CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 20:9. Then began He.—The opening of a fresh series of parables and discourses. This parable.—The substance of which is partly a history of the ingratitude and rebelliousness of the Jewish people, and partly a prophecy of their final act of apostasy in rejecting and slaying their Messiah, and of the punishment that would follow. A certain man.—The man represents God, the vineyard the Jewish nation, the husbandmen the rulers of the Jews. This parable is intimately connected with Isaiah 5:1 ff. For a long time.—The idea implied is that abundant opportunity was given for a return for all God’s mercy to Israel.
Luke 20:10. A servant.—By the servants are to be understood the prophets. For the treatment they received see 1 Kings 18:4; 1 Kings 22:24-27; 2 Chronicles 24:21; Jeremiah 26:20-23; Jeremiah 37:15 :cf. also Nehemiah 9:26; Hebrews 11:36-37. Of the fruit.—I.e., payment in kind.
Luke 20:12. Cast him forth.—A certain gradation in acts of insolence and violence is implied.
Luke 20:13. My beloved son.—The distinction between the son and the other servants is plainly indicated (cf. Hebrews 3:5-6). Yet the Son takes upon Him “the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). Christ here speaks of Himself, not as Redeemer, but as preacher of righteousness. When they see him.—Omitted in the best MSS.; omitted in R.V.
Luke 20:14. This is the heir.—An implication that the leaders of the Jews were secretly conscious that Christ’s claims were well founded. Nicodemus, speaking for his class, said, early in Christ’s ministry, “We know that thou art a teacher come from God” (John 3:2). The words, too, of Caiaphas seem to imply a latent consciousness that Jesus was the Messiah (John 11:49-52).
Luke 20:15. So they cast him out.—Here the prophetical part of the parable begins. The allusion is either to excommunication, to delivering Him over to the heathen, or to His suffering death outside the walls of the city. If this last be the fulfilment of the prophecy, we may compare with these words, John 19:17; Hebrews 13:11-12.
Luke 20:16. He shall come.—In St. Matthew this reply is given by the people in answer to Christ’s question. This coming of the Lord is here plainly identified with the destruction of Jerusalem. God forbid,—Lit., “Be it not so”; a phrase found here only in the Gosples. There seems no special reason why, in the passages in the New Testament where it occurs, the Divine name should be used in translating it; it is scarcely reverent so to use it.
Luke 20:17. And He beheld them.—Rather, “But He looked upon them” (R.V.); a fixed glance to add force to the quotation from Scripture which He was about to make. That is written.— Psalms 118:22; a psalm from which the multitude had quoted in acclamations the day before. (Hosanna, Matthew 21:9, is from the twenty-fifth verse of that psalm, where it is rendered “save now.”) Head of the corner.—“The stone is regarded both as a foundation-stone and a stone at the angle of the building, binding the two walls together” (Farrar).
Luke 20:18. Broken.—Rather, “broken to pieces” (R.V.). Grind him to powder.—Rather, “it will scatter him as dust” (R.V.). In the latter there is probably an allusion to Daniel 2:35. They fall on the stone who are offended at Christ in His low estate (Isaiah 8:14; Luke 2:34). “Of this sin His hearers were already guilty. There was yet a worse sin which they were on the point of committing, which He warns them would be followed by a more tremendous punishment: they on whom the stone falls are those who set themselves in distinct and self-conscious opposition against the Lord; who, knowing who He is, do yet to the end oppose themselves to Him and to His kingdom” (Trench).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 20:9-18
The Vineyard and its Keepers.—The pungent severity of this parable, with its transparent veil of narrative, is only appreciated by keeping clearly in view the circumstances and the listeners. They had struck at Him with their question of His authority, and He parries the blow. Now it is His turn, and the sharp point goes home.
I. The preparation of the vineyard.—
1. It is planted and furnished with all needful appliances for making wine (see Matthew), which is its great end. The direct Divine origin of the religious ideas and observances of “Judaism” is thus asserted by Christ. The only explanation of them is that God enclosed that bit of the wilderness, and with His own hands set growing there these exotics. Neither the theology nor the ritual is of man’s establishing.
2. Thus prepared, the vineyard is next handed over to the husbandmen. These are the Jewish people. No doubt the Sanhedrim was the chief object at which Christ aimed the parable. But they only gave form and voice to the national spirit, and “the people loved to have it so.” National responsibilities are not to be slipped out of by being shifted on to the broad shoulders of governments or influential men. Who lets them be governments, and influential? Christ teaches both rulers and ruled, then, here, the ground and purpose of their privileges. They prided themselves on these as their own, but they were only tenants. They made boast of the law, but they forgot that fruit was the end of the Divine planting and equipment. Holiness and glad obedience were what God sought.
