suppose that the country enjoyed a regular government, and that the men
had deliberately adopted a plan. In order to account for the
circumstances, you must suppose that the central government was
paralyzed, and that these men were as stupid as they were wicked. Great
criminals are often blind to their own interests: their blunders
generally lead to their conviction.
The murder of the heir by these greedy tenants, in the vague hope of
obtaining the property, is a probable event. To show that the scheme was
not skilfully devised, does not by any means prove that the crime was
not actually perpetrated. The owner was absent; no display of
irresistible power was made to their senses; they were not in the habit
of nicely considering the remote consequences of an act, and an
overmastering passion completely paralyzed at that moment a judgment
which was feeble at the best.
From this point the close of the tragedy is self-evident; the Lord
accordingly does not further prosecute the narrative. Here the Pharisees
are invited to pronounce judgment upon themselves; nor do they hesitate
to accept the challenge. Whether in simplicity, as unconscious of the
Teacher's drift, or in exasperation as knowing that by this time his
drift appeared to the whole company all too plain, may not be certain;
but in point of fact they gave the answer without abatement and without
ambiguity: "He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out
his vineyard to other husbandmen which will render him the fruits in
their season."
No serious difficulty occurs in the interpretation of this parable, and,
consequently, no considerable differences of opinion have arisen among
interpreters regarding it. The main lines of the lesson cannot be
mistaken; but there is need of careful discrimination in some of the
details.
Frequently in the Scriptures the seed of Abraham, called by God and
endowed with many peculiar privileges, are compared to a vine, or to the
aggregate of vines in a vineyard. I shall here point to three examples
of this usage, in order to show that, notwithstanding an obvious general
resemblance, they differ from each other and from this parable in the
specific purposes to which they severally adapt and apply the analogy:--
1. Isa. v. 1-7: "Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved
touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very
fruitful hill. And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof,
and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of
it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should
bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O
inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt
me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that
I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring
forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell
you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof
and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall
be trodden down. And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned nor
digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command
the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord
of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant
plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for
righteousness, but behold a cry."
The vineyard, with its slope to the southward, and rich soil, and
careful cultivation, and secure defences, and convenient apparatus,
represents the people whom God chose and cherished. The drift of
Isaiah's parable is to show the exaggerated wickedness of that favoured
nation. The vineyard brought forth wild grapes,--those sour grapes which
set on edge the teeth of him who tastes them (Ezek. xviii. 2). Israel
lived like the heathen, and thus the care bestowed upon them was thrown
away. As a punishment for its ungrateful return, the vineyard was laid
waste; the kingdom and polity of Israel were destroyed by the decree of
God, and through the instrumentality of the king of Babylon.
2. Ezek. xv. 2-5: "Son of man, What is the vine tree more than any tree,
or than a branch which is among the trees of the forest? Shall wood be
taken thereof to do any work? or will men take a pin of it to hang any
vessel thereon? Behold, it is cast into the fire for fuel; the fire
devoureth both the ends of it, and the midst of it is burnt. Is it meet
for any work? Behold, when it was whole, it was meet for no work: how
much less shall it be meet yet for any work, when the fire hath devoured
it, and it is burned?"
Here Israel is compared, not to a vineyard, but to a single vine; and
the special characteristic selected for purposes of instruction is the
uselessness of the vine tree as timber. Cultivated only for the sake of
its fruit, if it prove barren, it is not only no better than the trees
of the forest, but much worse. Forest trees are useful in their own
place, and for certain purposes; but a vine, if it do not bear fruit, is
of no use at all. No man can make a piece of furniture from its small,
supple, gnarled stem and branches. The wood of the vine is fit for
nothing but to be cast into the fire, and, therefore, a fruitless vine
takes rank far beneath a forest-tree; thus an apostate and corrupt
Church is a viler thing than the ordinary secular governments of the
world. Such obviously and notoriously is ecclesiastical Rome to-day.
3. Ps. lxxx. 8-15: "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast
cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it,
and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills
were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the
goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches
unto the river. Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all
they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth
waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we
beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and
visit this vine; and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and
the branch that thou madest strong for thyself."
Again Israel is represented as a vine; but in this case the features
brought into prominence are its former flourishing condition and great
extent compared with its present desolation. By the removal of the
protecting fence, the wild beasts of the forest were permitted to
trample at will on its feeble and lowly boughs. The picture sets forth
the ruin of Jerusalem through the withdrawal of God's protecting hand,
and the consequent irruption of hostile nations.
In all these cases the vine, or aggregate of vines, represents the
privileged persons who constituted the kingdom of Israel or Church of
God, as it then existed in the world. In the first example, the
_wickedness_ of Israel is represented by the bitterness of the fruit
which the vineyard produced; in the second, the _unprofitableness_ of
Israel is represented by the want of fruit on the vine; and in the
third, the _sufferings_ of Israel are represented by the inroads of the
wild beasts upon the wide spread, tender, unprotected vine.
