Matthew · New Testament · Matthew 21:33–46
Landowner and Wicked Tenants
The Story
Continuing His direct and increasingly pointed confrontation with the chief priests and Pharisees in the Temple courts, Jesus told the parable of a landowner who planted a vineyard, equipped it fully with everything needed for a productive harvest, leased it to tenant farmers, and then traveled away to a distant country. When harvest time came the landowner sent servants to collect his share of the fruit, but the tenants seized them one after another — beating some, killing others, and stoning yet others — and when the landowner sent even more servants the tenants treated them the same way. Finally the landowner made the extraordinary decision to send his own son, reasoning that surely the tenants would respect him — but when the tenants saw the son coming they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him, calculating that with the heir dead the inheritance would become theirs. Jesus then asked the religious leaders what they thought the landowner would do to those tenants when he returned — and they walked straight into their own verdict, declaring that he would bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other tenants who would give him his share of the harvest at the right time. Jesus then quoted the cornerstone passage from Psalm 118 — that the stone the builders rejected had become the cornerstone — and declared that the Kingdom of God would be taken from them and given to a people who would produce its fruit, and that anyone who fell on this stone would be broken to pieces while anyone it fell on would be crushed. The chief priests and Pharisees understood immediately and with certainty that Jesus was speaking about them — and they wanted to arrest Him right then, but held back because they feared the reaction of the crowds who regarded Jesus as a prophet.
The Message
Jesus made the meaning of this parable unmistakably personal — the religious leaders who heard it understood immediately that they were the wicked tenants who had rejected God's prophets and were now plotting to kill His Son, and their response was not repentance but a hardened resolve to arrest Him.