience members. That requires having a familiarity with the audience, and the reality of their lives. At this point, I believe the audience knows that Yeshua is talking about the prophets. As we will see later, the Sanhedrin delegation certainly knows. And if the servants are the prophets then they know that the “absentee” landlord is Yahweh, who has not spoken to them through prophets for about four hundred years at this point. Most Jews in the first century believed that time was over, that they were in a different—for lack of a better word—dispensation until the time of Messiah. They knew things were not right between themselves and Yahweh as they had not been freed from foreign oppression. They wanted their national slate wiped clean with all forgiven so that they could start anew, but that went so badly under the Hasmoneans. That’s why John was so popular, He was saying, “Repent and be baptized, because Yahweh is about to do great works in your midst.” No, He didn’t say it that way but that’s what it meant. Yahweh is about to intervene in a huge, eschatological way on behalf of His faithful. John was like a drink of ice-cold water to people in a furnace. He was hope, as well as a warning. People flocked to him because he was a herald of imminent action on their behalf by Yahweh.
But this turn in the story, they must have been horrified. What man would send his own son when all the servants had been brutalized? You can just hear the gasps and see people shaking their heads and muttering protests. No, the landlord must not send his own son or these oppressors will kill him too. Listening to parables was like watching television for them and this was a thrilling and heartbreaking story. “Who is this son?” they must have asked themselves. Could He be talking about the Messiah? Will God send the Messiah to kill these tenants and finally deliver justice to the prophets?
7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’
Because of the problem with absentee landlords, the people would understand this. Possession really was 9/10 of the law as far as land went and, when they saw the son show up, they might have put two and two together and gotten fifteen by assuming that all these servants have been coming because the landlord himself has died. Now, the presence of the son would appear as a last ditch effort to grab some of the harvest by his heir. Although this makes no sense to us, if they killed the son (if this was a real scenario) there was a possibility that ownership of the land would revert back to the tenants, who had proof that they lived there and could therefore establish residency. If there were no heirs, ownership could be claimed by anyone on a first come first serve basis. Sounds crazy to us, but that’s the way it was. That’s the background context, but how do we read the hidden meaning?
If we are taking all the other servants to be prophets, which of course we must, then the heir is the last emissary, the final message, their last chance to do things right. By plotting to kill him, they are admitting that he is the rightful owner—otherwise why bother? This has ceased to be a story about absentee landlord greed and has become a tale of the true Landowner, Yahweh, who has been seeking His share of fruitfulness from His people only to be repeatedly rejected, insulted, ignored, and His prophets brutalized. Things were getting more and more uncomfortable for the elites who had come to question Him. Not only were they all likely absentee landowners themselves, and believed by the populace to be greedy and oppressive, but they are also looking more and more like the greedy, brutal tenants by association with the leadership who had, in the past, killed the prophets and led the people astray.
Of course, we read this while knowing the rest of the story—these people, who make up a statistically insignificant percentage of the first century Jews, will conspire to have Him arrested, tried, convicted and condemned in an illegal mock trial and then will collaborate with the Romans to crucify Him. Just as Yeshua claimed in the three Passion Predictions. They do this because He threatens their authority over the Land, over the Temple and most importantly, over the people themselves. Isaiah refers to the people as the spoils of war that the Messiah will claim. Nothing is more important than people. The Land can rest and be renewed even after being laid waste. Temples can be rebuilt. Like the King of Sodom, Yahweh is most concerned with people—His image-bearers. The Jerusalem leadership is the same, and ownership of the Temple is the key to controlling the populace because of what it means to the people. We’ve talked about that before and I won’t rehash it all again.
8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.
It’s one thing to kill this man, that’s horrifying enough at this point, but when they throw him out of the vineyard? Disrespecting a corpse is the act of the lowest of the low, or a man against an enemy so detested that he wants him to go unburied. I mean, seriously, in the ancient world, people were terrified about the fate of their bodies after death. The thought of ending up as the dirt underneath someone else’s feet? To be mingled with animal waste? It may seem silly to us but this was a cultural taboo. When we look at abused corpses in Scripture, it is usually an extreme circumstance—like Saul and Jonathan—their bodies were left to rot in the field and Saul’s head displayed at the Temple of Dagon, their grain god. Jezebel fell to her death and her body was torn apart and eaten by dogs—as judgment, in part, for having a man murdered because her husband wanted another vineyard. Not being buried is about one of two things—wanton hatred of a man so severe that death doesn’t even satisfy it, or judgment. I think Yeshua was looking right at the chief priests, scribes and elders when He said this, as if to say, “I know exactly what you are planning to do to me.”