Our parable differs from all three as to the point where its lesson
lies. It is not a case in which a favoured vineyard produces bad fruit;
it is not a case in which a vine bears no fruit; it is not a case in
which a vine that might otherwise have been fruitful is trampled down by
wild beasts for want of a fence. It is a case in which, after the
vineyard has brought forth its fruit, the cultivators who have charge
refuse to render to the owner the portion of the produce which is his
due. The difference is important: it determines clearly the main line in
which the interpretation of the parable should proceed.
By the vineyard with all its privileges, I understand the ordinances of
Israel as appointed by God, and the people of Israel in as far as they
were necessarily passive in the hands of their priests and rulers. The
husbandmen manifestly represent the leaders, who at various periods had
usurped a lordship over God's heritage. Extraordinary ambassadors were
sent from time to time in the owner's name, to demand the stipulated
tribute,--prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel, men not of the number, or in the confidence of the ordinary
rulers, but specially commissioned by the Supreme, to approach them with
reproof and instruction. The established authorities of the nation,
exercising their office for their own pleasure or profit, rejected the
counsel and assaulted the persons of the messengers. Some were
imprisoned, some driven into exile, and some put to death. Successive
embassies, sent in successive ages, met with similar treatment, until,
in the fulness of time, Christ the Son became the messenger of the
covenant. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. Already
those Jewish rulers who listened to this parable, were laying their
plans to cast this greatest prophet out of the city, and to crucify
him.
The owner of the vineyard said, "They will reverence my son." The
expression is natural and appropriate in the lips of a human proprietor;
but obviously when it represents the purpose of God, it means only that
such reverence was claimed, and such reverence was due. The omniscient
knew beforehand that the Jewish rulers would not yield even to this last
and tenderest appeal. The expectation of the husbandmen that when they
should have murdered the heir, the property should become their own,
does not point to any definite, well considered plan by which the wicked
expect to gain a permanent portion by rejecting the Gospel; it indicates
merely the blunt determination of the carnal mind to grasp and enjoy
God's bounties while it despises and rejects his grace. To crucify
Christ by the hands of the Romans, or to crucify him afresh through
unbelief, was and is a short-sighted policy.
When the Lord of the vineyard cometh he will destroy those wicked men,
and will let out the vineyard unto others. The interpretation of this
turning-point is given to the Jewish rulers in full, and without
concealment. "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a
nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (ver. 43). The polity of the
Jews was crushed by the Romans, and the charge of the Church fell into
other hands. The "nation" that has succeeded to the kingdom is
constituted on a different principle, and held together by different
bonds. It is not after the flesh, but after the spirit that citizenship
is obtained in the Christian commonwealth; henceforth, the partakers of
Abraham's faith are the seed of Abraham to whom the covenant of promise
pertains. The worship and ordinances of God's house were transferred to
the apostles and their followers, neither as Jews nor as Gentiles, but
as the disciples of Christ. A new nation ([Greek: ethnos]) is
constituted of those who are born again; of those the kingdom consists,
and under their charge its affairs will be carried on until the Lord
come again.
The personal and permanent application of the lesson is obvious.
A rich vineyard, planted and fenced to our hand, has been let out to us
by the Maker and Owner of the world. Civil and religious liberty, the
Bible and the Sabbath, the Church and its ministry, have been provided
and preserved for us by our Father's care. We are permitted to enjoy all
for our own benefit, under deduction of a tribute to the Giver. Our
offerings cannot directly reach him, but he has made them payable to the
poor.
When Christ the messenger of the covenant stands at the door and knocks,
a worldly heart within refuses to admit him. The carnal mind is enmity
against God, and therefore resists the claim which the Mediator bears:
its language is, "We will not have this man to reign over us."
The lesson bears also upon the gradual corruption of the Christian
Church in the first centuries, and the absolute apostasy of the lordly
hierarchy at Rome. At the Reformation the kingdom was in part taken from
that faithless priesthood; but they retain vast multitudes in bondage
still. The Lord reigneth; and the time will come when every yoke shall
be broken, and the Church set free to serve the Lord alone. The vineyard
will one day be delivered from the tyranny of usurping tenants, and its
fruit fully rendered to its rightful Lord.
Ah, my country, I dread the punishment of thy unfaithfulness! The same
righteous God, who cast out the Jews and admitted the Gentiles, reigneth
still. On the same principle he has taken the kingdom from Asia Minor
and Greece, and given it to this island of the sea. Alas, if we render
not to him the fruits of his vineyard, he may take our privileges in
judgment away, and give them to another nation, perhaps to
Italy--emancipated, regenerated Italy (Rom. xi. 19).
