Luke 20:9-18 briefly summarizes the history of God's dealings with Israel. The question of Jesus' authority raised in Luke 20:1-8 is here answered in more detail. Jesus is the Son sent from God to warn Israel of their perilous condition. Israel is the vineyard (Isa. 5:1-7; cf. Psa. 80:8-16; Isa. 27:2-5; Jer. 2:21; Ezek. 19:10-14; Hos. 10:1). Isaiah 5:1-2 describes God's loving care for his vineyard. However, he also expresses his disappointment with the vineyard because it yielded only bad fruit (Isa. 5:4), his judgment of it, and his mourning over it (Isa. 5:5-7). The parable here somewhat differs. Whereas Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard was about the failure of the vineyard itself, Jesus' parable concerns the failure of the leaders of the vineyard, or Israel. The imagery is set as:
The man = God the Father
The vineyard = Israel
The tenant farmers = Israel's leaders
The servants = the prophets
The Son = Jesus
Bock interprets the parable saying:
The picture in this parable is a common one. It was not unusual in Palestine, as in many parts of the world today, for land to be owned by one person and farmed by others. When a man plants a vineyard and rents it out to tenants, he expects to collect proceeds from the profit on the crops. Even if his absence is long, he expects the land to remain profitable.
When harvest time comes, the owner sends servants to collect the proceeds from the vineyard. The first one is sent away after being beaten. A second servant is also beaten and treated shamefully. A third is wounded. All the owner's efforts to collect his share are rebuffed with impunity. The detail portrays the persistent unfaithfulness of the nation in their lack of response to the prophets. The Old Testament is full of such failure (1 Kings 18:13; 22:24-27; 2 Kings 6:31; 21:16; 2 Chron. 24:19-22; 36:1516; Neh. 9:26; Jer. 37:15; 44:4). As Luke 13:6-9 notes, the nation has no fruit to give God.
The owner decides to send "my son, whom I love." This expression may well be a way of describing him as an only son, since the tenants expect his death to lead to their being given the land. The owner assumes the tenants will treat him with respect. But when they see the son arrive, they see an opportunity. Barring any breach of relationship, it was not unusual for land to pass to tenants if no heirs existed. But the logic of these tenants is skewed: "If we kill the heir, we will become the heirs!" How will killing the heir reap benefits for them? How twisted sinful thinking can be. Blindness can see strange things in the dark. The allusion here is to their approaching execution of Jesus, which is the parables key point. Jesus knows exactly what they are about, even though it makes no logical sense.
Jesus asks the people how the owner will respond to the execution of the son. The pattern of previous behavior made finding the culprit for the crime easy. The owner will come, kill the tenants, and lease the land to others. This alludes to the coming involvement of the nations in the promise, as Acts shows, though it also includes a reference to the Twelve, who form the base of the new community Jesus is forming. The crowd gets the point about the shift in who gets to tend the vineyard and exclaims, "May this never be!" Surely Israel and her leadership could never be guilty of such reckless disobedience.
Scripture and a popular proverb to drive home his point. Psalm 118 teaches that the righteous one rejected by others is exalted by God as the key figure. This text is probably about the king who leads the procession into the temple. Old Testament Jews would have thought of their king in these terms, and Jews contemporary to Jesus would expect the nations to be in the place of blessing. The rejectors would have been the nations. Jesus turns the image upside down, noting that now the king is rejected by his own people (cf. Isa. 53). If God then exalts the stone into the key foundational role, it is risky business to stand opposed to the foundation. Everyone who falls on the stone is broken, and those on whom the stone falls are crushed. This proverbial remark is much like the later Jewish Midrash on Esther 3:6: "If the stone falls on the pot, alas for the pot; if the pot falls on the stone, alas for the pot!" Either way it is a problem to oppose the precious stone whom God has exalted - his Son Jesus.
Opposition to Jesus grows more intense, for they know Jesus is challenging them, just as he did earlier at the temple. He accuses them of being in the exact opposite place of where they see themselves. They want to arrest him, but the people remain an obstacle. Jesus is still too popular with them. He will have to be discredited first. So to this effort they turn their attention.
parable. See note on 8:4.
man planted a vineyard. Two historical details lie in the background to this parable. First, it was common for wealthy men to buy fields, establish vineyards in them, and hire servants to tend them until the harvest time. More importantly, the vineyard imagery represented Israel in the Old Testament (Ps. 80:8-13; Isa. 5:1-2; 27:2-3; Jer. 2:21; Hos. 10:1).
vine growers. People hired to tend the vineyard so it will yield fruit. God called Israel to himself, established them in the Promised Land, gave them a Law, and set over them priests and elders to care for them.