9 What will the owner of the vineyard do?
I like to imagine a very pointed pause here, continuing His stare in the direction of the delegation. The audience, of course, is aghast with horror and hanging on His every word. The elites must be beyond furious, but they were rendered speechless when they were unwilling to answer Yeshua’s question about the Baptism of John who, of course, was probably the one mentioned as being struck in the head in this parable. Anyone from an honor/shame culture knows exactly what the landlord would do because it is what they would do in his place—to reject a man’s son is to reject the man. There is no way around it. The word for owner here is kyrios, often translated as master or Lord and it hearkens back to, again, Malachi 3:1-3, which is a rebuke against the priests, which you will have memorized soon:
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
The “Lord” whom they seek will come suddenly to His Temple and it will be for judgment—although the good news is that it will work for the purification of the priests but when you know the condemnation is about you, you aren’t caring much about what it means to future generations of priests because you have just been declared toast. You aren’t acceptable. You have been judged wicked. The Lord you seek—you aren’t going to enjoy His visitation because you weren’t being faithful. So, what does this mean in the here and now? In the real world, you would expect the owner to get the government or the military involved. Roman soldiers stationed in cities were pretty much police officers. Let’s close out the parable:
He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.
Now, the gloves are off. The owner just isn’t a normal owner, He is going to personally destroy the tenants who have been running His vineyard and refusing to give Him what belongs to Him. Their greed will be condemned. They will be destroyed and replaced. Now, let’s talk about abuses of this Scripture because traditionally, for a long time this has been read within the context of Christian dispensationalism that uses this verse to say that the Jews had their shot and now God only is interested in the Church. Well, you can’t get that from a literal reading—that’s just straight up sloppy eisegesis (reading an agenda into the text). Sloppy theology. Not to mention a lot of wishful thinking. The tenants are the elites, not the Jews. It can’t be the Jews because they overwhelmingly loved and accepted John as a prophet. They accepted his message and his baptism. They are also not among the co-conspirators singled out as about to kill the son. Chief priests (not even all or the majority of priests), scribes (the high level legal experts, not all scribal retainers) and the elders—they are the tenants. And they know it. Yeshua just signed his own death warrant. They have been publicly shamed and they can’t even respond and admit that they know it. The others to whom the vineyard is given are Yeshua’s followers, specifically His disciples who will assume the mantle of leadership over the reconstituted, multi-cultural Israel.
10 Have you not read this Scripture: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 11 this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
And we are back to Psalm 118, which the people were chanting from during His entry into Jerusalem, “Hosanna! Baruch haba, b’shem Adonai,” “Hosanna (Please save)! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” That’s verses 25 and 26 but here He quotes from verses 22-23. We need to break this down in light of the first century understanding. In extra-biblical writings, the scribes/Torah teachers/legal experts were often called “builders”. Psalm 118 has these experts rejecting a stone.
In Acts 4:11-12, Peter outright interprets this verse in light of the crucifixion and resurrection where the rejected stone, Yeshua, will become the most important stone in the entire building: “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Romans 9:32-33 “…they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
I Peter 2:4-8 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture:
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
They are drawing in a very Jewish way from Isaiah 28 starting in verse 14: “Therefore, hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers, who rule this people in Jerusalem! Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip passes through it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter”; therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’”
Whoever believes will not be in haste. The Hebrew word means they will not be panicked. But it gives the sense of being careful, paying close attention—you know, exactly the sorts of things you would want to do if you wanted to avoid tripping over something in your path. The leadership here, they have now thrown all such caution to the wind and are in damage control mode. They are going to do whatever it takes in order to protect their own interests, no matter what. They have to be careful but I can tell you that right now, these men are angry and scared and see no other option but to get rid of Yeshua.
12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
They are silenced, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous. It just means that they have to find another way to get rid of Him. Direct challenges to His authority in front of the crowds will not work.
Next week, we will cover the tax and resurrection controversies. So, the Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducees are up to bat. Will they be any more successful than the legal elites? We’ll see.
