Matthew 21:33-41
New Catholic Bible
33 The Parable of the Tenants.[a]“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, fenced it in on all sides, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went off on a journey.
34 “When the time for harvest approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his share of the produce. 35 But the tenants seized his servants and beat one of them, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Again, he sent more servants, but they treated them in the same manner.
37 “Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39 And so they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
40 “Now what do you think the owner of the vineyard will do to those tenants when he comes?” 41 They said to him, “He will kill those evil men, and then he will lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest.”
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Matthew 21:33 The parable repeats, almost word for word, passages from the beautiful, sad song of the vineyard in Isa 5; Jesus is speaking of God and his people. How can we forget the tragic history of the Prophets, who were rejected, tormented, and stoned to death (2 Chr 24:21; Heb 11:37; Lk 13:34)? Is not the son here Jesus himself?
Scholars believe that some allegorical elements have been added herein to a basic parable originally spoken by Christ. One reason for their belief is the newly found apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, which contains (#65) a more primitive form of the parable.