3. Having installed the husbandmen, the owner goes into another country. Centuries of comparative Divine silence followed the planting of the vineyard. Having given us our charge, God, as it were, steps aside to leave us room to work as we will, and so to display what we are made of. He is absent in so far as conspicuous oversight and retribution are concerned. He is present to help, love, and bless. The faithful husbandman has Him always near, a joy and a strength, else no fruit would grow; but the sin and misery of the unfaithful are that he thinks of Him as far off.
II. The habitual ill-treatment of the messengers.—These are, of course, the prophets, whose office was not only to foretell, but to plead for obedience and trust, the fruits sought by God. The whole history of the nation is summed up in this dark picture. There is no more remarkable historical fact than that of the uniform hostility of the Jews to the prophets. That they should have had prophets in long succession is surely inexplicable on any naturalistic hypothesis. Such men were not the natural product of the race nor of its circumstances, as their fate shows. How did they spring up? The only explanation is that stated here: “He sent His servants.” Christ treats the whole long series of violent rejections as the acts of the same set of husbandmen. The class, or nation, was one, as the stream is one, though all its particles were different; and the Pharisees and scribes, who stood with frowning hatred before Him as He spoke, were the living embodiment of the spirit which had animated all the past. In so far as they inherited the taint, and repeated the conduct, the guilt of all the former generations was laid at their door. They declared themselves their predecessors’ heirs; and as they reproduced their actions, they would have to bear the accumulated weight of the consequences.
III. The mission of the son and its fatal issue (Luke 20:13-15).—Three things are noticeable here.
1. The unique position which Christ here claims, with unwonted openness and decisiveness, as apart from, and far above, all the prophets. They constitute one order, but He stands alone, sustaining a closer relation to God. They were faithful as servants, but He as a son. Rulers and people must decide whether they will own or reject their king, and they must do it with their eyes open.
2. The owner’s vain hope in sending his son. He thought that he would be welcomed, and he was disappointed. It was his last attempt. Christ knew Himself to be God’s last appeal, as He is to all men, as well as to that generation. He is the last arrow in God’s quiver. When He has shot that bolt, the resources even of Divine love are exhausted, and no more can be done for the vineyard than He has done for it.
3. The vain calculation of the husbandmen. Christ puts hidden motives into plain words, and reveals to His hearers what they scarcely knew of their own hearts. But how was the rulers’ or the people’s wish to “seize on His inheritance” their motive for killing Jesus? Their great sin was their desire to have their national prerogatives and to render no true obedience. The ruling class clung to their privileges, and forgot their responsibilities, while the people were proud of their standing as Jews, and careless of God’s service. Neither wanted to be reminded of their debt to the Lord of the vineyard, and their hostility to Jesus was mainly because He would call on them for the fruits. If they could get this unwelcome and persistent voice silenced, they could go on in the comfortable old fashion of lip-service and real selfishness. It is an account of the hostility of many men who are against Him. They want to possess life and its good, without being for ever pestered with reminders of the terms on which they hold it, and of God’s desire for their love and obedience. They have a secret feeling that Christ has the right to ask for their hearts, and so they turn from Him with anger, and sometimes with hatred.
IV. The application of the parable.—Our Lord, in this last portion of His address, throws away even the thin veil of parable, and speaks the sternest truth in the nakedest words. He puts His own claim in the plainest fashion, as the corner-stone on which the true kingdom of God was to be built. He brands the men who stood before Him as incompetent builders, who did not know the stone needed for their edifice when they saw it. He declares, with triumphant confidence, the futility of opposition to Himself—even though it kill Him. He is sure that God will build on Him, and that His place in the building, which shall rise through the ages, will be, to even careless eyes, the crown of the manifest wonders of God. Strange words from a man who knew that in three days He would be crucified! Stranger still, they have come true! He is the foundation of the best part of the best men; the basis of thought, the motive for action, the pattern of life, the ground of hope, for countless individuals; and on Him stands firm the society of His Church, and is hung all the glory of His Father’s house. Rejection of Christ involves an awful doom. The doom has two stages: one, a lesser misery, which is the lot of Him who stumbles against the stone, while it lies, passive, to be built on; one more dreadful, when it has acquired motion and comes down with irresistible impetus. To stumble at Christ, or to refuse His grace, and not to base our lives and hopes on Him, is maiming and damage, in many ways, here and now. But suppose the stone endowed with motion, what can stand against it? And suppose that the Christ, who is now offered for the rock on which we may pile our hopes and never be confounded, comes to judge, will He not crush the mightiest opponent as the dust of the summer threshing-floor?—Maclaren.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 20:9-18
Luke 20:9-18. The Parable of the Vineyard.—
I. Its references to the Jews.—Its special reference was to the teachers, the scribes and Pharisees. The lesson is very plain. They or their fathers had rejected the prophets who had come in the name of God, and now they were about to cast out and even kill the beloved Son of God Himself. Here, therefore, they are warned solemnly that their privileges will be taken from them, and they themselves will suffer the just punishment of their abuse of these privileges.