* * * * *
This parable is remarkable for the codicil taken from the Old Testament
and attached to it by the Lord on the spot and at the moment. The
picture of the tenant vine-dressers usurping possession--driving off the
owner's servants and slaying his son, although transparent in its
meaning and pungent in its reproof, does not contain all that the Lord
then desired to address to the Pharisees. It pleased him to employ that
similitude as far as it reached; but when its line had all run out, he
seized another line that lay ready in the Scriptures to his hand, and
attached it to the first, that by the union of the two he might make the
reproof complete. The first type taken from human affairs is not broad
enough to represent the kingdom of God at a crisis of its conflict. The
son whom the proprietor sends on an embassy to the vine-dressers, points
to Christ sent by the Father to his own Israel. The terrestrial fact
serves to show that the son was put to death by the rebels in
possession, but there its power is exhausted; it has no means of
exhibiting the other side of the scene,--that this son rose from the
dead, and now reigns over all. The parable, when it came to its natural
conclusion, left the lesson which it had begun to teach abruptly broken
off in the midst,--left a glory of the Lord unrevealed, and a terror to
wicked men unspoken. That he might proclaim the whole truth, and leave
his unrepenting hearers without excuse, the Lord proceeded then and
there to demand of them, "Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The
stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the
corner?"
The parable of the husbandmen has already shown that the Son was
rejected by the favoured people to whom he was sent; and this grand text
from the Old Testament Scriptures, which the Scribes well knew, shows
further that he whom the official but false builders rejected and cast
down, was accepted and raised up by God. Whom they refused, dishonoured,
and slew, him God raised up and made King upon his holy hill of
Zion.[41] It is a dreadful discovery for those husbandmen to make, that
the Son whom they murdered lives, and has become their Lord. Nothing is
more appalling to criminals than to be confronted with their
victim,--living and reigning. Hence the agony of Joseph's faithless
brothers when they discovered that Joseph was their judge. Herod
beheaded the Baptist in the intemperate excitement of a licentious
feast, that he might keep before his nobles the word which he had rashly
pledged to a fair, false woman: but Herod was not done with John when
John's body, tenderly buried by his disciples, lay silent in the grave.
Many times by night and day the king saw that gory head again lying on
the charger--it would not go out of his sight. The creaking of a door,
or the sighing of the wind among the trees, seemed the footfall of the
Baptist stalking forth to reprove him. When an attendant reported to
Herod the miracles of Christ, reporting at the same time that some took
Jesus of Nazareth for Elias, and some for another prophet, he had his
own opinion on the point; he knew better, and in a whisper, with pale
face, and starting eye-balls, and trembling limbs, he said to his
informant,--"It is John the Baptist whom I beheaded" (Mark vi. 14).
[41] What wise one of this world,--what human reason would have
conceived, under the cross, that this man suspended between two
malefactors, and despised by all, would one day receive the worship
of the whole world? This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous
in our eyes.--_Heubner in Lange_.
It is a fearful thing for his murderers to fall into the hands of this
_living God_. It is a fearful thing to see him whom you have crucified
afresh coming in the clouds to judge the world in righteousness.
Further expanding this conception regarding the chief corner stone, the
Lord transfers from another scripture (Isa. viii. 14, 15), the prophecy
spoken of old on this very point,--"And whosoever shall fall on this
stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind
him to powder." We seem to mark here a change in the character of Jesus.
Sterner and more stern he becomes, as in his prophetic office he
approaches the subject of his own kingly judgment. His eyes pierce these
hypocrites, and they quail before him. As his witnessing approaches its
close, he draws the two-edged sword from its sheath and holds it before
the time over the naked heads of his enemies, if so be they may even yet
fear and sin not. For his own holy purposes he lays aside for a moment
his gentleness, and appears as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The last
days of the Mediator's ministry on earth are now running: it must now be
decided whether his own will receive or reject him. The leaders of
Israel stood before him, with all their crooked purposes revealed to his
eye; the plot was ripening to take his life away. Laying aside the style
of a meek Beseecher, he assumes the aspect of a just Avenger; already we
seem to see the wrath of the Lamb gathering on his brow. Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry; as yet, his wrath is kindled but a little; in that
day, it will burn like fire. Why has it been kindled a little before the
time? Mercy has lighted this premonitory fire. This terror of the Lord,
like all the others that he sends in the day of salvation, is employed
as the means of persuading men. He not only receives all who come at his
invitation, but sends out foreshadowings of judgment to drive from their
unbelief those who refuse to yield to gentler means. Many of the
forgiven, on earth and in heaven, are ready to tell that after they had
long resisted his tender invitations, they were overcome at last by
gracious terrors launched against them by a loving Saviour.
