The Parable of the Tenants

Matt 21:33 “Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. 34 When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants [1] to the tenants to get his fruit. 35 And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. 37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 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.’ 39 And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 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.”

42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone; [4]
this was the Lord's doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. 44 And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” [5]

45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. 46 And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.

How does the parable of the tenants illustrate the character of the Father, the Son and the religious leaders (21:33-46)?

(b) 21:33-46 The tenants of the vineyard (see Mk. 12:1-12; Lk. 20:9-19). Here the theme of replacement is explicit. The story is of an absentee landowner and the tenant farmers who are obliged to pay him a fixed proportion of the produce as their rent. Their failure to do so is in itself sufficient reason for them to be replaced; the murder of his son makes matters far more serious.

The point of the story was obvious to the chief priests and the Pharisees (45) and would have been so to anyone who knew the book of Isaiah, where the memorable parable of the vineyard (Is. 5:1-7) symbolized Israel’s failure to live up to God’s expectations. But the focus here was not on Israel as a whole but on its leadership, whose execution of God’s son was about to bring to a head the repeated rejection of his prophets in the past. They could now expect only a wretched end, while others took their place.

Vs 42-44 work out the implications of the story. V 42 (quoting Ps. 118:22) illustrates the divine reversal which was soon to happen, when the one rejected by Israel’s leaders was to be proved to be the one chosen for the place of highest honour. V 44 takes up the same metaphor with allusions to the destructive stones of Is. 8:14-15 and Dn. 2:34-35,44-45. V 43 is more direct: the kingdom symbolized by the vineyard belongs to God not to them, and he will entrust it to someone more responsible. A people suggests not just a change of leadership but that the very composition of the people of God was to change (along the lines suggested in 8:11-12). It was not, however, a simple matter of Jews being replaced by Gentiles (that would have needed a reference to ‘peoples’ in the plural, the normal Greek term for Gentiles); rather a new community of God’s people was being created (cf. on 16:18), in which both Jews and Gentiles would find their place. What would characterize them was not their nationality, but that they would produce fruit (cf. 3:8, 10; 7:15-20; 12:33-37; 13:8, 26; and especially 21:18-20).

Matt. 21:43 kingdom of God will be taken away. The leaders have failed to carry out their obligations to God both in their personal lives and in leading the nation of Israel. Their privileged role in caring for God's vineyard/kingdom is now being taken away and given to a people producing its fruits. The church will be a new “people” (Gk. ethnos, “nation, people”) consisting of disciples, both Jews and Gentiles, gathered out of many “nations” (28:19; plural of Gk. ethnos) and brought together as one new “nation” (1 Pet. 2:9; singular of Gk. ethnos) in the unfolding of God's kingdom in the present age.