Bible Study series: Matthew 21:33-46. Another shot at the Jerusalem and temple establishment. This was God’s plan–to get his Son on the cross to die for the sin of the world. His Son spoke only the truth, which was enough to fulfill this plan.
A warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together. I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click on this link:
In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Matthew 21:33-46
33 “Listen to another parable! A man who was a landowner planted a vineyard and put up a wall around it and dug in it a winepress and built a tower and leased it to tenants and departed. 34 When the season of harvest came near, he sent his servants to the tenants to receive his produce. 35 And the tenants seized them, beating one, killing one, and stoning one. 36 Again he sent other servants more than the first, and they did the same thing to them. 37 Finally he sent to them his own son, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 When the tenants saw the son, they said among themselves, “He’s the heir; come, let’s kill him and let’s have his inheritance.’ 39 And when they seized him, they threw him outside of the vineyard and killed him. 40 When therefore the landlord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? 41 They said to him, ‘He’ll totally destroy those wicked men and lease out the vineyard to the tenants who will return to him the produce in its season.’
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures?
The stone which the builders rejected,
That one became the head of the corner;
This is from the Lord,
And it is marvelous in our eyes. [Ps. 118:22-23]
43 For this reason, I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation that will produce its harvest. 44 And the one who falls on this stone will be dashed to pieces; the one on whom it falls–it will crush him.”
45 And when the chief priests and Pharisees heard his parables, they comprehended that he was speaking about them. 46 And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they regarded him to be a prophet. (Matt. 21:33-46)
Comments:
This is a parable of the judgment on God on the last generation (see v. 37 and “finally). And last of all he sent his Son. Then Jesus will predict the destruction of the temple in Matt. 24. It happened in A.D. 70, and the temple system has disappeared from then until now, for two thousand years. The temple system Moses set up about 1300-1500 B.C. did not last as long as the destruction of his system. By the will and empowerment of his Father, Jesus really did turn the world upside down, which has continued to this day.
Landowner = God
Vineyard = Israel or more specifically, Jerusalem and temple
Tenant farmers = Leaders in the temple and Jerusalem
The situation is found in various documents about large, absentee landowners who lease their land to struggling tenant farmer in Israel and surrounding nations.
Servants (or slaves) = prophets and other messengers throughout Israel’s history
Son = Son of God or Jesus
Rejected stone = head of the corner = Jesus the Messiah
Nation that produces fruit = converted Jews and converted Gentiles
If they reject the ordinary looking stone, God will turn it into the chief cornerstone. That’s his new plan of vindication and redemption. Jesus knows what it feels like to be rejected. But he held on to God’s new plan.
Now let’s dig more deeply into the details.
33:
Jesus continues his dominance of the chief priests and teachers of the law and anyone else like them on the scene. Before, he didn’t submit to their investigation of his authority. That’s like a three-year-old asking a grandfather where he got his authority. Maybe the grandfather would also laugh it off. Now, however, Jesus takes off his gloves and “goes to town” or becomes stronger with these leaders who claimed Moses as their authority. But he was speaking to the people within earshot of his teaching.
A vineyard sometimes refers to Israel in the Old Testament (Ps. 80:8-13; Is. 5:1-2; 27:2-3; Jer. 2:21; Hos. 10:1).
Here’s a sample passage with the same phrases and words appearing in this parable and these verses in Isaiah:
I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.
2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit. …
The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel (Is. 5:1-2, 7, NIV)
“departed”: The owner (God) going away for a long time means that after the revelation on Mt. Sinai, where God appeared and spoke to Moses face to face throughout their sojourn across the desert, God did not give such clear and authoritative revelations—Moses was unique. Rather, he sent prophet after prophet to the people of Israel. Those are the series of servants in the parable.
“farmers”: this is the standard word for this occupation, but in context it could be translated more narrowly as “vine-growers.” I translated it as “tenant farmers. They represent the religious leaders.
Literally, the word parable (parabolē in Greek) combines para– (pronounced pah-rah and means “alongside”) and bolē (pronounced boh-lay and means “put” or even “throw”). Therefore, a parable puts two or more images or ideas alongside each other to produce a clear truth. It is a story or narrative or short comparison that reveals the kingdom of God and the right way to live in it and the Father’s ways of dealing with humanity and his divine plan expressed in his kingdom and life generally. The Shorter Lexicon says that the Greek word parabolē can sometimes be translated as “symbol,” “type,” “figure,” and “illustration,” the latter term being virtually synonymous with parable. Here you must see yourself in the parable.
34-36:
And here comes the first servant. The word servant here is doulos (pronounced doo-loss) and could be translated as slave, but I chose servant because in Jewish culture a Hebrew man who sold himself into servitude to his fellow Jew was like an indentured servant whose term of service had a limit; he was freed in the seventh year. But then the indentured servant could stay with his family, if he liked his owner (Exod. 21:2-6; Lev. 25:38-46; Deut. 15:12-18). So there was a lot of liberty even in servitude, in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).
Slavery and Freedom in the Bible
The owner reasonably requested a share in the crop of the vineyard. It is not likely that he asked for a huge pile of grapes, but their fair-market value in coins, particularly when he was gone. But the farmers beat the messenger and sent him away. Criminal behavior, but the owner (God) is willing to be merciful to them hoping they would repent.
Then God sent three servant-prophets, but the tenant farmers did awful things to them.