The Jews were familiar with these ideas connected with the corner stone.
The prophecy in the aspect of a promise they readily understood, but
here the other and opposite side of it also is displayed.
The picture--for it is by itself a short parable--represents a great
stone at rest. In Alpine valleys, close by the root of rent, rugged,
precipitous mountains, you may often see a rock of vast dimensions lying
on the plain. In magnitude, it is itself a little hill; and yet it is
only a stone that has fallen from the neighbouring mountain. Suppose a
band of living men should rush with all their might against that stone,
they would be broken and it would not be moved. If they retire and
repeat the onset, the rock lies still in majestic repose, while their
feeble limbs are mangled on its sides, and their life-blood sinks into
the soil at its base.
The next part of the conception, which the imagination can easily form
at will, is precisely the reverse of the first. The rock rises now into
mid-heaven, hovers over the assailants for a while, and then falls upon
their heads. Here, as in the other case, the human adversaries of this
rock are destroyed, but their destruction is wholly different in degree
and kind. In the first case, they were broken; in the second, they are
grinded to powder.[42] The words in the original are very specific, and
the translation is remarkably accurate. The term employed to indicate
the injury which men inflict upon themselves when they resist the
Redeemer in the day of grace, conveys the idea of the crushing which
takes place when a man strikes swiftly with all his force against a
great immoveable rock; the term which indicates the overwhelming of
Christ's enemies by his own power put forth in the day of judgment,
conveys the idea of the crushing which takes place when a great rock
falls from a height upon a living man. The one calamity is great in
proportion to the weight and impetus of a man; the other calamity is
great in proportion to the weight and impetus of a falling rock. Both
the rejection of Christ by the unbelieving in the time of grace, and the
rejection of the unbelieving by Christ when he comes for judgment, are
bruisings; but the second is to the first, as the power of a great rock
is to the power of a man. The first bruising, caused by a man's
unbelieving opposition to Christ under the Gospel, may be cured; but the
grinding accomplished by the wrath of the Judge when the day of grace is
done can never be healed. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.
[42] The expression is chosen with reference to the mysterious stone
in Daniel ii. 34, 35, which grinds to powder the image of the
monarchies; that is, to Christ who unfolds his life in the kingdom
of God and grinds the kingdom of this world to powder.--_Lange_.
There are only two ways. This stone lies across our path from edge to
edge. It is not possible to be neutral, so as to be neither for Christ
nor against him: we must either accept or reject the Son of God. In the
prophecy to which the text refers (Isa. viii. 14, 15,) it is intimated
that "He shall be for a sanctuary, but for a stone of stumbling." The
mighty one stands on our life path, and we cannot pass without coming
into contact with him. If we flee to him for refuge, he is the sanctuary
in which we shall be safe; if we fall on him, in a vain effort to
escape, we shall stumble, and fall, and perish.
As a general rule, it is in the present life that he bears the weight of
sinners striking against him; and in the life to come that those who
rejected him here, must bear the weight of his judgment.
But some do not relish this doctrine; those who heard it directly from
the lips of the Lord resented it keenly, and many resent it still when
it is taught from the Scriptures. In our day men do not often expressly
find fault with the teaching of Jesus as it is recorded by the
Evangelists: they prefer to blame the ministers who take up and echo
their Master's words. People fondly grasp one side of God's revealed
character and use it as a veil to hide the other from themselves. The
tenderness of God our Father is employed to blot out from view the wrath
of God our righteous Judge. Since the fathers fell asleep, all things
continue as they were; where, therefore, is the promise of his coming?
A great rock is lying on the plain: the cultivators have ploughed and
the cattle have grazed round it since the flood. Standing beside it, and
reverting to its possible history, you give scope to your imagination
and ask, What if it had fallen, or should yet fall on me? The bare
conception makes you shudder: you are fain to shake off the reverie and
compose yourself by the reflection that the rock, fixed to the spot by
the laws of nature, cannot move to harm you.
But the Judge of the quick and the dead, though likened to a stone as to
crushing power, is not like a stone in its silent still inertia. He
liveth and abideth for ever. He bears now,--has borne long. The Almighty
God does not move himself to hurt those who are his enemies, any more
than the rock which has slept half buried in the valley many thousand
years. But he will not thus bear for ever: he will come to judge the
world. He will come as the lightning comes: then blessed will all be who
shall have put their trust in him, while he waited, through the Gospel,
to be gracious. "When the Son of man cometh" the second time, "shall he
find faith on the earth?" He will then _find_ only the faith which his
first coming generated; for his second coming _creates_ no new faith.
Then, it is not "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
saved;" but "a fearful looking for of judgment."
XII.
THE ROYAL MARRIAGE FEAST.
PART I.--THE WEDDING GUESTS.