II. But the parable reaches to us also.—We have each our own vineyard to keep—that is to say, our work to do for God, and our life to live for God. He will call us to account for the deeds done in the body. To teach us to live for Him, He has sent us also prophets and apostles and martyrs, preachers and teachers. They come in humble guise, perhaps; but when they are pure and true, the conscience and the Spirit of God tell us they are God’s messengers. According to our treatment of them shall be our judgment.—Hastings.
The Wicked Husbandmen.—This parable tells—
I. The greatest favour.
II. The greatest sin.
III. The darkest doom.—Wells.
I. The vineyard.—
1. The owner of the vineyard.
2. What he did with it.
II. The husbandmen.—
1. Their privileges, and how they used them.
2. Their rebellion, and how it ended.—Watson.
I. The circumstances in which the vine-dressers (as representing the leaders of the Jewish people) are placed.
II. Their past conduct (Luke 20:10-12).
III. Their present conduct (Luke 20:13-15).
IV. The chastisement to be inflicted on them.
The History of the Theocracy.—Jesus here traces the course of the history of the theocracy. The true significance of that history is unveiled in a most profound manner. From the foundation of the ancient covenant, down through the ministry of the prophets to the advent of Jesus Himself, His rejection and death, the very consequences of His death not yet consummated—the rejection of Israel and the transference of the kingdom of God from the Jews to the Gentiles;—all is presented in the simplest imagery and with the most terrible clearness. At the same time an answer is given to the question of the priests as to the source of His authority. He is the Son, the Heir, the last messenger from their Master.—Godet.
Luke 20:9. “To the people.”—Christ had repelled the attack, but now He carries the war into His enemies’ quarters. He had unmasked the hypocrisy of His enemies, and shown the dilemma in which their pretended ignorance placed them: now He brings their guilt to light and foretells that their rejection of Him will lead to the bringing in of the Gentiles.
“Went into a far country.”—In the miracles which went along with the deliverance from Egypt, the giving of the law from Sinai, and the planting in Canaan, God openly dealt with His people—made, as we know, an express covenant with them; but, this done, withdrew for a while, not speaking any more to them face to face (Deuteronomy 34:10-12), but waiting in patience to see what the Law would effect, and what manner of works they, under the teaching of their appointed guides, would bring forth.—Trench.
Luke 20:10. “Sent a servant to the husbandmen.”—Nothing is more remarkable in the history of Israel than the constant co-existence within her pale of two entirely opposite classes of men—that of the moral triflers, too numerously represented among those exercising official influence; and that of the men of consuming zeal for righteousness, that is, the prophets.—Bruce.
“Give him of the fruit.”—These fruits which are demanded are in no wise to be explained as particular works, nor yet as a condition of honesty and uprightness, but much rather as the repentance and the inward longing after true inward righteousness which the Law was unable to bring about. It is by no means implied that the Law had not an influence in producing uprightness; it cuts off the grosser manifestations of sin, and reveals its hidden abomination, so that a righteousness according to the Law can, even under the Law, come forth as fruit. While yet, to be sufficing, this must have a sense of the need of redemption for its basis (Romans 3:20-25). The servants, therefore, here appear as those who seek for these spiritual needs, that they may link to them the promises concerning a coming Redeemer; but the unfaithful husbandmen, who had abused their own position, denied and slew these messengers of grace.—Olshausen.
Luke 20:11. “Entreated him shamefully.”—Cf. Nehemiah 9:26: “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against Thee, and cast Thy law behind their backs, and slew Thy prophets which testified against them to turn them to Thee; and they wrought great provocations.” See also 2 Chronicles 24:20-21; Jeremiah 44:4.
Luke 20:12. Cast him out.”—The vinedressers proceed from bad to worse: the first messenger they beat; the second they beat and outrage; the third they wound and fling out of the vineyard.
Luke 20:13. “I will send my beloved Son.”—The failure of this attempt implies
(1) that the resources even of heavenly love are exhausted, and
(2) that the impenitent fill up the measure of their guilt.
“It may be they will reverence.”—Two alternatives:—
I. Reverence shown to the Son.
II. Or, at least, hesitation to inflict on Him ill-treatment like that suffered by the servants previously sent.
Anthropomorphism.—Strictly speaking, indeed, this thought does not apply to God, for He knew what would happen, and was not deceived by the expectation of a more agreeable result; but it is customary, especially in parables, to ascribe to Him human feelings. And yet this was not added without reason, for Christ intended to represent, as in a mirror, how deplorable their impiety was, of which it was too certain a proof that they rose in diabolical rage against the Son of God, who had come to bring them back to a sound mind. As they had formerly, as far as lay in their power, driven God from His inheritance by the cruel murder of the prophets, so it was the crowning point of all their crimes to slay the Son, that they might reign as in a house which was without an heir.—Calvin.
