Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen

It describes a landowner (KJV: householder) planting a vineyard and letting it out to husbandmen (tenants in some translations) who failed in their duties.

A common Christian interpretation is that this parable was about the chief priests and Pharisees, and was given to the people present within the Temple in Jerusalem during the final week before the death of Jesus.

33 Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: 34 And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.

41 They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.

42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

Many writers of the New Testament used this Psalm to sum up their understanding of Jesus' death as part of his role as the messiah.

[3] This could be seen as referring to the new Church's belief that they had superseded Judaism through Jesus' death, resurrection and role as the messiah.

Others think it might be a reference to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem as seen by Christians as God's punishment for Jesus' death and their assumption that their new communities were the new Temple.

[5] Irenaeus used this parable to defend the link between Judaism's God and Jesus, in his Adversus Haereses.

The term husbandman is translated as tenant or farmer in the New International Version and as vine-grower in the New American Standard Bible.

Using a vineyard as a metaphor to describe Israel was a common practice for religious discourse at the time.

He concludes that: Interpreters should not assume that these farmers would necessarily have been understood as poor sharecroppers who out of desperation for land resorted to theft and murder.

Their high-handed actions against the servants and son of the owner parallel Jeddous’ rough treatment of the emissaries of Zenon’s associate, while the owner’s military response parallels the action taken against the Senators of Salamis.

These parallels from history are consistent with an interpretation of the parable that identifies the tenant farmers as the ruling priests.