The Parable Of The Wicked Tenants: An Exposition Of Matthew 21:33-46

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants: An Exposition of Matthew 21:33-46

The parables of Jesus were often spoken to hide the truth from His enemies and reveal it to the disciples and those who held to Jesus teaching. It is true that He often had to take them aside to explain what the parable meant because they were hard of hearing. But sometimes Jesus makes the meaning of His parables explicit to those who opposed Him. This parable is one of them.

Jesus’ parable here of the wicked tenant farmers has obvious overtones from Isaiah 5:1-7 which the Pharisees and Scribes would have recognized. Isaiah compared Israel and Judah to a choice vineyard in which God had given a great deal of care. Nothing was spared to make it fruitful. As many vineyards were planted in rocky and hilly soil, the exertion to gather up the stones and to terrace the vineyard with them demonstrated how hard God had worked with Israel. The tasks involved with the pruning of such a vineyard added to this. The Isaiah passage says that after God had done the toil of establishing the vineyard that He had hired laborers to care for the lesser tasks while He went away on a journey. He had expected upon His return to find fruit. But instead of finding sweet grapes which were choice in making wine, He found sour grapes. God told Isaiah to tell Israel and Judah that He was going to remove the wall of protection from them. He would also stop caring for them. What was once a beautiful vineyard would return to its wild uncivilized and uncultivated state. It would become a place of thorns and briars. Within the lifetime of Isaiah, Israel would go into captivity and become the abode of wild beasts, so much so that the King of Assyrian sent people there to occupy it and keep it safe from wild animals. Judah would come within a hairbreadth of the same fate. Only the LORD’s hearkening to the prayer of Hezekiah saved it, for a season. But soon it would suffer the same fate and be taken into Babylonian captivity.

Jesus adds to what Isaiah said. He mentions that He sent people to collect His share of the fruit. This represented the profit of the vineyard. This was sharecropping. The vinedressers were fairly paid according to their work. One thinks of paying tithes to the LORD. The Lord labored for six days to create the heavens and the earth. He sustains the universe by the word of His power. He sends the rain. He causes the sun to shine. He protects His people from harm. Surely He is entitled for a tithe of our increase, seeing that He has more than earned it. We should be thankful to serve Him. Israel should have cheerfully rendered their increase to the LORD. Instead, they beat one servant, killed a second and stoned a third. It was bad enough that they were unthankful, but they assaulted the LORD’s servants as well. This was the way many of the LORD’s prophets had suffered.

Yet the LORD was longsuffering. He gave them one more chance. He did not send a prophet this time. He sent His Son. Surely they would respect. The text does not explicitly say this, but the fact their was no other heir tells us that this was the vineyard owner’s only son. But the vinedressers did not respect Him. Instead they took counsel to kill Him because they would then become the owners of the vineyard. It is plain that the vineyard owner is the Father and Jesus is His only Son. Jesus is telling the Jews, particularly its leaders that they were plotting to kill Him. They wanted to own their own religion without respect to God. As long as God was held afar off, this was acceptable. But they were not interested in a God who made any demands of them. They would give Him some lip service but wanted Him to stay out of their affairs.

Jesus asks the hearers to respond to the question of how the owner of the vineyard should react to this insult. The listeners responded that the owner shall miserably destroy these tenants and lease out his vineyard to tenants who will render their due from the harvest. In this, they gave the conventional response. The owner had the right to avenge himself on these wicked and murderous tenants. The King James uses the words “miserably destroy” which I feel fits the idea of eternal judgment. The Greek uses both the adjective and adverb form of “evil” in the text. Literally he will inflict utter evil unto these people. This does not mean the LORD is evil. Rather it is the idea that they have brought catastrophic judgment upon themselves for their actions.