Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen - Matt 21:33-46; Mark 12:1-12; Luke 20:9-19

From the parable of the two sons, Jesus continues with another parable about “a certain man” who planted a vineyard, and rented it out to “husbandmen” and then left to go “into a far country for a long time.” In an article entitled, “The Wicked Husbandmen” published on biblehub.com we read, “the vineyard was let not to one capitalist, who might employ laborers to do the necessary work, but to a kind of joint-stock company of laborers who proposed to cultivate the property with their own hands for the common benefit.” When I first read this parable, I thought that it was run by one guy who was the main player because that’s how I imagined the situation being run, but this explanation would make sense as far as it termed “husbandmen” not “husbandman,” plural, not singular. It would also make it more accurate as far as how the Jewish government was being run at the time. Israel was occupied by Rome but even without Rome, there hadn’t been a single successive ruler for centuries. Israel was governed by committee more than a single person. Similarly, the vineyard is run by committee instead of a single overseeing contractor.

The use a vineyard in a parable to represent Israel, or the kingdom of God is very common, especially in the ancient scriptures. The article cites three references, Isa 5:1-7, Ezek 15:2-5, and Ps 29:8-15, and we have all the Book of Mormon references as well, in which there are 105 uses of the word “vineyard.” In the case of this parable, the vineyard represents the kingdom of God and the gospel. The vineyard is created by the householder, who represents God. God created the universe, but he did more than that, he also created the plan for us to be able to learn and grow and become like Him, but also to be saved, He created the plan of salvation. From the beginning, the gospel has been on the earth, but through various rejections and corruptions, the true gospel has been distorted to the point where, when Christ is born, the kingdom of God is being run by dishonest and greedy men who have weaseled their way to the top of Israel’s leadership.

I would imagine that the type of arrangement the householder had with the husbandmen was that they would fill a quota and anything left over after that was theirs to keep. Naturally, “at the season he sent a servant to the husbandmen, that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard.” This is to be expected, and shouldn’t have been a surprise to the men who had agreed to work the land. But when this servant arrived to collect what was due, “the husbandmen beat him, and sent him away.” At this point, for me, that would be a breach of contract and I would have come back, taken my land back and imprisoned the husbandmen for fraud and assault, assuming that was punishable at the time. But that’s not the reaction of the householder who sends another servant, who is also beaten and sent away with out the payment, and the same with the third servant who was sent. This went on for a while “and again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.” How bold is it to not only disregard your agreed upon obligation, but to then take the life of someone who is coming to collect?

If the vineyard is the kingdom of God and the husbandmen are the leaders in Israel, the servants would be the prophets who had come to teach the people on Israel. The IM comments, “Through the parable, the Lord taught that over the course of the preceding centuries, the leaders of Israel had rejected many prophets- men like Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and numerous others.” The husbandmen, meaning the Jewish leadership, treated the servants, meaning the prophets, cruelly, rejecting them all with varying degrees of violence. Some prophets were beaten up, some were exiled, some were ostracized, some were imprisoned, but many were just flat out murdered, and often in horrific ways. Some were bludgeoned to death with big frickin rocks, some were stuffed into a tree and then sawed in half, just the extremes the people took to not only reject the message, but to silence the messenger is disgusting.

What I find most interesting about the parable is that at the first rejection of the servants, the householder would have been within his rights to fully execute harsh judgment upon the husbandmen, but he didn’t. The article points out, “The proprietor, still unwilling to bring matters to an extremity, adopted next an expedient which he hoped would subdue the rebellion, without imposing on him the necessity of punishing the rebels.” The householder didn’t want to punish the husbandmen, he wanted to give them the chance to do the right thing, he just wanted everything to work out, so where he could have exercised maximum penalty, he choose instead of show maximum mercy.

After the rejection and murder of many of his servants, “then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son: it may be that they will reverence him when they see him.” A couple of points to make about this decision, first is that the way this verse is phrased, it implies that the householder fully expected the husbandmen to receive his son, where they didn’t accept the servants. We know that God is omnipotent, so in sending Jesus, His Son, to the Jewish leadership, there was no expectation there that they would accept him, when they hadn’t accepted the prophets. If the householder is portraying God Himself, then he would have sent his son back to the estate knowing full well that he would be murdered just like the others, just like Heavenly Father knew that Jesus was going to be murdered. The second point refers to the statement “they will reverence my son.” The article points out, “The owner of the vineyard said, ‘They will reverence my son.’ The expression is natural and appropriate in the lips of a human proprietor; but obviously when it represents the purpose of God, it means only that such reverence was claimed, and such reverence was due. The omniscient knew beforehand that the Jewish rulers would not yield even to this last and tenderest appeal.”