“They will reverence him.”—The lord of the vineyard has one expedient left. He will send his only and well-beloved son. The thought which lies on the surface is the estimate formed in heaven of the mission of the Son of God. It was something different, not in degree, but in kind, from any other instrumentality that had been or could be employed for touching hard hearts and awakening dormant sensibilities. We know how opposite was the result. Hearts were only stimulated into a greater degree of resistance by the mission of the Divine Son. Not one generation or one nation only which has thus argued. Men in all ages have felt the critical nature of the interposition of Jesus Christ, and have roused themselves to put Him down with an energy stimulated by the thought of the finality of the enterprise. In this recognition of the greatness of the stake at issue, Christians find nothing to complain of, everything to rejoice in. Jesus Christ is the key of the position. The text describes the anticipation in heaven, chronologically antecedent to the reception below. “It may be they will reverence Him when they see Him.” The word “reverence” used here occurs in several other places and contains three elements:—
I. Attention.—This is the first element of reverence. Can there be reverence without attention? Is there not much irreverence among priests and people alike? Neglect of Christ’s word? Careless living?
II. Awe is the second element in reverence.—There is much unhallowed familiarity in present-day religion. Too much emotional fondness. Christ risen and enthroned is too much forgotten. How little is felt of St. John’s awe in His presence!—“When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead.”
III. Shame is the third element.—It might have been thought that the sight of the son would awaken in the husbandmen a sense of shame for those misdeeds of theirs which had made his coming necessary. Whether shame enters into all reverence is a question which may wait. It must, however, enter into all that reverence which forgiven sinners feel for Jesus Christ. There is nothing like the sight of the Saviour for quickening the sense of the multitude and the shamefulness of personal sins. Because I am ashamed before Him now, I hope not to be ashamed before Him at His coming.—Vaughan.
Luke 20:14. “Let us kill him.”—We, on the contrary, say, “This is the Son of the Eternal God; let us believe on Him, and the inheritance shall be ours.”—Sutton.
Luke 20:15. “And killed him.”—Jesus relates, with striking calmness, and as a fact already accomplished, the crime which they are preparing to commit upon His person. It is as though He told them that He would not seek to escape out of their hands.—Godet.
Luke 20:16. Give the vineyard to others.—If the husbandmen who are dispossessed represent the heads of the Jewish theocracy, the others who take their place must be understood to represent the apostles and their successors.
Luke 20:17-19. The Rejected Stone.—A codicil added to the parable of the vineyard. The Jews were familiar with the ideas connected with the cornerstone.
I. The stone at rest.—Men falling or rushing on a big rock hurt, not the rock, but themselves. The Redeemer resisted in the day of grace, means loss and harm to those resisting. We must come into some kind of contact with the Son of God. Alas! He has, on earth, to bear the weight of many sinners striking against Him.
II. The stone in motion.—The rock is raised in mid-heaven, hovers over the assailants for a while, and then falls on their heads. Here the destruction is final and complete. Christ’s enemies will be overwhelmed by His own power put forth in the day of judgment. The first bruising may be cured: the grinding to powder accomplished by the Judge when the day of grace is done can never be healed. Many resented this doctrine from the lips of Christ. Some resent it keenly still. But there is no escape from the solemn truth that those who in this life reject Christ must bear the weight of His judgment in the world to come.—Arnot.
Luke 20:17. “What is this, then?”—I.e., if the evil-doers were not to be overthrown, the prophecy of Scripture would not be fulfilled.
Luke 20:18. “Fall on this stone.”—Those persons are said to fall upon Christ who rush forward to destroy Him; not that they occupy a more elevated position than He does, but because their madness carries them so far that they endeavour to attack Christ as if He were below them. Christ tells them that all they will gain by it is, that by the very conflict they will be broken. But when they have thus proudly exalted themselves, He tells them that another thing will happen, which is that they will be bruised under the stone against which they so insolently dashed themselves.—Calvin.
I. An injury which may be healed.—The bruising caused by a man’s unbelieving opposition to Christ under the gospel.
II. Irremediable destruction.—Accomplished by the wrath of the Judge when the day of grace has passed.
Rejection of The Gospel.—The two clauses of the text figuratively point to two different classes of operation on the rejection of the gospel. The one class represents the present hurts and harms which, by the natural operation of the thing, without the action of Christ judicially at all, every man receives in the very act of rejecting the Gospel, and the other represents the ultimate issue of that rejection.
I. Every man has some kind of connexion with Christ.
II. The immediate issue of rejection of Christ is loss and maiming.
III. The ultimate issue of unbelief is irremediable destruction when Christ begins to move.—Maclaren.