Then God in his mercy sent more servant-prophets to collect what rightly belonged to him. Israel belonged to God, and the farmers or tenants who got the lease had no right—legal or moral—to mistreat his lawfully commissioned servants. For centuries God sent prophets to Israel, and they were largely ignored and scorned and sometimes killed.
This passage from Jeremiah explains:
25 From the time your ancestors left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets. 26 But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their ancestors. (Jer. 7:25-27, NIV)
37:
Then the owner was so merciful that he sent the most authoritative man in his household—his Son.
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. (Heb. 1:1-2, NIV)
38-39:
Then the tenant farmers conspired and hatched a plan. If they kill the lead figure, then they will be able to ignore God and take the vineyard for themselves. The inheritance will be theirs, by default. And that is what they did. Of course their wickedness clouded their minds and made them stupid. The inheritance did not come to them. Just the opposite.
“No law would have granted the vineyard to tenants who had murdered the son; though it may have fallen to them had the landowner been deceased, had no other heirs claimed it, and had they been innocent, the deaths would surely have been investigated … As if asking for a legal ruling, Jesus questions the religious leaders what this patient landowner will finally do to the murderers” (Keener, p. 514).
An old pastor, now deceased, used to say, “Sin makes you stupid.” It’s been true in my life, and it looks like it was true in these fictional characters’ lives.
40-41:
These verses speak of God’s judgment on the Jerusalem religious establishment. How did God exact judgment on them? Recall that Jesus already had predicted Jerusalem’s destruction (Matt. 24:2). In addition, Luke 21:5-9 and 20-24 say that armies will surround Jerusalem and destroy it. And sure enough Roman armies began their sack of the city in A.D. 66 and finally conquered it in A.D. 70. Judaism as it was then practiced was over, finished. No more animal sacrifices in the temple, to cite only one example. The Jerusalem establishment was also done away with.
42:
Jesus spoke Aramaic. Blomberg: “There is also a wordplay between “stone” (Aram. eben) in v. 37 and “son” (Aram. bēn here) (comment on on 21:42)
He quoted from Ps. 118:22. Jesus was rejected by the builders (the temple establishment), but it became the cornerstone. What humankind rejects, God accepts. When people throw something away, God picks it up and turns it into the necessary item. This is redemption.
What Is Redemption in the Bible?
But this cornerstone is active. It not only can trip people and break them into pieces, but it can fall on them and crush them. This is serious business.
And no, Jesus did not need redemption from sin, but this redemption is vindication. People rejected him, yet God vindicated him at the resurrection and ascension.
43-44:
Who is the “nation” to whom the vineyard owner would give the vineyard? These are the converted Jews and converted Gentiles. The gospel was about to go to them, and the vineyard would expand around the world (Matt. 28:18-20; Luke 24:47). Judaism, expressed in the temple worship, sits under judgment (Matt. 21:33-45; Luke 19:41-45; 21:20-24; 23:26-31, though numerous individual priests (Acts 6:7) and thousands of Jews of Jerusalem and Judea converted (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 21:20). God loves people, but he is not enamored with systems.
Matt 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 and 17 in Parallel Columns Are Finally Clear
Matthew 24:4-35 Predicts Destruction of Jerusalem and Temple
Matthew 24:36 to 25:46–From Second Coming to New Messianic Age
This verse in Ephesians explains:
His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace (Eph. 2:15, NIV)
The “two” are Jews and Gentiles. In the Messiah, they become one.
“kingdom”: see v. 31 for more comments.
Turner insists that the “nation,” understood by Matthew’s original Jewish group, would be Jewish Christians who obey the ultimate Torah teacher and who keep the covenant (bearing fruit) and will replace the Jerusalem religious establishment as the leaders of Israel (p. 518). But this is too narrow. The “nation” includes both converted Jews and converted Gentiles, forming a new nation of God’s people who follow the New Covenant.
45:
The same chief priests and the Pharisees, who taught the law—and no doubt the elders and teachers of the law were there too, who had challenged him—knew exactly what he meant. The tenant farmers, who had custody of the vineyard (Israel), acted unjustly and criminally against the servant-prophets. After judging the Jerusalem establishment, God was about to expand the vineyard so far outwardly that it would go around the globe, and the Gentiles would take custody of it.
But expanding the vineyard is not really the main point. Rather, the main point is that the leaders would be replaced with “others” and the church will become the new temple (1 Cor. 3:17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:20-22; 1 Pet. 2:5). Peter got the vision that Gentiles would be and could be saved, and Cornelius and his household were the first Gentile converts to the new Jesus Movement (Acts 10). They and millions like them are the “nation.”
So some could interpret the “vineyard” as the kingdom manifested at first in Israel and later in the entire church.
“kingdom”: see vv. 28-32 for more comments.
“Pharisees”:
See v. 23 for their Watchdog function
“chief priests”: see v. 15 for more comments.
Quick Reference to Jewish Groups in Gospels and Acts
To sum up this parable, Matt. 13 says that parables were intended to conceal the message of the kingdom, but here the religious leaders caught on quickly, thus provoking the plot to kill Jesus and fulfilling the parable (!) (HT: Osborne, p. 792). Now God is fulfilling his plan to get his Son on the cross.
GrowApp for Matt. 21:33-48
1. Jesus was rejected, but God honored him and raised him up. He was vindicated with his resurrection and ascension. How has God vindicated you when you were rejected? By salvation and a church family, for example?
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1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 