 The lord’s son is sent “but when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.” I find it interesting that the motivation to kill the son was money, and the motivation for rejecting Jesus was also money. I had read somewhere that in ancient Israel the law was that if a land owner dies with no living heir then the land goes to whoever was working it. If this is the case, then it would make sense that the thought would come up, but it is a very poorly thought out plan because if a man owns land and is living somewhere else, the chances of him having no spouse or heir or any arrangements made to the estate upon his death, is slim to none. And it is also very unlikely that, upon the death of his son, the landowner wouldn’t come exercising his legal right to kill the husbandmen and let someone else use his land. So again, the thought being there makes sense, but the execution of the plan is very short sighted.

Apparently, they don’t see the fatal flaws in their plan, so the husbandmen “cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.” I wondered why Jesus would have given the specific additional detail of the son being killed outside of the vineyard. Why would he have just said that the son was killed? There was no specific location given for any of the other mistreatment of servants. The IM comments, “This part of the parable was fulfilled three days later when Jesus was taken outside of the city and slain.” Why is it significant that Jesus was not killed inside of the city? I’m not sure, I’m going to have to think about this.

My question is, “what did you think was going to happen?” Jesus has a similar question for the chief priests, “what therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them?” I try to imagine myself as one of the chief priests standing in the temple courtyard and listening to Jesus as he told this parable? Would I have understood what he was talking about? Would I be able to see past the accusations of hypocrisy and really be able to view Him as the Son of God? I would imagine that the density of the Spirit that would be there at that moment must have been tremendous, which just goes to show how hardened their hearts would have had to be to withstand it. The landowner in the parable is much like God in real life for them, and us, because he’s given them multiple opportunities to accept his message, to repent. To their credit, some did believe in Jesus and I think that the rampant spread of Christianity after Jesus’ death is indicative of some Jewish acceptance of the gospel.

The chief priests couldn’t have condoned the behavior of the wicked husbandmen because that would expose their fraud as spiritual leaders. JTC suggests that the chief priests gave the answer, but the way I’m reading it, it appears that Jesus answer his own question saying, “He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to others.” Again, what did these husbandmen think was going to happen? In the practical application, the Jewish leadership thought that by removing Jesus through death would end his popularity, and therefore secure their own place of wealth and power and prestige. Jesus is telling them that this isn’t going to happen, and that in fact, by rejecting Him, they were going to lose their place of prominence among the people. The gospel that Israel had been entrusted with for all these millennia was going to be taken from them and given to the gentiles who would embrace it and bear righteous “fruit.”

The people answered “God forbid,” and it’s unclear to me why they would have responded that way. Were they objecting to the notion that the husbandmen shouldn’t be punished for their breech of contract and murder? Probably not, because even the most hard hearted person couldn’t ignore the fact that the lord of the vineyard was legally entitled to mete out that punishment, and govern his own land. Maybe they understood the parable more than I imagined and were objecting to the idea that the gentiles would be given the “true and living God” and the gospel and would be favored of God the way that the Jews thought of themselves at that point. It seems like the people are upset at the prospect of losing their premier status, but not so much about rejecting the Messiah that they’ve been waiting for.

It seems like Jesus changes the subject, but I wonder what I’m missing as far as continuity here goes. He begins citing scripture saying, “What is this then that is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” I love when the Lord cites scripture because it just goes to show that the gospel truth is in there, we just aren’t looking for it. This example reminds me of the saying, “you can’t break the commandments, you can only break yourself against them.” The concept of the “stone” is interesting, the builders reject this rock, but it doesn’t just become incorporated later, it because the most important piece. It would be one thing for the people building a structure, who are supposed to be the professionals, go through a bunch of rocks, but don’t choose that certain one, then another group later makes it part of a wall somewhere, that’s not what he’s saying.

He’s saying that the most important piece of material is being discarded like garbage, therefore their structure is bound to fail. When the next group comes to build what the first group could not, they will take the stone that was unwanted and create a magnificent building from it. The stone is the most important part, it’s just the people who are questioning it’s value. Likewise, Jesus is the most important anything in our existence, but it’s up who are standing around thinking about money and paying our bills. It’s like Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said, something like “the game is finished, the final score has already been posted, but we are down here still trying to figure out which team to join.”