Jesus and His Bible, Part 10

The Faithless Vine-Growers

Mark 11 ends with the priests, scribes, and elders asking Jesus who gave him the authority to do such things as clear the merchants out of the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple.  He “answered” them with a question about where the baptism of John came from, whether heaven or humans.  They refused to answer, because he had trapped and immobilized them. 

Mark 12:1 And He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard, and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the winepress, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.” 

The parable goes on to tell how, each time he sent servants to collect the rent, the vine-growers beat them, stoned them, shamed them, and killed some of them. So he sent his son, thinking they would respect him. But instead they reasoned that killing the son would make them the de facto owners, so they did kill him and throw his body out of the vineyard. 

Jesus asked the crowd, “What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers and give the vineyard to others.”

Jesus’s Bible has so many references to vines and vineyards that they cannot all be brought to mind here.  The references are particularly prevalent in the Prophets, and we will look at just one, Isaiah:

“Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard.  My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. 

And he dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now…I will lay it waste…For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his delightful plant. Thus he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress…Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil…Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight.” (Isaiah 5)

The context of this parable is the prophet Isaiah’s call to his nation to repent; his description of the suffering their sinfulness will call down on them; his prediction of the dissolution of their community and kingdom; his list of their sins, including a plea to “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (1:17). Interspersed among the warnings and accusations are visions of a blessed future, where war is no more, where Zion is holy and protected, which Isaiah so much wanted to be true. 

Isaiah  goes on following his parable of the vineyard to predict the defeat and downfall of the nation of Israel.

By quoting this passage, Jesus brought before the priests, scribes, and elders their worst nightmare—the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem and the nation.  It had happened before when Babylon invaded, and the Jews were dispersed out of their homeland. Isaiah’s prophetic vision was accurate.

Jesus essentially said to his hearers that the same conditions that provoked judgment before have occurred again, and even worse, and how can they hope to escape?  This was infuriating, and it confirmed their fear that Jesus’s message and person had both personal and political implications. Their arrogance and their will to power and their personal corruptions were laid bare by Isaiah’s words in Jesus’s mouth.